In ancient times and in traditional cultures, dance has functioned as the means by which people gathered and unified themselves in order to confront the challenges of their existence. ~ James Hurd Nixon
Dancing is an ancient form of magic. The dancer becomes amplified into a being endowed with supranormal powers. His/her personality is transformed. Like yoga, the dance induces trance, ecstasy, the experience of the divine; the realization of one’s own secret nature, and finally, emergence into the divine essence…
The dance is an act of creation. It brings about a new situation and summons into the dancer a new and higher personality. It has a cosmogonic function, in that it arouses dormant energies which then may shape the world. ~ Heinrich Zimmer/Author of “Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization”.
Dance is often used to bring ordinary members of the community into contact with the spirits. In ritual and dance, non-shamans can enter the spirit world and interact with its inhabitants, or the spirits can possess ordinary human dancers and bring their power out into ordinary reality. Perhaps because of its very physicality, dance seems to open the channels of communication to the spirits for people for whom this contact is not normally possible.
~Karen Kelly/Spirit Talk Shamanic Newsletter
Recent Comments