Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/276

254 of some august (i. e. Shintō) prayers, while Heavenly Hand Power Male God was sent to hide beside the august door. Thereupon Heavenly Ugly Face August Thing, using a heavenly vine from the Heavenly Incense Mountain as shoulder-cord to tuck up her sleeves, and making herself a wig of the heavenly masa-tree and tying up a bunch of bamboo-grass from the Heavenly Incense Mountain to hold in her hand, turned a cask bottom up before the door of the heavenly rock-house, and treading and stamping upon it with her feet became possessed (kamu-ga-kari shite). And clutching the clothes from about her breast, and pushing down the girdle of her skirt, she let her dress fall down to her hips. And the Plain of High Heaven resounded as the eight hundred myriad deities with one accord laughed. Thereupon the Heavenly Shining Great August Goddess, hearing the sound, cried out"—what is now immaterial, since her curosity once caught, she herself soon followed.

The next mention of divine possession occurs in the Nihonshoki. It is recorded in the reign of the Emperor Sujin, a most unlucky monarch, with whom everything went