Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/123

Rh classes of men who indulged in mortification of the flesh to the attainment of thus losing themselves,—gyōja and shinja. With pure Shintō, that is, the present resurrection of the past pure faith, these names are naturally not popular, inasmuch as they savor of the millennial lapse from orthodoxy. But the course in practical piety pursued by the would-be pure, having itself always been de rigueur, remains still substantially the same.

Gyōja, translated, means "a man of austerities;" and heaven is witness that he is. Short of actual martyrdom, I can imagine few thornier paths to perfection. He would seem to need a cast-iron constitution to stand the strain he cheerfully puts upon it. Even to be a shinja necessitates a regimen that strikes the unregenerate with awe. Though shinja means simply "a believer," the amount of works this simple believer must perform before his faith is enough to be accepted would appall most people.

The curriculum has this in common with more secular ones, that whoso goes in at the one end usually comes out at the other, unless protracted austerity pall upon him; in which case he quits in the middle. The fact