Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/391

Rh making, too openly, a pin-cushion of him, or otherwise treating him with what he took for disrespect.

But the maeza does not affect the god's actions, and only incidentally suggests by his questions the current of the divine thought precisely as one person does that of another in every-day conversation. The maeza usually starts the topic, but the god is responsible for the replies. The maeza is thus, unlike the operator in the hypnotic trance, not the power behind the throne, but merely the master of ceremonies before it. In this he differs again from a person who has a sitting with a trance-medium, and who is not supposed to open his mouth except upon his own business. There is, however, a greater gulf between the god and the maeza particularly pure as the latter is, than between the sitter and the informing spirit.

We now come to a very suggestive dissimilarity between the Shintō possessions and all others.

Of trances of the possessory sort there are manifold varieties to be found scattered over the surface of our globe. Believers grade them after the ethics of the possessing