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
We entirely agree; but the question is whether this does not represent
a later stage in the religion of prehistoric humanity. Must there not
have been a prior stage in which a less concrete idea of supernatural
powers obtained? What induced the supposition that the god performed
“measured movements”? And what would have been thought to be the form
of these movements? Mr Marett, in the first essay of the volume already
referred to, brings forward incontrovertible arguments, as it seems to
us, for believing that there was a stage in the mental and religious
development of man in which he was not yet capable of other than a vague
sense of the supernatural; in which he had not yet associated definite
spirits or ghosts with what he conceived to be supernatural phenomena;
but in which the sense of mystery and consequently of awe in face of
these supernatural phenomena filled his heart. This is also dealt with
in the fourth essay: “The Conception of Mana.” It is in this stage that
we would locate the origin of the sacred dance, performed in imitation
of what were the movements of supernatural powers, but powers of the
vaguest kind; merely a something, unknown, mysterious, and therefore to
be feared; but associate yourself with it, and already you are in an
indefinable way in communion with it; you have in some sense made friends
with it, which makes things safer. “Given the supernatural in any form
there are always two things to note about it: firstly, that you are to
be heedful in regard to it; secondly, that it has power[22].” So that
what Réville says is true, but it must be referred to a later stage of
religious development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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