As a boy at Brookline, Patrick Burns, the coachman, trained at Newcastle, had taught him to ride bareback with a halter for a bridle—although he had never really cared for riding, just as in college he had run races without taking much interest in athletics. But on August 9, 1887, we find him writing that he has bought a polo pony, and that “Sam Warren, Fred Stimson, et al. have just started a polo club at Dedham, and have also in contemplation the erection of an inn there.” He adds that he is in both schemes; and in fact the plan for an inn developed into a clubhouse, where he lived in summer for some years when about Boston. During the remainder of the first season the players knocked the ball about—and rarely with a full team of four in a side—tried to learn the game on a little field belonging to George Nickerson, another member of the club. But the next year the number increased, and Percival with his great quickness and furious energy soon forged ahead, leading the list of home handicaps in the club with a rating of ten, and becoming the first captain of the team.
By the autumn of 1888 they had become expert enough to play a match with the Myopia club on its grounds at Hamilton, but with unfortunate results. At that time it was the habit to open the game by having the ball thrown into the middle of the field, and at a signal the leading player from each side charged from his goal posts, each trying to reach the ball first. Percival had a very fast pony, so had George von L. Meyer on the other side, and by some misunderstanding about the rules of turning there was a collision. In an instant both men and both horses were flat on the field. Percival was the most hurt, and although he mounted his horse and tried to play, he was too much stunned to be effective, and had to withdraw from the game.
In the following years he played as captain other match games with various teams; and, in fact, the Dedham Polo Club, which he came to regard as his home, was certainly his chief resource for recreation and diversion in this country until he built his Observatory in Arizona. Yet it by no means absorbed his attention, for with all the vigor he threw into anything he undertook he could maintain an intense interest in several things at the same time, besides being always ready for new ones, not least in the form of travel. So it happened that at the end of January, 1890, he sailed again for Europe, and with Ralph Curtis, a friend from boyhood and a college classmate, visited Spain—not in this case to study the people or the land, although he observed what he saw with care, but for the pleasure and experience. Like all good travellers he went to Seville for Holy Week and the festivities following; but, being sensitive, the bullfight was a thing to be seen rather than enjoyed. He had heard people speak also of the cathedral of Burgos as marvellous, in fact as the finest specimen in the world; so, at some inconvenience, he went there on his way to France, and on seeing it remarked that the praise bestowed upon it was due less to its merits than to its inaccessibility. Later he noticed that having taken the trouble to go to Burgos he never heard anyone speak of it again. So much for people’s estimates of things someone else has not seen.
On his way home he passed through London and enjoyed the hospitality he always found there.
CHAPTER VIII
JAPAN AGAIN—THE SHINTO TRANCES
The trip to Spain was merely an interlude; for, above all, at this time he felt the attraction of Japan. Returning from Europe in June he spent the summer in Dedham; but when winter came he started again for the Far East, this time by way of Europe, where he picked up Ralph Curtis; and then by the Red Sea to India and Burma, reaching Tokyo about the first of April, 1891. By far the most interesting part of this visit to Japan arose from a journey which he took with George Agassiz in July and August, into the interior of the Island. Agassiz became a most devoted friend, who followed his studies here, and later in Flagstaff, taking part in his observations and writing a memorial after his death. Their object was travel through a part of the mountainous region, ending at Ontake, a high extinct volcano, one of Japan’s most sacred peaks. But the holiness of the spot, or the religious pilgrimages thereto, were not the motive of the visit; nor did they expect to see anything of that nature with which they were not already familiar.
