The sacred 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 contrary[174]—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.:

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 file[175]; 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:

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 occurrence[176]. 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 lame[177]. 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 mourn[178].’” While the dance began in sober style[179] 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. 14[180].

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 Israelites[181]; 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):

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 Penuel[182].” 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 himself[183]; 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 Zēlaʿ[184], 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 published[185] 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 texts[186]. 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 them[187].” 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 by[188]. 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 malbûs[189]. 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 experiences[190].

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 god[191]. 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:

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 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 Farnell[194] 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

then he goes on to say that

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 Maenads[195], 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 pipe[196]. Or again, on a cup in the Athens National Museum a Maenad is represented playing a tambourine, or timbrel, and dancing in wild fashion[197]. 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 us[198]”; 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 sleep[199]”; 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 Dionysos[200]”; 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 visions[201]; the god was believed to be present, though invisible; and at the Dionysos festivals the maidens celebrated his presence[202], thus direct contact with him by his worshippers was effected[203].

In an interesting passage in Pausanias we read:

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:

Iacchus was the name by which Dionysos was known at Eleusis[206].

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:

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:

It is to these that Euripides refers in the Bacchae[209]. Diodorus speaks of them thus:

The male correlatives of Maenads, or rather Thyiads, are the Kouretes, who took their part in the Orphic mysteries. They were

Clement of Alexandria refers to them thus:

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.

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 Mater[214]. Its special feature was the orgiastic dance of the priests[215], 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:

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 place[217].” Again, in Southern India we have the example of the so-called “devil-dancers,” who work themselves into paroxysms in order to gain inspiration,

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

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 god[220].

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 measured[221].”

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 faint[223].

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 executed[224].

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: