Chapter VII The Ecstatic Dance
I
An important department of our subject is that of the type of dance performed by the early prophets of Israel. We say the “early” prophets because the one account which the Old Testament gives us of this kind of dance refers to it among the early prophets. There is, however, no reason for supposing—rather the contrary174—that this type of the sacred dance was confined to the early prophets of Israel. Its purpose was connected with an aspiration deeply seated in human nature; its performance has been very widespread among peoples of antiquity; and it is found to exist at the present day among uncultured races. So that the presumption is that it did not cease abruptly among the Israelites, but continued, at any rate, up to the time of the Exile.
This type of dance is the outcome of strong religious emotion which necessitates some bodily expression. It may be paralleled with the exuberance of physical health which demands vigorous exercise. While it begins with moderated movements, held in check by rhythmical restraint, yet as the nervous excitement of the performer becomes increasingly intense and the physical exertion more exacting, so does the dance get wilder and wilder until, as the result of the abandonment of all self-control, the dancer ultimately loses consciousness. Its contagious character has often been remarked upon.
But the religious emotion which thus finds expression is engendered by an aspiration which is believed to be attained by means of the dance; and this aspiration is nothing less than union with the deity. The loss of consciousness which eventually takes place is replaced, so it is believed, by the indwelling of the divine spirit; the body thus becomes the temporary abode of the deity, and is utilized for divine purposes.
The first passage in the Old Testament with which we are specially concerned is 1 Sam. x. 5 ff.:
... and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a band (ḥebel) of prophets coming down from the high place (bāmāh), and in front of them harp and drum and pipe and lyre, and they shall be prophesying...,
cp. xix. 20-24. It is true, no direct mention of the sacred dance is made here, but in view of the enumeration of musical instruments which, as we have seen, usually accompanied dancing, it is reasonable to assume that a ritual dance was taking place. That it was a religious exercise of some kind is made clear by the fact that they had come down from the high place (bāmāh), i.e. a sanctuary. The technical name for such a band of prophets, ḥebel, “rope” or “string” (cp. Josh. ii. 15), shows that the procession was in single file175; with which we may compare the sacred dance in single file depicted on the Hittite inscription at Boghazkeui (see p. 59). The account given in the Old Testament of the “prophesying” of these early prophets, and of the means employed whereby they reached the pitch of excitement required for the purpose, is so sober and restrained that it would be difficult to form a picture of the whole proceeding without the help of analogous performances among other peoples. And we are justified in believing that the practice of this type of dance among other peoples does throw light on its mode of performance among these Israelite prophets, because it is a question here of a phenomenon, a curious phenomenon, which appears at a certain stage of religious development, with few exceptions, all over the world. Its details may, and do, differ; but the essence of the rite is the same. There are innate tendencies in human nature which produce similar results; and this is one of them. So that when the means used for producing such results are given in greater detail in many cases, we are justified in believing them to have been similar in a case in which, for some reason or other, the details are only partially described. But if the details of the means used to produce the result are somewhat lacking in the Old Testament account, the result itself is stated clearly enough. The object of all that took place was to be “possessed,”—in this case by the spirit of Jahwe; for it was this “possession,” this indwelling of the deity, which enforced the “prophesying.” In the passage before us the centre of interest, in the eyes of the writer, is Saul. Of him it is said that, as a result of his contact with the “rope” of prophets prophesying, “the spirit of Jahwe” would come “mightily” upon him, and that he, too, would prophesy with them, and “be turned into another man”; the context shows that his contact with the prophets meant joining in their ecstatic dance, the effect of which is graphically described in verses 11, 12:
And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that, behold, he prophesied with the prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?...
The surprise here expressed was natural enough seeing the extravagances to which the ecstatic state led, for in xix. 24 it is said of Saul that as one of the results of his “possession” he “stripped off his clothes... and lay down naked all that day and all that night.”
The point with which we are primarily concerned is the means employed to get oneself into the ecstatic state required in order to become “possessed.” As is well known, these were of various kinds; but the one most prevalent in antiquity, as well as among men in a low stage of culture at the present day, was, and is, the sacred dance accompanied by music. While there is only one other passage (on which see below) in the Old Testament which deals in any detail with this type of sacred dance, it would be the greatest mistake to suppose that it was of only rare occurrence176. In the passage just referred to, there is no hint as to its being anything unusual; the only thing unusual was Saul’s “possession,” while the very saying, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” points to the peculiarity of the prophets as something recognized and well known. And from what we gather as to the existence of the ecstatic dance among other peoples, the fact of its existence among the Israelites does not strike one as other than what one would expect.
