Within the Nakatomi Purification Prayer, the spiritual landscape is shaped above all by the great kami of purification, who are invoked to carry away, swallow, disperse, and dissolve defilement. Central among these are Seoritsu-hime, Haya-akitsu-hime (also called Hayaakitsu-hime), Ibuki-do-nushi (or Ibukido-nushi), and Haya-sasura-hime. Each of these deities is associated with a particular mode of purifying movement—through waters, breath, and wandering dispersion—so that impurity is not merely removed but thoroughly scattered and rendered powerless. The prayer thus situates purification as a dynamic process, entrusted to a coordinated company of kami whose roles interlock.

Alongside these purification deities, the prayer also turns toward Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess and supreme deity of the Shinto pantheon. Her presence in the text underscores that purification is not only a matter of removing stain, but also of reorienting the community toward the luminous center of the cosmos and the ancestral source of imperial authority. The invocation of Takama-no-hara no kami-tachi, the collective deities of the High Celestial Plain, further broadens this horizon, suggesting that the act of purification is carried out under the gaze and sanction of the heavenly assembly as a whole.

The prayer’s scope extends as well to more localized and elemental presences, such as various river and water kami, and the kami of specific locales where the rite is performed. These deities embody the immediate environment—streams, seas, and the very land itself—through which the work of purification is enacted. In this way, the ritual does not separate the sacred from the natural world, but treats the flowing of water, the movement of air, and the character of place as active participants in the cleansing of spiritual pollution. The Nakatomi Purification Prayer thus invokes a layered hierarchy of kami, from the highest celestial powers to the intimate spirits of river and region, all converging in the single task of restoring clarity and ritual purity.