Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. Dance is an important part of many shamanistic ceremonies and may be a factor in inducing a trance state. The use of drumming and chanting while moving the body in rhythm to beat often has a hypnotic effect on participants. In some dances, the participants may fall to the ground when they enter into the trance state.
In the 1923 book Sacred Dance in the Ancient World, W.O.E. Oesterley talks about the Ecstatic Dance in which the dancer enters into a trance state:
“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.”
W.O.E. Oesterley also writes:
“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.”
One example of dance being used to induce a trance state can be seen in the so-called Ghost Dance movement among Native Americans in the late nineteenth century. The Paiute prophet Wovoka had died and then returned to life with a new dance for his people. The dance itself is a circle dance in which the dancers symbolize the ingathering of the people in the embrace of God and his prophet Wovoka. The people dance in harmony with the sun, always moving to the left, symbolizing that they must live and work in harmony. In an article in Journal of the West, Meldan Tanrisal writes:
“Holding hands was one of the distinctive features of the Ghost Dance that marked it as different from other Indian dances. Symbolically this could be interpreted as a reaching out not only to one’s immediate neighbor in the dance, but to all Indian peoples.”
With the rhythmic chanting and dancing, some of the dancers would fall to the ground in a trance state and experience intense visions.
With regard to the Khoisan people (!Kung) of the Kalhari, David Lewis-Williams, Thomas Dowson, Andrew Lock, and Charles Peters, in their report on Bushman rock art in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, write:
“A shaman becomes full of potency through a trance-inducing dance, altering his or her state of consciousness through hyperventilation, intense concentration, and sustained rhythmic dancing.”
One of the features of many rituals is music which triggers many emotions—joy, fear, sadness, happiness—in the brains of listeners. Music can also aid in the transition to the trance state. In his book In Gods We Trust, Scott Atran writes:
“Music, which involves patterned modulation of people’s sense of time, arouses and manipulates affective states and cognitive representations in ways inaccessible to consciousness. Moreover, especially in religious contexts, music is experienced as authorless, like the sacred texts that often accompany it.”
Scott Atran also reports:
“The pre-tonal religious music of small-scale societies usually has its mythic beginnings in the origins of the world, which invites audiences to share a sense of timeless intimacy.”
Open Thread
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