Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/316

294 stage. From being wild, the possessing spirits have become tame. Deity has been domesticated. Originally a voluntary act of god upon involuntary man, possession has become practically an involuntary divine acquiescence to human constrainment. The lightning, in short, has been turned into serviceable electricity.

This constrainment of deity is no new thing there. It had already come about in prehistoric times, as the Kojiki and Nihonshoki show. Since then it has been more and more systematized till it has now grown into a regular business, done as a matter of course. Comment on this is needless.

The trance itself tells the same story, in the ease with which the possession is effected. For the closer the normal state lies to the abnormal one, the less the wrench in passing from the one to the other, and the more seemingly natural the latter when entered. Now compared with mediumistic trances, the Shintō possessions are decent, gentlemanly affairs. There is, indeed, the initial throe and the subsequent quiver, but the one is not an epileptic portal to a general epileptic appearance throughout, which