Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/247

Rh apparently make a happy family of it, finding divided prestige disagreeable. So, like queen bees, they swarm with their following and found a new club. Such fission is one mode of club generation. Another is by the spontaneous generation from the fertile brain of some energetic individual spoken of above.

Once started, each club is a spiritual law unto itself—a possession Salpétrière perpetuating its own peculiar practices. For it educates its own nakaza under the tuition of its maeza and the previous nakaza. The tuition is one long process in purification. A man begins as a simple member, gradually rises to a lower part in the function, and, if proficient, may eventually rise to be a godpossessed. The outward ceremonies are of course consciously copied, the inward initiative quite unconsciously conformed to.

When one subject has thus educated his successor he retires from active practice, becoming what is called an inkyo-nakaza. An inkyo, lit. a dweller in retirement, is a singular Japanese conception. It denotes a man who has abdicated all earthly cares, duties, and responsibilities in favor of his