ABSTRACT
When Mr Percival Lowell climbed Mt Ontake in August 1891 he found himself, at a spot just above the eighth stage, the astonished witness of ‘certain esoteric phenomena which turned out to be as unknown as they were peculiar’. Three young men dressed in the white attire of the Ontake pilgrim were engaged in rervent prayer before a small shrine. One then seated himself with his back to the shrine, his eyes closed and his hands clutching a gohei wand. A second man faced him intoning formulae, ‘tying his fingers into mystic knots…accompanying each act with a gutteral grunt suggestive of intense exertion’. The third man stood and watched.