But we turn now to another passage in which we read of a sacred dance of a peculiar kind which seems to develop into an orgiastic form of ecstatic dance. This was a ritual limping dance performed at sanctuaries, and apparently in cases of great emergency. Its object was not the same as that form of it to which we have just referred; however, as it evidently must belong to the category of ecstatic dances, we consider it here. The passage is the familiar one, 1 Kings xviii. 26, where it is said that the prophets of Baal executed a special kind of limping dance around the altar: “They limped about the altar which was made.” This was done after the ineffectual calling upon the name of their god from morning till noon, so that it seems to have been regarded by them as a special means of appeal to which recourse was had as a last resort. The dance consisted of a step which had the effect of making the dancers look lame177. This is clear from the use of the root in other connexions. Thus, Mephibosheth “became lame” (2 Sam. iv. 4 and ix. 13), as the result of a fall. The same root is used in reference to men who are lame in 2 Sam. v. 6-8, and also in Lev. xxi. 18, where a lame man is not permitted “to offer bread to his God.” It is also used in reference to animals not regarded as fit to be sacrificed because of lameness (Deut. xv. 21, Mal. i. 8-13; cp. also Isa. xxxiii. 23, xxxv. 6, Jer. xxxi. 8, Prov. xxvi. 7, Job xxix. 15; and as a proper name it occurs in 1 Chron. iv. 12, Ezra ii. 49, Neh. iii. 6, vii. 51). In a figurative way, but connoting the same idea, the word occurs in 1 Kings xviii. 21: “How long will ye limp upon two legs?” That the prophet is making a word-play here is obvious; but the passage raises the question as to the kind of step in which the dance was performed. Limping on two legs can hardly mean that the “limping” was done on both legs at the same time, for a frog-leap of this kind would not suggest lameness! The limp must have been done on either leg alternately, yet neither leg being raised from the ground; as this involves the bending of the knees, one can form a fairly clear idea of what this dance looked like. The word for “legs” is used in Isa. xvii. 6, xxvii. 10 of the forked branches of a tree, cp. Ezek. xxxi. 6-8; if one pictures to oneself such a fork, gnarled and bent, it might certainly suggest the position of a man’s legs while performing this dance. The purpose of this curious dance-step may well have been that by simulating lameness it was thought that the pity of the god would be aroused, and that he would therefore be moved to answer petitions. As Robertson Smith says, “the limping dance of the priests of Baal in 1 Kings xviii. 26 is associated with forms of mournful supplication, and in Syriac the same verb, in different conjugations, means ‘to dance’ and ‘to mourn178.’” While the dance began in sober style179 it gradually increased to an orgiastic frenzy, as is clear from verse 28: “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, till the blood gushed out upon them”; cp. Hos. vii. 14180.
This dance was performed by the prophets of Baal, and it may therefore be objected that it does not reflect Israelite usage because the worship of these prophets was Phoenician (cp. 1 Kings xvi. 30-33); but to this it must be replied that the Old Testament gives ample evidence to show that the influence of the indigenous cults of the land was very powerful upon the Israelites181; the prophet Elijah himself regards practically the whole nation as under this influence (1 Kings xix. 10, 18). Moreover, we have mention of a ritual dance similar to that just referred to in Gen. xxxii. 30, 31 (31, 32 in Hebr.), though the word used is a different one (zalaʿ):
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he limped upon his thigh.
We must see here, as Gunkel points out, an aetiological trait: “Just as, and because, Jacob limped in Penuel, so are we also wont to limp in Penuel182.” The name implies that it was a sanctuary, a name such as “the face of God” proves that here a god was believed to manifest himself183; and, whatever may have originally been the reason for it, it was the custom at this sanctuary to perform the “limping” dance. It took place at sunrise (see verse 31), so that it may at one time have had something to do with sun-worship.
Conceivably another ancient sanctuary where this special kind of dance was performed was Zēlaʿ184, the name of Saul’s ancestral dwelling-place (2 Sam. xxi. 14).
Although the passages in the Old Testament in which this type of sacred dance is referred to are not numerous, they are sufficient to show that the ecstatic dance was not unknown among the Israelites. We have already shown reasons to account for the comparative paucity of references in the Old Testament to the religious dance generally; what we have said applies to this limping dance with special force, since there are grounds for believing it to have been of Syrian origin; as characteristic of Syrian religion it would have been regarded with special abhorrence by Israelite religious leaders as being the heathen rite of that form of alien cult to the influence of which the Israelites were most exposed.
It will have been noticed that mention has been made of what are, in effect, two distinct forms of what for the want of a better term we have called the ecstatic dance, viz. that which had for its object the bringing about of a state of semi-consciousness, or total unconsciousness, during which state the deity was believed to take up his abode in the body of the worshipper, i.e. union with the deity; and that which had for its purpose the enforcing of the deity to answer prayer. They differed in important particulars, to which we shall refer again; but that wherein they were similar was the state of wild frenzy which both ultimately assumed.
We shall now draw attention to some examples of both forms of this ecstatic dance among other peoples.
II
It is a significant fact that, with the exception of Syria, there is scarcely any evidence of the existence of the ecstatic dance among the Semites. In the great mass of Babylonian and Assyrian texts of which translations have been published185 many refer to ritual of various kinds; in these some incidental references to this type of dance might have been expected to occur had such been in existence. We have sought in vain among many of these translated texts for any hint of it; nor have we been able to find in the works of authoritative writers on Assyro-Babylonian religion any allusion to it. It may, we believe, be accepted as a fact that the ecstatic dance was unknown among these people; and this would accord with what is otherwise known of their religious practices, which were austere and restrained.
