Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/187

Rh music, actual heirlooms, some of them, it is said, in the high-priest's family, are played upon by their modern descendant as they were by his mythologic forbears, that the unchangeable gods may still be pleased. In fact, the whole action is as nearly as possible as it would appear could one be transported a couple of millenniums into the past.

The trance itself is likewise different from its Ryōbu relative. It is more natural and more free. The possessed is not fettered to the conventionality of the Ryōbu forms. He sits, stands, speaks more spontaneously, and generally behaves himself with more of the self-prompting a god might be expected to possess. This, however, is in the believer's eyes of less consequence than the knowledge of the scriptures he displays. In proportion as he is able to elucidate the meagre accounts in the Shintō bibles, does he prove his superior divinity. That the subject has been well trained in this old folk-lore, does not, to the pious, constitute a propter hoc in the matter.