TALES FROM THE UJI 2:8 

Please read footnotes below!
I attempt a live reading of a story from an English translation of the medieval Japanese folktale collection UJI SHUI MONOGATARISHU. This is a classic tale about Abe no Seimei, the great onmyoji (Yin Yang diviner) from history and folklore. This was one of the stories which Hiroshi Aramata based a climactic scene of his popular occult novel TEITO MONOGATARI on and that novel can be seen as sort of a modern continuation to this story. In TEITO MONOGATARI, Seimei's descendant protects a young woman from an evil sorcerer with the technique Seimei employs here. Anime fans may know that scene through the climax of the first episode of DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS (an animated adaptation of TEITO MONOGATARI), however this is the original story it is based on.
D.E. Mill's FOOTNOTES:
*Abe no Seimei was a member of the Abe Family and perhaps the most famous of all Masters of Divination or yin-yang practitioners (onmyoji). His exact dates are not known, but he lived in the second half of the tenth century.
*An Archivist Minor Captain is a Minor Captain of the Inner Palace Guards who was also an Archivist (an official in the Sovereign's Private Office).
*A shikigami is a "servant spirit" or a "familiar" that the onmyoji employs. [I reversed Mill's translation in the reading because I like the term "shikigami" more than just "familiar"]
*ARCHIVIST'S FIFTH RANK: There were three posts as Archivists in the Sovereign's Private Office which carried the Fifth Court Rank, and their holders were known as Goi no Kurodo. The lower officials, who held the Sixth Rank, were allowed to stay in their positions for only six years, and if at the end of that time there happened to be no vacancy as a Fifth Rank Archivist, they lost the position of Archivist altogether. It is true that they were then promoted to the Fifth Rank, but it was known as the Archivists' Fifth Rank, and was very much a consolation prize, since they had no further opportunity for advancement and lost the privilege of being admitted to the audience chamber of the palace.