What has been said applies also to the ancient Egyptians; evidence for the existence of this type of religious dance does not appear on the inscriptions, nor yet in Egyptian texts186. On the other hand, one has only to think of the Dancing Dervishes to realize that the ecstatic dance exists in Egypt at the present day. Tristram compares the dancing of the modern dervishes with that of the early Israelite prophets; and he gives an interesting description of Arabi Pasha leading a procession with the sacred carpet for the Kaaba of Mecca out of Cairo on its way to the Prophet’s shrine; “in front,” he says, “was a vast crowd of ulemas and dervishes, leaping, bounding, swaying their arms, and whirling round in time to the din of drums, trumpets, and cymbals which followed them187.” One feels that there must be a long history behind this, and though the evidence is wanting it is difficult to believe that there was not something of the kind in ages long since past.
Again, as to the ancient Arabs, there is almost as great a dearth of evidence, though some slight indications exist of this type of dance having been performed in days gone by188. Thus, a proceeding very similar to that of Saul is mentioned by Robertson Smith of Kûkubûry, who used “under the influence of religious music, to become so excited as to pull off part of his clothes”; like Saul he was what the Arabs would now call malbûs189. This type of dance exists at the present day among the Arabs, and it is interesting to note, among other things, that it is regarded as a means to mystic experiences190.
Fuller information is forthcoming with regard to the ancient Syrians.
There is the interesting story of Wen-Amon, an Egyptian official who came to Byblos in Phoenicia in the 11th century B.C. Here we are told of how a noble youth, while he was sacrificing to his gods, was seized by the god who caused him to fall into a state of ecstasy; the hieroglyph depicts a man rushing forward with outstretched arms. While the youth is in this state he prophesies, declaring that a certain messenger who had arrived had indeed brought the image of a god, and must be received, for he had been sent by Amon. This occurs as the messenger with his god is on the point of being sent away. We are not concerned with the various details of this story; the point is that a youth is supposed to have been caused by the will of the god to fall into an ecstasy; the hieroglyph clearly implies an ecstatic dance; and as a result he reveals the arrival of another god brought by the messenger. He speaks while in this state of ecstasy words which are divinely put into his mouth, so that he is the mouthpiece of the god191. This is precisely the same idea as that of the spirit of Jahwe coming mightily upon Saul, he prophesies, and is turned into another man.
Another example is given by Heliodorus (Aethiopica, IV. 16 f.), who describes the sacred dance of the Tyrian seafarers in the worship of the Tyrian Herakles; he says:
And I left them there with their flutes and their dances, which they performed after the manner of the Assyrians [i.e. Syrians], hopping to the accompaniment of the quick music of the Pektides, now jumping up with light leaps, now limping along on the ground, and then turning with the whole body, spinning around like men possessed192.
The limping here recalls the dance of the prophets of Baal, or rather of its earlier phase, and that of Jacob at Penuel. For the wilder phase of the dance of these prophets we have a very interesting parallel given by Apuleius of the ecstatic dance of the priests of the Syrian goddess. This is well worth giving in full; it occurs in The Golden Ass, VIII. 27, 28:
The day following I saw them apparelled in divers colours, and hideously tricked out, having their faces ruddled with paint, and their eyes tricked out with grease, mitres on their heads, vestments coloured like saffron, surplices of silk and linen; and some ware white tunics painted with purple stripes which pointed every way like spears, girt with belts, and on their feet were yellow shoes. And they attired the goddess in silken robe, and put her upon my back. Then they went forth with their arms naked to their shoulders, bearing with them great swords and mighty axes, shouting and dancing, like mad persons, to the sound of the pipe. After that we had passed many small villages, we fortuned to come to a certain rich man’s house, where, at our first entry, they began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither as though they were mad. They made a thousand gests with their feet and their heads; they would bend down their necks, and spin round so that their hair flew out at a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally, everyone took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in divers places. Meanwhile, there was one more mad than the rest, that fetched many deep sighs from the bottom of his heart, as though he had been ravished in spirit, or replenished with divine power, and he feigned a swoon and frenzy, as if (forsooth) the presence of the gods were not wont to make men better than before, but weak and sickly.... And therewithal he took a whip, such as is naturally borne by these womanish men, with many twisted knots and tassels of wool, and strung with sheep’s knuckle-bones, and with the knotted thongs scourged his own body, very strong to bear the pain of the blows, so that you might see the ground to be wet and defiled with the womanish blood that issued out abundantly with the cutting of the swords and the blows of the scourge...193.
The close parallel of this procedure of these Syrian priests with that of the prophets of Baal needs no insisting upon.
III
We turn now to Greek sources; and here the material is as abundant as it is interesting; the examples to be given are therefore restricted in number, but they will be sufficient to illustrate the important part that this type of dance played in Greek religious ritual.
