Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/127

Rh yet purer, so gyōja aver; pure Shintō says it was because they had then lapsed from orthodoxy. However that be, when gyōja were gyōja they were anchorites pure and simple. They dwelt as hermits among the hills, seeing no man by the space of three years, and reducing themselves as nearly as might be to a state of nature; of the inoffensive kind, for, as their diet will show, they belonged rather to the herbivorous than to the carnivorous order of wild animal. After they had become quite detached from all that distinguishes humanity, they returned to the world to live hermitically in the midst of it, repairing again at suitable seasons to mountaineering meditation. Such were the men who opened, as the consecrated phrase is, Ontaké, that is, who first succeeded in reaching its sacred summit. There are still a few of these estimable creatures at large in the hills. I have myself met some of them, there and elsewhere, after their return to society, and have gazed with interest at caves pointed out to me which they had once inhabited.

But gyōja generally have deteriorated with the world at large. They are far from being what they were, so far that a conscientious