Toilets were often dark and unpleasant places where the user was at some risk of falling in and drowning. The protection of the toilet god was therefore sought to avoid such an unsanitary fate
In the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa Islands), the fuuru nu kami, or "toilet god", is the family protector of the area of waste. The pig toilet (ふーる / 風呂), lacking this benevolent god, could become a place of evil influence and potential haunting (such as by an akaname, or other negative spirits, welcomed by the accumulation of waste matter, rejected and abandoned by the human body)
[Dont let ur waste be sad and lonely]
A cult developed around Ucchuṣma in Zen monasteries where the latrine, the bath and the meditation hall or refectory were regarded as the three "silent places" (sanmokudō) for contemplation.
In New Zealand, the atua – the gods and spirits of the Māori people – were believed to focus on the village latrine.
The gods were said to frequent the latrine in large numbers and excrement was regarded as the food of the dead.
Biting the latrine was said to transfer the tapu quality that the biter had acquired back to its origins in the world of the gods. The practice of biting to transfer mana or tapu was seen in other areas of Māori life, such as a son biting his dead father's penis to acquire his powers, or a student weaver biting part of the loom to acquire tapu to assist with learning how to weave cloth.
The inhabitants of ancient Rome had a sewer goddess, a toilet god and a god of excrement. The sewer goddess Cloacina (named from the Latin word cloaca or sewer) was borrowed from Etruscan mythology and became seen as the protectoress of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome's sewage system.
She was later merged with the better-known Roman goddess Venus and was worshipped at the Shrine of Venus Cloacina. [HUGE!!!!!!!!!]
Hence the name akaname means 'scum-licker' or 'filth-licker"
Hence the name akaname means 'scum-licker' or 'filth-licker"
A place where women gave birth and practiced divinations, the bathhouse was strongly endowed with vital forces.
In order to appease the bannik, upon the rebuilding of a banya, a black hen would be suffocated, left unplucked and buried beneath the building's threshold.
The bannik had the ability to predict the future. One consulted him by standing with one's back exposed in the half-open door of the bath.
Tlazōlteōtl was called "Deity of Dirt" (Tlazōlteōtl) and "Eater of Ordure" (Tlahēlcuāni, 'she who eats dirt [sin]') with her dual nature of deity of dirt and also of purification. Sins were symbolized by dirt. Her dirt-eating symbolized the ingestion of the sin and in doing so purified it.
tzintli, the buttocks, and religious rituals include offerings of "liquid gold" (urine) and gold (Nahuatl teocuitlatl "divine excrement", which Klein jocularly translated to English as "holy shit").
In the Babylonian magico-medical tradition, Šulak is the lurker of the bathroom or the demon of the privy.
Ancient folk etymology held that the name Šulak derived from a phrase meaning "dirty hands", due to his dwelling in the bīt musâti - literally "house of rinse-water", i.e. lavatory.
Protective amulets in the form of the Lion Centaur Urmahlullu, or cuneiform tablets inscribed with spells to ward off Šulak, were often buried in the doorways of lavatories, or in the foundations of the house, or deposited in drainage pipes.
The Rabbis taught: On coming from a privy a man should not have sexual intercourse till he has waited long enough to walk half a mil,
— because the demon of the privy is with him for that time; if he does, his children will be epileptic.