Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/117

Rh gods, good gods and bad gods, great gods and little ones. Access to the most desirable divinities is the privilege to which the church holds the keys.

Capability to commune is thus in a general way endemic, much as salvation is held to be in some places, or infant damnation in others. And to Japanese thought the gods are very close at hand. Unsuspected as such presence be by foreigners, in the people's eyes the gods are constantly visiting their temples and other favorite spots, in a most ubiquitous manner. Indeed, after introduction to their Augustnesses, one is tempted to include them in the census and to consider the population of Japan as composed of natives, globe-trotters, and gods.

The gods resemble the globe-trotters in this, that both are a source of profit to the people. For finding themselves in communication with the superhuman, the Japanese early turned the intimacy to practical account. They importuned these their relatives for that of which men stand most in need, the curing of disease. Out of this arose a national school of divinopathy.

Civilized cousins of the medicine-men of