Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/176

160 thus on the holy harmonicon to the chanting of a portion of its contents by heart. The fair ones chorused him at a respectful distance in the rear.

After thus adroitly disposing of his chief devoir, the priest repeated several remembered prayers, not on his rosary, but, as it were, to it. For in the possession ceremony the Japanese Buddhist uses his rosary not as tally to his prayer, but as musical accompaniment to it. As he prays he soothingly strokes it, and it purrs with the gratified responsiveness of a cat.

All this lasted a long while, but the sights and the sounds beguiled the senses to the forgetting of time. When the priest had prayed, in all conscience, enough, he turned at right angles to his former position, and beckoned to the maiden to approach and seat herself opposite to and facing him, sideways, therefore, to the altar. She then folded her hands and closed her eyes.

First he sprinkled her all over with a shower-bath of sparks from a flint and steel; after which he repeated in a soporific way several monotonic chants, and watched the effect. When he judged her numb enough