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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: pendent gohei, or zigzag strips of paper, permanent votive offerings
of man. As for the belief itself, it is but the deification of
those natural elements which aboriginal man instinctively wonders at
or fears, the sun, the moon, the thunder, the lightning, and the
wind; all, in short, that he sees, hears, and feels, yet cannot
comprehend. He clothes his terrors with forms which resemble the
human, because he can conceive of nothing else that could cause the
unexpected. But the awful shapes he conjures up have naught in
common with himself. They are far too fearful to be followed.
Their way is the "highway of the gods," but no Jacob's ladder for
wayward man.
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