By way of introduction the following words of Farnell194 will be found instructive; he is dealing with the earliest period of Greek religion, and in writing about the worship of Dionysos, says he was
vaguer in outline (than Apollo or Athene), a changeful power conceived more in accordance with daimonistic, later with pantheistic, thought, incarnate in many animal-shapes, and operative in the life-processes of the vegetative world; and an atmosphere of Nature-magic accompanied him;
then he goes on to say that
the central motives of this oldest form of ritual were the birth and death of the god—a conception pregnant of ideas that were to develop in the religious future, but alien to the ordinary Hellenic theology, though probably not unfamiliar to the earlier Cretan-Mycenaean creed. But the death of this god was partly a fact of ritual; he was torn to pieces by his mad worshippers and devoured sacramentally, for the bull or the goat or the boy that they rent and devoured was supposed to be his temporary incarnation, so that by this savage, and at times cannibalistic, communion they were filled with his blood and his spirit, and acquired miraculous powers. By such an act, and—we may suppose—by the occasional use of intoxicants and other nervous stimulants, the psychic condition that this worship evoked was frenzy and ecstasy, which might show itself in a wild outburst of mental and physical force, and which wrought up the enthusiastic feeling of self-abandonment, whereby the worshipper escaped the limits of his own nature and achieved a temporary sense of identity with the god, which might avail him even after death. This privilege of ecstasy might be used for the practical purposes of vegetation-magic, yet was desired and proclaimed for its own sake as a more intense mood of life. This religion preached no morality, and could ill adapt itself to civic life; its ideal was supernormal psychic energy.
It is only one aspect of the ritual of this religion with which we are now concerned, and which is to be illustrated by the examples given, namely, the ecstatic dance which played such an important part in it. Therefore we naturally think of the mythic Maenads195, and more especially of their historical counterpart, the Thyiads, who are much the same as the female Bacchantes. According to the myth concerning the origin of the Thyiads, they were so called because the first priestess of Dionysos was named Thyia, and she performed orgiastic dances in his honour; hence all women who danced, or “went mad,” in honour of Dionysos were called Thyiads after her. The Maenads are depicted on many Greek vases and bas-reliefs, so that we can form a good idea of the kind of dances they were supposed to perform; and these were, of course, the actual form of the dances executed by the Thyiads. Thus, for example, on a vase in the Naples Museum four Maenads are represented dancing; two, with head thrown back, carry the thyrsus, a staff with vine-leaves, at the top of which was a pine-cone. One of them has also a torch; two others, while dancing, play, one a tambourine, the other a pipe196. Or again, on a cup in the Athens National Museum a Maenad is represented playing a tambourine, or timbrel, and dancing in wild fashion197. Another example is the dancing, accompanied by instrumental music, which is portrayed on the beautiful cylix of Hieron, “perhaps the most exquisite that ceramography has left us198”; the movements of the maidens are superbly executed. But instances of this kind could be greatly multiplied; they all exhibit one or other phase of orgiastic dance, “the same mad revelry, the utter exhaustion and prostrate sleep199”; and they represent the kind of dancing which historically was performed by the Thyiads. “Maenad,” as Miss Harrison says, “is the Mad One, Thyiad the Rushing Distraught One, or something of the kind... Mad One, Distraught One, Pure One, are simply ways of describing a woman under the influence of a god, of Dionysos200”; and, of course, this madness could be caused by any other orgiastic divinity.
Those who took part in these dances are described as “raving and possessed”; their over-wrought state caused them to see visions201; the god was believed to be present, though invisible; and at the Dionysos festivals the maidens celebrated his presence202, thus direct contact with him by his worshippers was effected203.
In an interesting passage in Pausanias we read:
But I could not understand why he (i.e. Homer, in Od. XI. 581) spoke of the fair dancing grounds of Panopeus till it was explained to me by the women whom the Athenians call Thyiades. The Thyiads are Attic women who go every other year with the Delphian women to Parnassos, and there hold orgies in honour of Dionysos. It is the custom of these Thyiads to dance at various places on the road from Athens, and one of these places is Panopeus. Thus, the epithet which Homer applies to Panopeus seems to allude to the dance of the Thyiads204.
The finest and most graphic description of this ecstatic dance is that given by Aristophanes in the Frogs, 325 ff. which is sung by the chorus of the Mystae:
Thou that dwellest in the shadow
Of great glory here beside us,
Spirit, Spirit, we have hied us
To thy dancing in the meadow!
Come, Iacchus; let thy brow
Toss its fruited myrtle bough;
We are thine, O happy dancer; O our comrade, come and guide us!
Let the mystic measure beat:
Come in riot fiery feet;
Free and holy all before thee,
And thy Mystae wait the music of thy feet!
Spirit, Spirit, lift the shaken
Splendour of thy tossing torches!
All the meadow flashes, scorches:
Up, Iacchus, and awaken!
Come, thou star that bringest light
To the darkness of our rite,
Till thine old men dance as young men, dance with every thought forsaken.
