I'm trying to find out more about the status of onmyoji (official astrologers and sorcerers, for lack of a better term) during the Heian and post Heian eras of Japan. Specifically, what sort of housing did they live in, and what sort of daily lives did they lead? Were they permanently stationed in the capital in their own households? Or was it more like a monastery situation? Who were they deferential to, and who did they outrank?
I'm also particularly interested in what kinds of rituals they performed, or whether most of their duties consisted of things such as calendar-making (and if so, was this a collaborative effort with other Onmyoji? How was this handled?)
Thank you in advance!
I'm not a Heian expert but I have recently done a search of the English literature on onmyoji. I'll share with you some results.
The article I'd call a must-read is
This article summarizes everything we know about the historical figure of famed onmyoji Abe no Seimei. It includes a list of every contemporary record of Seimei’s onmyodo activities: about sixty entries in all. Furthermore, it explains the context of the onmyoji role and his expected duties.
The Heian onmyoji was usually a civil servant within the government bureaucracy, and often a member of the nobility. As explained in the article (p. 87) :
Most onmyõji whose names appear in records left by the Heian nobility, including those lower- ranking officials who never ranked higher than Senior Sixth Rank, Lower Grade, were all government officials with rank and position - "official onmyõji " A not inconsiderable proportion of them had the rank of Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade, which meant they were members of the nobility and middle-ranking bureaucrats. For a list of "official onmyõji " of the mid-Heian period, see Shigeta 2004, 227-83; 2006, 128-44.
The Abe no Seimei article was part of a full volume: Onmyōdō in Japanese History. You can access all the articles in that volume for free on this website. Scroll down to Volume 40: 1, 2013 to bring up the table of contents. These articles cover Onmyodo throughout a number of periods.
Another translated article by Shigeta that fits your focus is Onmyōdō and the Aristocratic Culture of Everyday Life in Heian Japan trans. Luke Thompson in Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie Vol. 21, The Way of Yin and Yang: Divinatory Techniques and Religious Practices / La Voie du Yin et du Yang : Techniques divinatoires et pratiques religieuses (2012), pp. 65-77
This article is on JSTOR. If you don't have access to the JSTOR database, you can sign up for free and download three free articles every two weeks.
I hope this helps with your research.