Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/164

148 waiting populace of men, women, and children.

When the last man was back again before the altar, the eight launched in a body swingingly upon one of the purification prayers, the maeza as usual leading off. Exceedingly impressive these purification prayers are, if one will but devoutly refrain from understanding them. I had some of them translated, and am a wiser and sadder man in consequence.

As the chant swelled it sounded like, and yet unlike, some fine processional of the church of Rome. And as it rolled along it touched a chord that waked again the vision of the mountain, and once more before me rose Ontaké, and I saw the long file of pilgrims tramping steadily up the slope.

Intoned in monotone, it was pointed with pantomime, those strange digital contortions, the finger-twists. I suppose to one looking on for the first time nothing about the function would seem so far out of all his world as these same finger-charms. The semi-suppressed vehemence with which the knots are tied, the uncanny look of the knots themselves, and the strange self-abandonment of