Percival Lowell

“ Spirit never dies, it only circulates. When a man or animal or plant dies its body duly decays, but its spirit either lives on alone or returns to those two great reservoirs of spirit, the gods Takami-musubi-no-kami and Kami-musubi-no-kami. From them a continual circulation of spirit is kept up through the universe. Whether a spirit's personality persist or not is a matter decided by the supreme god, and depends upon the greatness or the goodness of the defunct. ”

“ For while simple Shintō regards the dead as spiritually living, philosophic Buddhism regards the living as spiritually dead; two aspects of the same shield.
The Japanese thus conceive themselves the great-grandchildren of their own gods. Their Mikado they look upon as the lineal descendant of Niniginomikoto, the first God Emperor of Japan. And the gods live in heaven much as men, their children, do on earth. The concrete quality of the Japanese mind has barred abstractions on the subject. The gods have never so much as laid down a moral code. ”

“ If you can manage the conception of the first of these philosophic vacuities, you will find no difficulty with the second. Furthermore, spirit and soul may coexist separately in one body. As the spirit clarifies, that is, becomes more and more blank, it approaches soul and finally becomes it.
The one thing common, therefore, to all things, both of this world and the next, is spirit. Everything, from gods to granite, has its god-spirit. Each spirit is as separate and particular as the body it inhabits ”

“ That their dead should thus definitely live on to them is nothing strange. It is paralleled by the way in which the dead live on in the thought of the young generally. Actual personal immortality is the instant inevitable inference of the child-mind. The dead do thus survive in the memories of the living, and it is the natural deduction to clothe this subjective idea with objective existence.
Shintō is thus an adoration of family wraiths, or of imputed family wraiths; imaginaries of the first and the second order in the analysis of the universe. ”

“ Of the present ten sects that compose the Shintō church, only two practice the possession-cult, the Shinshiu and the Mitaké sects. That they do so while the others do not is not matter of creed, but of tradition. Though called sects, the Shintō sects are not properly so much sects as sections. For they differ not by differently worshiping an identical god, but by identically worshiping different gods. Each of them likewise worships, though with less assiduity, all the others' gods. Each looks specially to the great shrine dedicated to its special gods ”

“ Stocks and stones, plants, animals, and some men have no soul, being made up entirely of body and mind. The behavior of some men seems to lend support to this theory. Gods, on the other hand, are bodiless and consist of spirit and soul, except the supreme god, Ame-no-minaka-nashi-no-mikoto, who is all soul. ”

“ Spirit is by no means necessarily good. It is manifest that, viewed from the human standpoint, some things are harmful, some harmless, both among plants, animals, and men. The harmful ones are therefore bad ”

“ Of course no merely finite man can possibly worship so infinite a number of deities, though time be to him of oriental limitlessness. So each makes his choice of intimates, and clubs the rest in a general petition, from time to time, to prevent accidents.
His first choice is made for him by his parents. A week after birth the babe is presented at the temple (miya mairi) and put under the protection of some special deity. The god's preference is not consulted in the affair; he becomes tutelary god on notification, as a matter of course. ”

“ Spirit not only circulates after death; it may do so during life. Usually it does not wander in this way, simply because it is at home where it is and inertia keeps it there. But in some cases it is not so wedded to the body with which it is associated, and the purer it becomes the more is it given to occasional volatilizing. ”

“ Whether during the time of Shintō's long eclipse the possession cult was kept up by the few remaining pure Shintōists, if indeed there can be said to have been any pure Shintōists then at all, is doubtful, although the priests to-day assert that it was always practiced by the pious in secret. Certain it is, however, that during the lapse of Shintō from national regard practice of the cult passed to all intents and purposes to a hybrid of Shintō and Buddhism known as Ryōbu or Both, because it was indeed manufactured of both creeds. ”

“ Possession may be partial, complete, or intermediary, that is, the alien spirit may share the head of the person with the native spirit, or it may drive it out, or it may drive it down into the belly. ”

“ Similarly the gods themselves are divided into the sheep and the goats, but by a merciful dispensation of something or other the good gods are mightier than the bad. Indeed, a certain evolutionary process is going on throughout the universe, by which the bad spirits grow good and the good better. ”

“ A long peace, following the firm establishing of the Shogunate, turned men's thoughts to criticism, and begot the commentators, a line of literati, who, beginning with Mabuchi, in the early part of the eighteenth century, devoted themselves to a study of the past, and continued to comment, for a century and a half, upon the old Japanese traditions buried in the archaic language of the Kojiki and the Nihongi, the history-bibles of the race. ”

“ Why certain inoffensive animals, for example, have got a bad name, or even a good one, is as inscrutable as the cause of the gender of Latin nouns. They are given a bad name, and that is cause enough. It will be observed that in this system of ethics man has no monopoly of original sin. ”

“ Now esoteric Shintō consists in compelling this spirit to circulate for particular ends. This is not a difficult matter, if it be properly undertaken. It is accomplished through self-purification. For the degree of purity determines the degree of possession. Possession is simply the entrance into one body of another body's spirit, and the simultaneous expulsion or subjugation of the spirit originally there. ”