The text describes "miracles" as "tests of the proficiency already attained in the Way of the Gods." What specific qualities or spiritual advancements would these "feats," such as walking on coals, demonstrate to both the practitioner and the public?

From the book

inity quite transcending the simply not feeling at all. Yet he was unconscious at the time, and conscientious afterward. By partially spoiling the miracle, then, it would seem that I had considerably improved it. ​ III. The second miracle of the Three Great Rites is the Huvatari or the Walking Barefoot over a Bed of Live Coals. To the faithful this is one of the regular stock miracles, and when you become well known to the profession for a collector of such curios, you shall have offers of performance in your own back-yard. If also you be friend to the high-priest of the Shinshiu sect, you…

For there is a more or less complete absence of blisters. The part burnt is burnt like cloth, and that is the end of it. No inconvenience whatever follows the act among the truly good. In less devout folk small blisters are raised, but without noticeable annoyance. The fact is that in burns generally it is the cure that constitutes the complaint. It is the body's feverish anxiety to repair the damage that causes all the trouble. Even in the severest burns very little of us is ever burnt up, but our own alarm that it may be induces our consequent inflammation. Delbœuf showed this conclusively…

all the evidence in the case will find it in the Nihonshoki, an invaluable work in fifteen volumes of archaic Japanese. Walking over the coals with impunity is attributable only in part to virtue in the performer. Immunity from harm is chiefly due ​ to the fact that the fire has lost its power to burn. It has parted with its spirit. Materially considered, the fire is still there, but spiritually speaking it is extinct. This is why, when it has been once exorcised, the veriest tyro may cross it without a blister. The spirit of water has descended to it from the moon and driven the spirit of…

been at first at a loss, so he said, to comprehend the divine meaning. Later the god had condescended to an explanation. Nevertheless, this flowery title, so I am ​ given to understand, is in common secular use. To the undevout mind the salting of the bed would seem to conduce to the success of the feat. For salt is a very glutton of heat, and will do pretty much anything to get it, however menial, from melting snow on horse-car tracks to freezing ice-cream. Cooling coals is therefore quite in character for it. This, its unappeasable appetite for caloric is not unknown to the profession. The…

ibition by the whole company. Fellowship, they say, adds to the purity of the rite. It certainly conduces to exaltation. In the second place, performance is not confined to the professionals. They indeed have the pas , but after they have thus broken the ice the ​ populace is permitted to indulge itself in the same way to satiety. For while the bed is possessed by the god any sufficiently pure person may tread it with impunity to his cuticle and great gain to his good luck. The two go together. The difficulty comes in, in accurately estimating the degree of one's own purity. If one be pure…