Leaving Tokyo by train on July 24, they soon reached a point where they got off and took jinrikishas to descend later to their own feet on a path that came “out every now and then over a view at spots where Agassiz said one had to be careful not to step over into the view one’s self.” For the next three days the lodging was not too comfortable, the heat terrific and the footpath going over a steep mountain pass. However, the weather improved; and without serious misadventure they were, on August 6, ascending Ontake, and not far from the top, when they saw three young men, clad as pilgrims, begin a devotional ceremony. One of them seated on a bench before a shrine, went through what looked like contortions accompanied by a chant, while another, at whom they were directed, sat bowed on the opposite bench motionless until, beginning to twitch, he broke into a paroxysm and ended by becoming stiff though still quivering. Then the first leaned forward, and bowing down, asked the name of the god that possessed his companion. The other in a strange voice answered “I am Hakkai.” Whereat the first asked, as of an oracle, questions that were answered; and after the god had finished speaking, said a prayer and woke the other from his trance. But this was not the end, for the same thing was repeated, the three changing places by rotation until each of them had been petitioner and entranced. On several more occasions the ceremony was enacted during the next thirty-six hours, the young men fasting all that time. The whole scene is more fully described in the opening chapter of Percival’s “Occult Japan.”
With his temperament and literary ambition he thought at once of writing about this extraordinary sight, which he connected as a phenomenon with the fox possession he had already encountered on a lower plane. He suggested the title “Ontake, a Pilgrimage,” but he soon saw the whole matter on a larger scale. The cult seemed to be unknown beyond its votaries, nothing did he find written upon it, the few foreigners who had scaled the mountain had missed it altogether, although, as he says, their guides or porters must have been familiar with it. Dr. Sturgis Bigelow, who was a student and believer in Buddhism, had never heard of it, which seemed strange, for although a Shinto, not a Buddhist, rite many people accepted both faiths, and one Buddhist sect practiced something akin to it. Moreover, its underlying idea of possession by another spirit appeared to ramify, not only into fox possession, but in many other directions. On inquiry he found that there was an establishment of the Ontake cult in Tokyo, and the head of it the Kwanchō, or primate of that Shinto sect. This man proved very friendly and gave all the information about its rites, their significance and underlying philosophy, within his knowledge,—perhaps beyond it,—and arranged exhibits; all of which Percival carefully recorded in his notebooks. Every motion made in inducing the trance, every implement used in the ceremony, had its meaning and its function, which he strove to learn. Moreover, there were miracles of splashing with boiling water, walking over hot coals and up ladders with sword blades for rungs; curing disease; consulting the fox and the raccoon-faced dog, which he called Japanese table turning; and other less dignified performances more or less connected with the idea of divine or demonic possession. Some of these things he was able to witness by séances in his own house, others by visits to the places where they were performed, often for his special benefit.
All this took more time than he had expected to spend in Japan, and delayed his sailing until the autumn was more than half over. Nor was this enough to complete his researches. In December of the following year he re-crossed the Pacific, and at Christmas we find him at Yokohama. Again he hires a house, fits it up in Japanese style but with occidental furniture; again he was travelling over the land, this time in search less of scenery than of psychic phenomena and the lore connected with their celebration. In July he is interviewing a Ryobu Shinto priest and “eliciting much valuable information.”
For the trances, and the various miracles, a participant must be prepared by a process of purification, long continued for the former, always by bathing before the ceremony; and by Percival’s frequent attendance, and great interest, he attained the repute for a degree of purity that enabled him to go where others were not admitted. On this ground he attended what he called the Kwanchō’s Kindergarten, but was not allowed to bring a friend. The Kwanchō, as the head of the principal Shinto sect that practised trances, had a class of boys and girls who went through a preparation therefor by a series of what an unbeliever might call ecstatic acrobatic feats, lasting a long time before they were fitted for subjects of divine possession. He visited everything relating to the mysteries that he could find, procured from the Kwanchō an introduction that enabled him to see the interior grounds of the great shrines of Ise, from which even the pilgrims were excluded, and to see there a building whereof he learned the history and meaning that the very guardian priests did not understand. At trances he was allowed to examine the possessed, take their pulse, and even to stick pins into them to test their sensibility, sometimes in a way that they were far from not feeling afterwards. In short he was enabled as no one had ever been before, to make a very thorough examination of the phenomena with the object of discovering and revealing their significance; for he was convinced that they were perfectly genuine, without a tinge of fraud, and allied to the hypnotism then at the height of its vogue. In March, 1893 he gave the first of a series of papers on Esoteric Shintoism before the Asiatic Society of Japan. These he worked up after his return to America in the autumn, and published in 1895 with the title “Occult Japan or the Way of the Gods.”