act inclose the place of the god's descent and sanctify it to his brief habiting. In short, wherever a gohei is hung up you may know it for one of the purification kind.
To the second or the god's body variety belong all such as are stood upright upon a wand. The gohei that makes cynosure upon the temple altar is of this kind and so is the one so daintily domesticated in the family cupboard at home. So also are those met with in the mart, on the mountain-top, and amid the paddy-fields. Last but most important of all these vicarious emblems of deity is that which is clenched in the hands of the possessed during the possession trance.
They are called the god's body, not because they are permanently god, but because they may become his embodiment at any moment. The little that we know of the evolution of the gohei will help explain what is supposed to take place. Its name signifies cloth, gohei meaning august cloth or present; the former meaning having in course of time developed through a whole gamut of gifts in the concrete into the latter meaning in the abstract. For the gohei is the direct descendant of the hempen cloth hung on the
