Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/170

154 came on and then the wand settled with a jerk to a rigid half-arm holding before his brow, a suppressed quiver alone still thrilling it through. The god had come.

The maeza leaned forward, bent low before the outstretched gohei, and reverently asked the god's name. The eyes of the possessed had already opened to the glassy stare typical of trances, the eyeballs so rolled back that the pupils were nearly out of sight. In an unnatural, yet not exactly artificial voice, the god replied, "Matsuwo," at which the maeza bowed low again, and then asked what questions he had previously inquired of me my preference to have put. They were about the health of those beyond the sea, and prognostications for my approaching voyage. All of which were answered with Delphic oracularity; after which the god spoke on of his own accord. He spoke to the maeza but at me; he wished to thank me, he said, for making the ascent of the mountain (Ontaké) two years before. At which divine encomium, considering that the pious are convinced that no foreigner may scale the sacred peak and return alive, I was proportionately pleased.