Of the dulness and the fear
Left by many a circling year:
Let thy red light guide the dances
Where thy banded youth advances,
To be joyous by the blossoms of the mere!205
Iacchus was the name by which Dionysos was known at Eleusis206.
Pindar, in the Pythian Ode, refers to the dancing of the Thyiads at the annual festival celebrated in honour of Pan, when, according to Herodotus, VI. 105, sacrifice was offered and a torch procession took place:
I would pray to the Mother to loose her ban,
The holy goddess to whom, and to Pan,
Before my gate, all night long,
The maids do worship with dance and song207.
Reference may also be made to Pausanias, V. xvi. 5, where we read of the “Sixteen Women” who get up two choruses, that of Physcoa and that of Hippodamia; the former was loved by Dionysos, and she is said to have been the first to pay reverence to him; and therefore “among the honours which Physcoa receives is a chorus named after her and arranged by the Sixteen Women.”
The Thyiads are, as already mentioned, the same as the female Bacchantes often spoken of Pausanias, for example, makes a reference to them:
... Beyond the theatre is a temple of Dionysos; the image of the god is of gold and ivory, and beside it are female Bacchantes in white marble. They say that these women are sacred, and that they rave in honour of Dionysos208.
It is to these that Euripides refers in the Bacchae209. Diodorus speaks of them thus:
... In many towns of Greece every alternate year Bacchanalian assemblies of women gather together, and it is the custom for maidens to carry the thyrsus and to revel together, honouring and glorifying the god; and for the (married) women to worship the god in organized bands, and to revel in every way to celebrate the presence of Dionysos, imitating thereby the Maenads who from of old, it is said, constantly attended the god210.
The male correlatives of Maenads, or rather Thyiads, are the Kouretes, who took their part in the Orphic mysteries. They were
the young population considered as worshipping the young male god, the Kouros; they were “mailed priests” because the young male population were naturally warriors. They danced their local war-dance over the new-born child, and, because in those early days the worship of the Mother and the son was not yet sundered, they were attendants (prospoloi) on the Mother also... they are divine (theoi), and their dancing is sacred211.
Clement of Alexandria refers to them thus:
The mysteries of Dionysos are wholly inhuman; for while he was still a child and the Kouretes were dancing their armed dance about him, the Titans stole upon him, deceived him with childish toys, and tore him to pieces212.
A typical instance of myth regarded as reality. We are only dealing here, however, with a few examples of the ecstatic dance among the Greeks. Those given will suffice for present purposes.
It will have been noticed that all these examples present the ecstatic dance in its milder form; it is comparable with the dance of the Israelite prophets, not with that of the Syrian prophets of Baal. The fact is that this latter form of worship was not popular among the Greeks. It is true, the worship of Attis, in which the ecstatic dance in its most barbaric form figured prominently, is mentioned in Pausan. VII. xvii. 9, XX. 3; but this is quite exceptional, for the rites, of Syrian origin, which were performed in honour of Kybele and Attis were un-Hellenic and did not appeal to the Greeks.
“The barbarous and cruel character of the worship, with its frantic excesses, was doubtless repugnant to the good taste and humanity of the Greeks, who seem to have preferred the kindred but gentler rites of Adonis. Yet,” continues the same writer, “the same features which shocked and repelled the Greeks may have positively attracted the less refined Romans and barbarians of the West. The ecstatic frenzies, which were mistaken for divine inspiration, the mangling of the body, the theory of a new birth, and the remission of sins through the shedding of blood, have all their origin in savagery, and they naturally appealed to peoples in whom the savage instincts were still strong213.”
Among the Romans, under the Empire and onwards, this worship became prominent, and was still existent in the 4th century, for Symmachus tells of the celebrations of the festivals of Magna Mater214. Its special feature was the orgiastic dance of the priests215, accompanied by song, which culminated in self-laceration. The third day of this festival of Kybele and Attis was known as the Day of Blood (Dies Sanguinis); the Archigallus or high-priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice:
Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt in a frenzy of excitement, and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood216.
Thus, while among the Romans during the early centuries of the Christian era, and owing to the influx of oriental cults, the ecstatic dance in its most barbaric form was prominent, among the Greeks this form of it made but little appeal, and it is only rarely that reference is made to it. But although this extreme and sanguinary form was distasteful to the Greeks, the ecstatic dance was with them of a very wild character; and it is possible that the purpose of this type of dance among Greeks and Romans respectively may have had something to do with its form. Reference is made to this point below (see p. 138), but we must first take a brief glance at the ecstatic dance as practised among some of the uncultured races.
IV
Among uncultured peoples the ecstatic dance appears both in its milder and its more barbaric forms. To take a few examples of the former first.
