Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/50

34 on the jump for the whole of his millennial life. Nevertheless, he found time amid it all to invent Ryōbu. His invention consisted in a judicious hodge-podge of Shintō and Buddhist popularities. His diligence met its reward. The newly invented faith instantly became very popular, because it let everybody in. It was essentially an open air faith, much given to mountaineering, a trait it might be supposed to have inherited from its father, were it not instinctive in a Japanese to climb.

Ryōbu has more than one sect, but it was only the Ontaké sect of the belief that practiced god-possession. It kept the cult alive for a thousand years, and then, when pure Shintō was revived at the time of the Restoration, and hybrids were abolished by imperial edict, the Ontaké Ryōbuists came back again into the Shintō fold.

Besides Ryōbu, some of the Buddhist sects early saw the advantage of being intimate with deity, and Kōbō Daishi, after being taught the means to it by the Shintō Emperor Sanga, so it is said, not satisfied with inventing Ryobu and incorporating it in that, boldly took it for his own Shingon sect of