The sacred dance : $b A study in comparative folkloreOesterley, W. O. E. (William Oscar Emil)
Religion
The sacred dance : $b A study in comparative folklore
Oesterley, W. O. E. (William Oscar Emil)
Dance -- Religious aspects -- History
[187] _Eastern Customs in Bible Lands_, pp. 207-210 (1894); a good
account of the Dancing Dervishes is given in W. Tyndale’s _An Artist
in Egypt_, pp. 26-30 (1912); and see especially Gressmann, _Palestinas
Erdgeruch in der Israelitischen Religion_, pp. 34 ff. (1909).
[188] See Herodotus, II. 133.
[189] _The Prophets of Israel_, p. 392 (1897); cp. Stade, _Geschichte des
Volkes Israel_, I. 477 (1886).
[190] Snouck-Hurgronje, _Mekka_, II. 281 (1888-1889). And see, further,
Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, II. 119 (orig. ed.); Robinson Lees mentions
this dancing as taking place at holy places in Palestine, _Village Life
in Palestine_, pp. 27, 28 (1897).
[191] See Golénischeff, _Recueil de Travaux_, XXI. 22 f.; Gressmann,
_Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum A.T._, I. 225 ff. (1909).
[192] Regarding the musical accompaniment to such ecstatic dances,
Iamblichus propounds the extraordinary theory that the reason why certain
sounds and melodies produce an ecstatic state is because before the
soul entered the body it was “an auditor of divine harmony,” and when,
being in the body, it hears these, it recollects the divine harmony and
participates in it; hence the cause of the ecstatic state and the faculty
of divination (_De Mysteriis_, III. 9 end).
[193] Die sequenti variis coloribus indusiati et deformiter quisque
formati, facie caenoso pigmento delita et oculis obunctis graphice
prodeunt, mitellis et crocotis et carbasinis et bambycinis iniecti,
quidam tunicas albas in modum lanciolarum quoquoversum fluente purpura
depictas cingulo subligati, pedes luteis induti calceis; deamque serico
contectam amicuio mihi gerendam imponunt brachiisque suis humero tenus
renundatis, attollentes immanes gladios ac secures, evantes exsiliunt
incitante tibiae cantu lymphaticum tripudium. Nec paucis pererratis
casulis ad quandam villam possessoris beati perveniunt et ab ingressu
primo statim absonis ululatibus constrepentes fanatice pervolant, diuque
capite demisso cervices lubricis intorquentes motibus crinesque pendulos
in circulum rotantes, et nonnunquam morsibus suos incursantes musculos,
ad postremum ancipiti ferro quod gerebant sua quisque brachia dissicant.
Inter haec unus ex illis bacchatur effusius ac de imis praecordiis
anhelitus crebros referens, velut numinis divino spiritu repletus,
simulabat sauciam vecordiam, prorus quasi deum praesentia soleant homines
non sui fieri meliores sed debiles effici vel aegroti.... Arrepto denique
flagro, quod semiviris illis proprium gestamen est, contortis taeniis
lanosi velleris prolixe fimbriatum et multiiugis talis ovium tesseratum,
indidem sese multinodis commulcat ictibus, mire contra plagarum dolores
praesumptione munitus. Cerneres prosectu gladiorum ictuque flagrorum
solum spurcitia sanguinis effeminati madescere.... The translation is
that of S. Gaselee in “Loeb Classical Library” (1915).
[194] In _ERE_, VI. 403 _a_; we give the quotation in full as this large
Encyclopaedia is not, for many, easily accessible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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