read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes, you will
acquire the same merit has the reading of them would enable you to gain...
So much will perhaps suffice to explain the religious meanings of
nazoraeru.


The magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety of
examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If you
should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister Helen
made a little man of wax,-- and nail it, with nails not less than five
inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox (2),--
and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw man,
should die thereafter in atrocious agony,-- that would illustrate one
signification of nazoraeru... Or, let us suppose that a robber has entered
your house during the night, and carried away your valuables. If you can
discover the footprints of that robber in your garden, and then promptly
burn a very large moxa on each of them, the soles of the feet of the robber
will become inflamed, and will allow him no rest until he returns, of his
own accord, to put himself at your mercy. That is another kind of mimetic
magic expressed by the term nazoraeru. And a third kind is illustrated by
various legends of the Mugen-Kane.



After the bell had been rolled into the swamp, there was, of course, no
more chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it. But persons who
regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects
imaginatively substituted for the bell,-- thus hoping to please the spirit
of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble. One of these
persons was a woman called Umegae,-- famed in Japanese legend because of