Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/207

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INCARNATIONS.
189

blur of divinity, quite unrecognizable for anybody in particular. The communistic character of the possession is as singular as the constituents to it are many. Rarely does one god monopolize the trance. Usually from three to a dozen descend in turn. As each descends, the activity of the possession rises from lethargy to somnambulistic action; the possessed acts, speaks, is the god. Then, when the god departs, he sinks forward into a comatose condition from which the next god rouses him. Each god stays but five minutes or so, and this five-minute rule in speaking produces a wave-like rise and fall, in the character of the possession, by which it becomes possible to count the number of the divine visitors.

Contrary to what might be thought probable, the same god very rarely, if ever, returns in the same trance. To have come once, instead of being reason for coming again is reason for the reverse, which certainty shows a praiseworthy regard on the part of the god not to monopolize his subject.

Although neither the subject nor any one else knows beforehand what particular gods