Magic Among the Mongolians
The Chinese's Great Devotion to Magic - Spiritism of Two Distinct Kinds - The Performance of Extra Mundane Feats and Spirit Communion Through Spiritual Gifts
Few nations of the East exhibit a greater amount of devotion to magic than the Chinese, a people whose antiquity is the problem of history, whose priority of origin disputes the palm even with India, yet as far back as history can trace or tradition bear witness of, up to the present day, China, with all its surrounding Mongolian sister nationalities, has inseparably blended its religious belief with faith in spiritism. Mongolian spiritism divides itself into two kinds; the one is the performance of extra mundane acts or feats of magical power, the other, communion with spirits procured through what is now understood to be natural spiritual endowments. Although there is the closest resemblance between the magical practices of the Mongolians, and the East Indians, it would be impossible to overlook the spiritism of so vast a nation as that of China, and one in which its practices are so widely engrafted in the people's nature. The magic of the Mongolians, like that of the East Indians, is in a measure the results of their religious faith.