Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/60

44 the innocent bystanders as well, giving them thus, by the way, the most convincing proof of the genuineness of the feat. Higher and higher rose the pitch of his possession till, at last, nature could no farther go, and from the acme of his paroxysm he all at once collapsed into a lump of limp rag upon the ground. The others rushed in and bore him away, the wilted semblance of a man.

While he was gone to prepare himself once more for this world, the high priest explained to me the spirit of the rite.

The moon, it seems, is the cause of it all; a first step in elucidation, to follow which requires less stretch of the western imagination than the next succeeding one. For that lunacy-inducing body is, it appears, the origin of water; on the lucus a non principle, we must suppose, inasmuch as it has none to speak of. But, whatever the cause, the spirit of water resides in the moon; the spirit of cold water, be it understood, cold water and hot water being, in Japanese eyes, quite different substances with different names. The spirit of hot water is the spirit of fire. This rose to the water in the caldron from the fire below at the moment the water boiled.