Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/315

Rh ever produced its parallel. For not only is each form surprisingly common, but there are such a surprising number of forms. There is intentional possession, and possession unintentional; possession by the mediation of the church, and possession immediately by the devil; beneficent possession by dead men, and malevolent possession by live beasts. There is, in short, possession by pretty much every kind of creature, except by other living men.

This omission is highly significant. For it shows that no Japanese personality of itself has proved potent enough thus to affect its fellows; from which it instantly follows that the great extent possession has reached in Japan is not due to an excess of personality, but to a lack of it. As collateral evidence of this, is the fact that mesmerism, hypnotism, and the like, were unknown in Japan till introduced there by the western world; absent, not from dearth of subjects, but from dearth of hypnotizers.

Even more subtly significant is the quality of the possession. Fortuitous, of course, at first, god-possession in Japan has passed from the spontaneous into the systematic