Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/201

Rh is otherwise conventional. The behavior of one god bears a striking family likeness to that of another. Each begins by brandishing maniacally the gohei-wand, and after sufficient flourish brings it down to the commanding holding before the brow which betokens that he is ready to be interviewed. He is then invariably first asked his name, which would seem to be a polite formality, since god-experts say they can tell which god has come by the manner alone in which he brandishes the gohei-wand. Gods are as easily told apart as men, when you know them. Their general resemblance is due to their divinity; their slight individuality is their own.

The conventional character of the actions of the entranced is of course no sign of shamming. To mistake such for fraud is to be one's own dupe. His actions are but the unconscious assimilation of precedent become stereotyped into trance habit, just as artless a thing as any every-day habit. One might make a more serious mistake and take for necessary symptoms of the Japanese trance these mere adventitious adjuncts of it, due to auto-suggestion at first and then