Note 123 — Chapter VIII · VILLAGE CUSTOMS, FESTIVALS AND FOLK-LORE

The following remarks in Dennys's Folk-lore of China (pp. 56 seq.) will be of interest to those who are wise enough to regard this subject with unorthodox seriousness: "Divination is in China as popular as, and probably more respectable than, it was amongst the Israelites in the days of the witch of Endor, and it is not perhaps going too far to say that there is not a single means resorted to in the West by way of lifting the impenetrable veil which hides the future from curious mankind which is not known to and practised by the Chinese. From 'Pinking the Bible' to using the Planchette, from tossing for odd and even to invoking spirits to actually speak through crafty media, the whole range of Western superstition in this regard is as familiar to the average Chinaman as to the most enthusiastic spiritualist at home. The coincidences of practice and belief are indeed so startling that many will doubtless see in them a sort of evidence either for their truthfulness, or for a common origin of evil.... It is when we come to the consulting of media, the use of a forked stick, writing on sand, and similar matters that the Chinese practice becomes singular in its resemblance to superstitions openly avowed at home. I would here remark that I am no spiritualist. But how, without any apparent connection with each other, such beliefs should at once be found in full force in the farthest East and the extreme West is puzzling. Is our Western spiritualism derived from China?" It may be added that Japanese "occultism"—to use a disagreeable but useful word—is very similar to Chinese, and offers equally striking analogies with that of Europe. (See Percival Lowell's Occult Japan.)