The drawing of threads: fine filaments that appear at the fingertips of a believer making reverence before the written name of Amida. Temples kept scrolls known for it, and the folk reading was moral — threads meant sound faith, no threads meant sin. A lecture course of the 1890s measured them, noted that lifting one off produces no sensation of pulling, and printed instructions for reproducing the effect: make the same reverence for five to ten minutes to a lamp, or to a pillar. They are airborne dust, caught on hands that have just been washed and are being held still.