Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/147

Rh the care of the patient. In addition to these six there is a deputy maeza and a sort of clerk of court. The impersonality of these names is worth noting. It is the post, not the person, that is designated.

Severally clapping their hands, the performers now enter upon the ceremony proper. This consists of two parts: a general purification service, separated by a pause and a rearrangement from the communion service itself. The one is an essential preface to the other.

When the last man is fairly launched upon the general incantation, the maeza starts one of the purification prayers (harai), into which the others instantly fall. The prayer chosen to begin with is usually the misogi no harai. It is a chant chiefly in monotone, only occasionally lapsing for a note into the octave or the fifth. Every now and then a chanter sinks into a guttural grunt as if mentally fatigued, very suggestive of a mechanical dulling of the mind.

The harai over, or rather bridged by some of the company, the maeza starts another, the rest take it in swing, and the eight are off again together. In this manner prayer