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Rh roof and then blackened. But at the court-ceremony the production of the protective ideograph by the use of the magic-working broom was doubtless thought to add something to the ideograph's efficacy.

There is a practice of scattering salt about a room, after the removal from it of a corpse, and then sweeping the salt out, for the purpose of rendering the room ritually clean [Yokohama]. While the employment of the salt seems to be the essential feature of this proceeding, I think that the sweeping is undoubtedly intended not merely as a means for removing the salt after use, but as in itself having a purificatory effect, for a quotation cited infra (p. 178), although possibly referring to some other Japanese localities, apparently speaks of sweeping for the purpose of purification after the removal of a corpse.

Perhaps the practice of carefully sweeping out the rooms in which an unwelcome guest has been, after the visitor has left the house, for the purpose of keeping him from repeating his visit [Chikuzen province], is based on an idea of sweeping out all influences belonging to him which he has left in the house, so that there will be nothing to tend to draw him back there again. I am inclined to