The Far East
Asian spiritualism is flexible enough to make its way into any number of aspects of life, not the least of which is martial arts. While the majority of Eastern martial arts are based in religious philosophy, of all of them sumo is the most interesting. While it's turned into a competitive sport, the origins of sumo date all the way back to the Chinese Han dynasty. It eventually made its way to Japan and became closely tied to Shintoism. Originally called sumai, sumo began its life as a ritual dance simulating something of an exorcism rite. Participants were thought be ritualistically wrestling with a Shinto kami, or spirit. Since then, it's evolved into the sport the Japanese go crazy over, where 400-pound men hurl each other dozens of feet and then bow ceremoniously. Between a modern Yokozuna and a Shinto demon, I'm not sure which I'd rather be staring down in a ring.
But for those of us who fear martial combat, we're blessed with go, a Chinese-turned-pan-Asian board game. Famously linked to modern numero-mysticism in the movie Pi, go's roots are linked to ancient divination techniques. The board itself, a lined network of tiny squares into which you put black and white stones, represents a blank universe. Diviners would then place astronomical symbols on the board and would then make their predictions depending on where players placed their stones in relation to the symbols. Even now, the center of the go board translates to "axis of heaven," and the four quadrants retain mystical symbolism: male, female, mountain and wind.
Go's creation is also surrounded in myth and bears similarities to a Judeo-Christian story, that of Moses' discovery of the 10 Commandments. The story tells of a special mountain with a maze-like ascent. The first person to make it to a cavern at the summit returned with the first go board, made entirely from magical stone. So two guys climb an ancient mountain and one comes back with a game under his arm that ponders the heavens, and another comes back with the foundation for modern lawmaking.
Mesoamerica
While much of the Americas doubtlessly linked games with their omnipresent religions, the only example to survive with any ubiquity was the Olmec game pok-a-tok. Dating back to 3000 B.C., pok-a-tok was religious ceremony, political d