The means employed to become “possessed” are various, but the most usual is the dance accompanied by the rhythmic beating of a drum or other instrument; this is persisted in until with the rising excitement it becomes wilder and wilder, and ultimately brings about unconsciousness, or at least semi-consciousness, in the dancer. Thus, the Vedda form of “possession” is attained by a dance which began with moderate movements in which “the shaman, while uttering invocations to the spirits, circles round the offerings; the dance increases in speed until the seizure takes place217.” Again, in Southern India we have the example of the so-called “devil-dancers,” who work themselves into paroxysms in order to gain inspiration,
whereby they profess to cure their patients. So, with furious dancing to music and chanting of the attendants the Bodo priest brings on a fit of maniacal inspiration in which the deity fills him and gives oracles through him218.
Another instructive instance is that of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast whose priests and priestesses are believed to be from time to time
possessed or inspired by the deity whom they serve; and in that state they are consulted as oracles. They work themselves up to the necessary pitch of excitement by dancing to the music of drums; each god has his special hymn, sung to a special beat of the drums, and accompanied by a special dance. It is while thus dancing to the drums that the priest or priestess lets fall the oracular words in a croaking or guttural voice which the hearers take to be the voice of the god. Hence dancing has an important place in the education of priests and priestesses; they are trained in it for months before they may perform in public. These mouth-pieces of the deity are consulted in almost every concern of life, and are handsomely paid for their services219.
Among the North American Indians with whom the sacred dance acts as the expression of religious feeling to a greater degree than perhaps among any other uncultured races with the exception of the aborigines of Oceania, dancing to the point of unconsciousness is an act of devotion to the god220.
This is further illustrated by the ancient Peruvians; among them the religious dance was “the grand form of religious demonstration.” The very name of their principal festivals, Raymi, means “dance.” Their dances at these festivals are of such a violent character that the dancers seem to be out of their senses. “It is noteworthy,” says Réville, “that the Incas themselves took no part in the violent dances, but had an ‘Incas’ dance of their own, which was grave and measured221.”
Another example, offered by Skeat, is from a very different centre. In writing about dances among the Malays, which, as he says, are almost all religious in their origin, he goes on to tell of one which “began soberly like the others, but grew to a wild revel until the dancers were, or pretended to be, possessed by the Spirit of Dancing, hantu mĕnāri as they called it...222.”
Lastly, in Borneo the Kayan medicine-women, in the course of exorcism of the evil spirit for the cure of disease, whirl round until they fall in a faint223.
A modern European example of this type of dance is that performed among some Russian sectaries; in order to produce a state of religious exaltation wild, whirling dances, like those of the dancing dervishes, are executed224.
These are but a very few examples of many which could be given; but they are sufficient to answer our purposes.
Before coming to one or two illustrations of the more barbaric form of this type of dance, one instance may be offered of the ecstatic dance of the milder kind being performed with an object different from those which are usually connected with it. Among the Maoris the war-dance, which was looked upon as a religious act, was often performed on the eve of battle in order to impart daring and bravery to the warriors; and this dance often assumed the form of frenzy when accompanied by the beating of drums and the shouting of the dancers. An eye-witness describes it thus:
The Maoris turned their faces into close imitations of their demonlike carved images. But the thrust-out tongue, the wild rolling eyes standing out of the head, the fierce grimaces, and the quivering hands and fingers, with the accompaniment of the deep-drawn cries and the stamp of feet, had all the advantages of living movement to add to the terrifying effect. It is difficult to efface the deep impression that its massive energy and furious, almost epileptic, passion makes on the mind, when produced by hundreds. It surpassed in fury anything that kava or any other drug or fermented liquor could have given to the harmonious movements of a mass of warriors225.
Strictly speaking, this hardly belongs to the category of ecstatic dances because it is not performed with any idea of communication with a supernatural power, whether as a means of effecting union with it, or honouring it, or as a form of supplication to it; nevertheless, it is worth recording here, if only because it affords an illustration of the extended use of a rite for purposes with which originally it had nothing to do.
And now to give, finally, an example or two of the ecstatic dance in its most extreme and barbaric form. Frazer tells us that
when game was very scarce, certain Basuto tribes which lived partly by the chase, were wont to assemble and invoke the spirit of a famous dead chief and other ancestral deities. At these ceremonies they cut themselves with knives, rolled in ashes, and uttered piercing cries. They also joined in religious dances, chanted plaintive airs, and gave vent to loud lamentations. After spending a whole day and night in wailing and prayer, they dispersed next morning to scour the country in search of the game which they confidently expected the ghosts or gods would send in answer to their intercession226.
He compares this with the frenzied rites of the Canaanite prophets of Baal, and refers to another well-known case among the Israelites themselves (Hos. vii. 14), in which they lacerated their bodies by way of appealing to the deity on behalf of their corn and vines. The non-mention of the sacred dance in this passage does not imply that it did not take place; analogies suggest that it was an indispensable part of the rite.
