dance

• purely military d. refined by Prince’s staff

66:5.29These lead­ers con­tributed much to bring­ing about in­ter­tribal mar­riages. They fos­tered court­ship and mar­riage af­ter due de­lib­er­a­tion and full op­por­tu­nity to be­come ac­quainted. The purely mil­i­tary war dances were re­fined and made to serve valu­able so­cial ends. Many com­pet­i­tive games were in­tro­duced, but these an­cient folk were a se­ri­ous peo­ple; lit­tle hu­mor graced these early tribes. Few of these prac­tices sur­vived the sub­se­quent dis­in­te­gra­tion of plan­e­tary in­sur­rec­tion.

• successor to military drill

70:2.2The con­stant ne­ces­sity for na­tional de­fense cre­ates many new and ad­vanced so­cial ad­just­ments. So­ci­ety, to­day, en­joys the ben­e­fit of a long list of use­ful in­no­va­tions which were at first wholly mil­i­tary and is even in­debted to war for the dance, one of the early forms of which was a mil­i­tary drill.

• was dramatic prayer

88:6.3Word com­bi­na­tions, the rit­ual of chants and in­can­ta­tions, were highly mag­i­cal. Some early in­can­ta­tions fi­nally evolved into prayers. Pres­ently, im­i­ta­tive magic was prac­ticed; prayers were acted out; mag­i­cal dances were noth­ing but dra­matic prayers. Prayer grad­u­ally dis­placed magic as the as­so­ciate of sac­ri­fice.

• many shamanesses were professional dancers

90:1.3While they may have prac­ticed de­cep­tion in mi­nor mat­ters, the great ma­jor­ity of the shamans be­lieved in the fact of their spirit pos­ses­sion. Women who were able to throw them­selves into a trance or a catalep­tic fit be­came pow­er­ful shamanesses; later, such women be­came proph­ets and spirit medi­ums. Their catalep­tic trances usu­ally in­volved al­leged com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the ghosts of the dead. Many fe­male shamans were also pro­fes­sional dancers.

• originated in seasonal worship festivals

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

• was dramatic prayer

99:5.9Prim­i­tive man made lit­tle ef­fort to put his re­li­gious con­vic­tions into words. His re­li­gion was danced out rather than thought out. Mod­ern men have thought out many creeds and cre­ated many tests of re­li­gious faith. Fu­ture re­li­gion­ists must live out their re­li­gion, ded­i­cate them­selves to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man. It is high time that man had a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence so per­sonal and so sub­lime that it could be re­al­ized and ex­pressed only by “feel­ings that lie too deep for words.”

44:1.10There are over one hun­dred thou­sand dif­fer­ent modes of sound, color, and en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion, tech­niques anal­o­gous to the hu­man em­ploy­ment of mu­si­cal in­stru­ments. Your en­sem­bles of danc­ing un­doubt­edly rep­re­sent a crude and grotesque at­tempt of ma­te­rial crea­tures to ap­proach the ce­les­tial har­mony of be­ing place­ment and per­son­al­ity ar­range­ment. The other five forms of mor­ontia mel­ody are un­rec­og­nized by the sen­sory mech­a­nism of ma­te­rial bod­ies.

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.