Celebi is peak Shinto. Ilex Forest Shrine is just straight up a shinto shrine to Celebi. And that requires us to really get into Shinto.
If anyone's seen Avatar and remembers all the stuff about the Spirit World (a sort of "parallel reality" that exists simultaneously alongside and within our own) then that's honestly the easiest comparison I can make. This other dimension or spirit realm or heightened state of existence is home to kami, which encompass all sorts of things from the living spirits of physical natural objects, to what we consider distinct Japanese "Gods" like Ryujin and Inari and Izanami, to the spirits of the deceased and animals. Ancestors can become kami. Beasts can become kami.
Celebi fits very squarely into the archetypes of the kami in a traditional sense, being some form of nature spirit and/or deity, not necessarily a "god" as we would conceptualize that. Like a kami it is elusive, rarely seen, as kami inhabit the world of spirits and are invisible to us mere mortals. It has a kind, nurturing, loving nature, but it also displays something of an unknowable, inhuman rationality at times, and when displeased or disrespected it brings destruction and disrupts the harmony of nature. And like all kami, it has a divine obligation. It performs duties related to that with which it is associated, in Celebi's case that being the Ilex Shrine, the Forest, and its power of time travel. In return, the people of Johto are obligated to be custodians of Celebi's needs, with prayer and offerings, respect and appeasement. All these are real obvious signs of its status as a kami.
One interesting note is that Ilex Shrine seems to resemble a Hokora shrine, suggesting that Celebi is both a very minor kami, but also that it is known locally and respected enough that people looked to it for protection and guidance within the dangerous wilds of Ilex Forest. Another bit of very subtle implication, however, is that Ilex Shrine might have once housed some artifact or object meant for Celebi to physically inhabit. Could Celebi's physical appearance in our world in fact be explained as the kami possessing an otherwise inanimate object? There's definitely something interesting about the eventually scrapped idea of the GS Ball being used to catch Celebi specifically.
Of course it wouldn't be Pokémon if the inspirations were simple, would it? Celebi also somewhat closely resembles, at least visually, a Kodama spirit, a sort of tree-spirit that is not exactly a kami at all and is something closer to Yokai which... let's just say yokai are weird supernatural monsters and kami are spirits and leave it at that because trying to distinguish things much further involves untangling much older Japanese mytho-history and exploring the history of koshinto which is barely documented or understood even to this day. The major point to take away is that kami are nature spirits, patron gods, guardians and inhabitants of the world in some form, while yokai are (mostly comically specific caricatures) personifications of strange phenomena and, for lack of a better term, monster-ifications of just weird spooky stuff. There's a kami of ironworking, but abandoned umbrellas that grow heron feet and lick people to death yes they are all that wacky are yokai. Celebi also does bear some resemblance to depictions of dryads and fairies, being a supernatural being and/or deity that is intrinsically linked to nature as a concept, and being an unfathomable otherworldly creature humans can't quite understand. It is both a representative and guardian of nature as well as being of nature itself in its very physicality, appearing woody and floral, even resembling an onion or tulip bulb of some kind.
But this leaves the biggest mystery: why the heck does it time travel? I'll be honest I've searched for explanations on this and there's plenty of documentation of instances of time travel in the franchise, but nothing seems to be forthcoming as to why Celebi specifically has the power to travel through time. It does seem to be an oddly focal component of its appearance within the series, though, for whatever reason, and it is even categorized as "The Time Travel Pokémon" of all things. I could say something about the nature of how kami perceive time, the interactions of the spirit world with our normal reality, maybe find some allusions to an obtuse lesser-known deity that has some kind of time power or something if I spent the next ten years of my life hunting through anthropological archives... but I think I'll just stick with "it's a neat idea I guess" and leave it at that for now.
Part 1: Celebi
If anyone's seen Avatar and remembers all the stuff about the Spirit World (a sort of "parallel reality" that exists simultaneously alongside and within our own) then that's honestly the easiest comparison I can make. This other dimension or spirit realm or heightened state of existence is home to kami, which encompass all sorts of things from the living spirits of physical natural objects, to what we consider distinct Japanese "Gods" like Ryujin and Inari and Izanami, to the spirits of the deceased and animals. Ancestors can become kami. Beasts can become kami.
Celebi fits very squarely into the archetypes of the kami in a traditional sense, being some form of nature spirit and/or deity, not necessarily a "god" as we would conceptualize that. Like a kami it is elusive, rarely seen, as kami inhabit the world of spirits and are invisible to us mere mortals. It has a kind, nurturing, loving nature, but it also displays something of an unknowable, inhuman rationality at times, and when displeased or disrespected it brings destruction and disrupts the harmony of nature. And like all kami, it has a divine obligation. It performs duties related to that with which it is associated, in Celebi's case that being the Ilex Shrine, the Forest, and its power of time travel. In return, the people of Johto are obligated to be custodians of Celebi's needs, with prayer and offerings, respect and appeasement. All these are real obvious signs of its status as a kami.
One interesting note is that Ilex Shrine seems to resemble a Hokora shrine, suggesting that Celebi is both a very minor kami, but also that it is known locally and respected enough that people looked to it for protection and guidance within the dangerous wilds of Ilex Forest. Another bit of very subtle implication, however, is that Ilex Shrine might have once housed some artifact or object meant for Celebi to physically inhabit. Could Celebi's physical appearance in our world in fact be explained as the kami possessing an otherwise inanimate object? There's definitely something interesting about the eventually scrapped idea of the GS Ball being used to catch Celebi specifically.
Of course it wouldn't be Pokémon if the inspirations were simple, would it? Celebi also somewhat closely resembles, at least visually, a Kodama spirit, a sort of tree-spirit that is not exactly a kami at all and is something closer to Yokai which... let's just say yokai are weird supernatural monsters and kami are spirits and leave it at that because trying to distinguish things much further involves untangling much older Japanese mytho-history and exploring the history of koshinto which is barely documented or understood even to this day. The major point to take away is that kami are nature spirits, patron gods, guardians and inhabitants of the world in some form, while yokai are (mostly comically specific caricatures) personifications of strange phenomena and, for lack of a better term, monster-ifications of just weird spooky stuff. There's a kami of ironworking, but abandoned umbrellas that grow heron feet and lick people to death yes they are all that wacky are yokai. Celebi also does bear some resemblance to depictions of dryads and fairies, being a supernatural being and/or deity that is intrinsically linked to nature as a concept, and being an unfathomable otherworldly creature humans can't quite understand. It is both a representative and guardian of nature as well as being of nature itself in its very physicality, appearing woody and floral, even resembling an onion or tulip bulb of some kind.
But this leaves the biggest mystery: why the heck does it time travel?
I'll be honest I've searched for explanations on this and there's plenty of documentation of instances of time travel in the franchise, but nothing seems to be forthcoming as to why Celebi specifically has the power to travel through time. It does seem to be an oddly focal component of its appearance within the series, though, for whatever reason, and it is even categorized as "The Time Travel Pokémon" of all things. I could say something about the nature of how kami perceive time, the interactions of the spirit world with our normal reality, maybe find some allusions to an obtuse lesser-known deity that has some kind of time power or something if I spent the next ten years of my life hunting through anthropological archives... but I think I'll just stick with "it's a neat idea I guess" and leave it at that for now.
In short, Celebi is kinda neat.