Another instructive example is given by Jevons which he takes from Bishop Caldwell’s “very careful observations in Tinnevelly227.” He says:
In Tinnevelly evil spirits have no regular priests; but when it becomes necessary, in consequence of some pressing need, to resort to the aid of these spirits, some one is chosen, or offers himself, to be the priest for the occasion, and is dressed up in the insignia of the spirit. As blood is the sacrifice to a god, so in the dance with which the evil spirits, like the tribal god, are worshipped, the dancer in an ecstasy draws his own blood and drinks that of the victim, a goat, say, and thus the spirit passes into him, and he has the power of prophecy. As the sacrifice of the sacred victims was a solemn mystery to be celebrated by night, and terminated before sunrise, so the worship of the evil spirits must be performed by night, and the general opinion is that night is the appropriate time for their worship228.
Here we have another interesting parallel to the procedure of the priests of Baal, though, as the Canaanite worship had reached, in comparison, a higher stage, the parallel does not hold good in all particulars. But we have the pressing need of the Baal-worshippers, the sacrifice to the god, the dance round the altar, the dancers in an ecstasy drawing their own blood, and the spirit of prophecy passing into them229; the sacrifice takes place after sunset. They do not drink the blood of the sacrificial victim in order to become possessed by the god because this is effected by means of the ecstatic dance whereby they prophesy; and probably this points to an advance in religious conception; for the belief that union is effected by the ecstatic dance is certainly not so crass and materialistic as that which requires the essence of the deity to pass into his worshippers by drinking the blood of the sacrificial victim offered to him, and which is supposed to become identified with the god. In other respects the parallel is sufficiently striking. In each case it is clear that the ecstatic dance is an essential part of the ritual.
The pressing needs which this type of sacrifice with its ecstatic dance are supposed to supply are various, but there is a curious and instructive similarity in most of the details of the ritual wherever it is practised, showing that the underlying ideas are generally the same in every case. Here is one more example. In his book on Serpent-worship in India Mr C. F. Oldham describes what he saw during the great sacrifice to Kailang Nāg, which was celebrated in the village of the Ravi, and which had for its object the obtaining of fine weather for the sowing,—this had been delayed owing to storms. Kailang, a demi-god, is supposed to control the weather. The writer says:
On my arrival I found the people assembled on the open grassy space in front of the temple. The men and the boys sat together, the women and the girls being at a little distance. Soon the music struck up, and some of the men and boys began to dance in a circle, the chela230 dancing in the centre. After a time the music became wilder and the dance more energetic. Some of the men, when tired, sat down, and others took their places. The chela continued dancing, and he applied the sungal231 to his own back and shoulders, and to those of some of the other dancers. Some of the men then applied another similar scourge to their backs, with great effect, amid shouts of Kailang Mahārāi ki jāi (“Victory to the great king Kailang”). Then, all being ready, a victim (a ram) was led out, and having shown, by shivering, that it was acceptable to the deity, its head was struck off. The body was immediately lifted up by several men, and the chela, seizing upon it, drank the blood as it spouted from the neck, amid renewed shouts of Kailang Mahārāi ki jāi. The carcase was thrown down upon the ground, and the head, with a burning coal upon it, placed before the threshold of the temple. The dancing was then renewed, and became more violent, until the chela gasped out Kailang āya (“Kailang has come”). All then became silent, and the prophet announced that the sacrifice was accepted, and that the season would be favourable. This was received with a storm of shouts of Kailang Mahārāi ki jāi, and the chela sank down upon the ground exhausted. Water was poured over him, and he was vigorously fanned till he showed signs of revival. The assembly then began to disperse232.
These three examples exhibit essentially the same traits and sufficiently illustrate this type of dance in its extreme form among peoples of low civilization, so that it is unnecessary to multiply illustrations. It must, however, be said that this more barbarous form of the ecstatic dance is not nearly so prevalent as the form previously mentioned; it seems to be resorted to in times of emergency, and in this offers a further parallel to the case of the prophets of Baal.
Summary and Considerations
The ecstatic dance is performed as the outcome of strong religious emotion; it begins quietly and without any indication of what is to come; but the intention to increase it gradually to an extravagant pitch is there from the commencement, and it continues until semi-consciousness, and even total unconsciousness is reached. The excitement caused by the dance frequently becomes contagious, so that others join in. The purpose of this dance is to effect union with a superhuman spirit; the body, temporarily “emptied” of consciousness, is believed to be entered by the god or spirit in whose honour the dance takes place. Among peoples of low culture, among whom belief in the “external soul” is common, there can be no doubt that the conviction existed that the soul took its departure from the body for the time being, thus making room for the higher spirit of the god. While thus inhabiting the body, the god utilized it for his own purposes. The prime motive of the ecstatic dance was union with the deity; that being once effected other things might or might not follow.
