Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/248

226 son; a man professedly gone from the world while still patently in it. This is a state of existence immaterial enough, but to be a retired potential god would seem a doubly etherealized idea. Nevertheless the thing exists, and in case of sickness or other incapacity on the part of the nakaza, the man who represents this abdicated embodiment of immateriality performs in the other's place.

The chief difference between the various schools of divinity consists in the opening or non-opening of the eyes of the possessed during the height of the trance. But all the other actions of the possessed during the trance are likewise stereotyped. His whole behavior in it is no more nor less than a bundle of hypnotic habits. The mechanical raising of the gohei-wand. to his forehead, the peculiar frenzied shake he gives it, the settling of it again to a statesque imperative before his brow, are all but so many cases of unintentional artificiality. This is particularly discernible in the difference between the simpler attitudes of the Ryōbu trances and the more elaborate poses of the pure Shintō ones. The Buddhist feminine fashions, again, are different from either.