The ecstatic dance takes, however, a different form, and has a different purpose under special circumstances. It acts sometimes as a means of forcing the deity (or, rather, it is believed to do so) to answer prayer; then during the ecstatic state self-laceration takes place, apparently with little or no sensation of pain; the loss of consciousness does not necessarily ensue. Both these forms of the ecstatic dance are met with among the Israelites. The former was practised by the prophets, and its contagious character is forcibly illustrated; as a result the spirit of Jahwe comes upon the performer. The latter is mentioned as a Syrian rite practised in time of emergency by the prophets of Baal; but the influence of Syrian, or Canaanite, practice upon the Israelites here is plainly indicated by the prophet Hosea who tells of how the people “cut themselves for corn and wine,” thus rebelling against their God. Though in this instance the dance is not mentioned we know from the parallel case of the prophets of Baal that it was part of the ritual, and therefore took place; and this quite apart from the analogous practice elsewhere. It was done with the purpose of forcing the god (in this case some local Baal) to give good crops. It was, so we may believe, an emergency rite; the more normal method may have been the dance round the sacred tree (see above, pp. 96, 99, 103). As to the special form of dance on these occasions, it is probable, so far as the prophetic dance was concerned, that it began in quite moderate style, and in single file formation; as the excitement increased it is obvious that it assumed a very different form, a whirling round with head thrown back, judging from analogy. In the case of the wilder, Syrian, form, there is reason to suppose that it began also quietly, with the “limping” step, and presently got wilder and wilder, until knives and other sharp instruments were seized, and self-inflicted wounds caused blood to flow from the bodies of the performers. The purpose of the “limping” step is believed, with good reason, to have been to arouse the pity of the god, or else to imitate him and thus induce him to hear the prayers addressed to him; the flowing blood may be regarded as having been a means of forcing the god to answer prayer.
The ecstatic dance, at any rate in its more barbarous form, is unknown among other Semitic peoples. This holds good also of the Egyptians, though the present day existence of it, in its less barbarous form, among the Dancing Dervishes supports the belief of its having been in vogue in earlier times.
With regard to the Syrians, however, there is the clearest evidence of its existence in both forms; for we have the story of Wen-Amon, and the detailed accounts of Heliodorus and Apuleius.
Very full evidence is forthcoming as to the ecstatic dance among the Greeks; it is, however, not indigenous, and can be shown to have come to them from the Syrians. It is, in the main, connected with the worship of Dionysos, in whose honour the Thyiads danced and raved, often until they became insensible. The god was supposed to be present at the orgies which took place during his festivals, and those who, by means of orgiastic dances, lost consciousness, came under his influence and were “possessed” by him. The instances of this dance among the Greeks, of which some notable ones are recorded above, show to what an extent it was in vogue; but we find that, in general, it is the less barbarous form of the ecstatic dance that was performed among them. The more objectionable form was rare; it occurred in connexion with the worship of Attis, but this was not popular among the Greeks. On the other hand, strange to say, among the Romans, especially during the later period of the Empire and owing to the influx of alien oriental cults, this form of worship became prominent. National characteristics undoubtedly had much to do with this contrast between Greeks and Romans; but it is probable that the respective purposes of the dance also had something to do with it; for while the main purpose of the ecstatic dance among the Greeks was to bring about the union of the god with his worshippers, among the Romans it appears to have been that of offering their blood. Among the Greeks, that is to say, it was in the nature of an act of devotion; but among the Romans it was to induce the goddess of fertility to give abundant crops.
Both forms of this dance appear among uncultured peoples. Its purpose is “possession” during which the possessed becomes endowed with supernatural powers; he is able to cure diseases, or to give oracles; or else it is purely an act of devotion. Among the Maoris it is supposed to have the effect of imparting courage, so it is performed on the eve of battle.
In its more barbaric form it is supposed to induce the higher powers to supply wants, as among the Basutos when game is scarce. An interesting example of the rite is offered by the natives in Tinnevelly in which both union with a supernatural being, and the power of prophecy is attained by means of this type of dance; it is true that, among these natives the actual union with the spirit is effected by offering him blood and drinking that of the victim sacrificed to the spirit; but the necessary spiritual condition into which the worshipper must be transported for this purpose is brought about through the sacred dance. But in this instance, as invariably among the uncivilized races, there is always some practical end in view; a material need of some kind arises which, it is believed, will be supplied by means of this rite.
In comparing this type of dance, as practised among many peoples, with the three instances of it given in the Old Testament, it will have been seen that there is a striking similarity both in purpose and performance. It is noteworthy, however, that among the Hebrews it is the milder type that is indigenous, and it is essentially an act of devotion; it is a means of receiving the spirit of Jahwe, and this for the practical purpose of divining His will and proclaiming it. The rite as practised by the prophets of Baal is Syrian; and there can be little doubt that the custom recorded by Hosea was of Syrian origin. So that, as among the Greeks, the milder form of the ecstatic dance was indigenous, while the more barbarous form was due to Syrian influence.
Reviewing the subject as a whole, there is no shadow of doubt that Hebrew and Greek practice here, though it is but a small item of religious ritual with which we have been concerned, illustrates their religious superiority over all the other races. But of these two the Hebrews stand on distinctly higher ground; there is not the remotest reason for believing that the ecstatic dance among them was ever contaminated by the licence which often obtained among the Greeks. Among the Hebrews, moreover, the object of it was purely devotional; and when an oracle was put forth it was only to declare the will of their God. So that it is true to say that even in the lower planes of religious thought and practice the Hebrews showed that they were in the vanguard of religious evolution.