[55] Compare, for example, what we are told of the religious dances of the Ostiaks (Erman, Travels in Siberia, ii, 45 f., E. T., Cooley), the Haokah dance of the Dakota, the “medicine-dance” of the Winnebago in North America (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii, 487 ff., 286 ff.), the dance of voodoo negroes in Haiti (Nouv. annales des voyages, 1858, iii, p. 90 ff.). For the violent religious dances of the people in ancient Peru see Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 385; in Australia, R. Brough-Smith, Aborigines of Victoria, i, 166 ff. (1878). Among the Veddas of Ceylon there was a dance of the “devil’s priests” (called Kattadias) dressed up as demons: see Tennent, Ceylon, i, 540 f.; ii, 442.—In antiquity the following have the closest relationship to the ecstatic cult of the Thracians: the dance festivals in honour of the “Syrian Goddess”, of the Kappadocian Mâ, of the Phrygian Mountain Mother, and of Attis (the last having much the same origin as the Thracian festival, but being more strongly affected by Semitic influences, and perhaps by the religious practices of the prehistoric inhabitants of Asia Minor). Besides these we may remember the account given by Poseidonios ap. Strabo, 198, D.P. 570 ff., of the excited nocturnal festival celebrated in honour of “Dionysos” in an island at the mouth of the Loire by the women of the Namnites (Samnites, Amnites) Διονύσῳ κατεχόμεναι in the wildest delirium (λύττα).
[56] This is regularly the meaning of such excesses practised by “magicians”. The shaman (with his “soul”) voyages out into the spirit-world; see the remarkably vivid account of Radloff, Siberien, ii, 1–67; and also Erman, Zschr. f. Ethnologie, ii, 324 ff.; A. Krause, Tlinkitindianer, p. 294 ff., 1885. So does the Lapp magician (Knud Leem, Lappen in Finmarken [E.T. in Pinkerton’s Voyages]). The Angekok enters into communion with his Torngak (Cranz, Hist. of Greenland, i, p. 194, E.T., 1820); the Butio with the Zemen (Müller, Amerik. Urrelig., 191 f.); the Piajes with the spirits (Müller, 217). Thus, too, communication with the divine “grandfather” of the people is established by means of dances, etc., among the Abipones (Dobrizhoffer, Abipones, ii, 64, E.T.). The expulsion of the soul to visit the spirit-world is also practised (in their convulsions) by the [277] magicians of the North American Indians, the people of the Pacific Islands (Tylor, ii, 133), etc. Such practices start out from a commonly held conception of the nature of body and soul and of their relations with the unseen. The magicians believe “that in their ecstatic condition they can break through the barrier between this world and the next”, Müller 397. To facilitate this process they employ the various means alluded to of stimulating their senses.
[57] The most remarkable case of this is provided by the history of a religious sect of our own day widely spread in Russia, who call themselves “the Christs”, i.e. sons of God. The sect was founded by a holy man named Philippov in whose body God one day took up his abode; after which the man spoke as the living God himself and gave commandments. The sect particularly stood for the idea that the divine dwells in mankind, Christ in men and Mary in women, and that the sense of their presence can be awakened in men by the action of the Holy Ghost, through the force of strong belief, by saintliness and by religious ecstasy. To produce the ecstasy dances are held in common. About midnight, after long prayers, hymns, and religious addresses, the participators in the secret festival, both men and women, dressed in strange costumes begin to dance. Soon the ranks and circles of the dancers and singers break up; individuals begin to turn round and round, revolving on their own axis with incredible speed, balancing meanwhile on their heels. The excitement of the dancing and leaping crowd grows continually greater. Finally one of them calls out “He comes; He is near—the Holy Ghost”. The wildest ecstasy takes hold of every one. Details may be found in N. Tsakni’s La Russie sectaire, p. 63 ff. (cf. what is said in the same work, p. 80 ff., of the religious dances of the Skopzes, and p. 119 f. of the sect of the “Leapers”).—All this is true Bacchanalia christiana and therefore mentioned here.
[58] e.g. Mariner, Tonga Islanders, i, 108 (1817); Wrangel, Reise in Siberien, i, 286 (i, 267 f., French trans.); Radloff, Siberien, ii, 58. Even the respectable Cranz, whose own point of view made it impossible for him to appreciate properly the Angekok practices so clearly observed by him, admits that many of them really saw visions that suggested “something supernatural” to them: Hist. of Greenland, p. 197 E.T. Something similar is said about ecstatically dancing dervishes by Lane, Modern Egyptians, ii, 197.
[59] Magicians called by the name of the god (Keebet) among the Abipones: Dobrizhoffer, ii, 248. Similar cases elsewhere: Müller, 77. In Tahiti the person inspired by the god so long as the “inspiration” lasted (several days sometimes) was himself called “god” or given the name of some particular god: Waitz, Anthropol. vi, 383. In the case of an African tribe dwelling on the banks of Lake Nyanza the chief spirit sometimes takes temporary possession of one of the magicians (man or woman) who then bears the name of the spirit: Schneider, Relig. d. Afrik. Naturv. 151. Sometimes the identity of the magician with the god is expressed by the wearing of the god’s distinguishing dress and imitation of his outward appearance (in the manner of the Thracian Βάκχοι); cf. the devil-dancers in Ceylon, etc.
[60] When it acquires a more philosophical temper mysticism seeks its unification with the highest (the ἔλλαμψις τῆς φύσεως τῆς πρώτης) more by means of the completest passivity of mind and body. It employs the εἰς αὑτὴν ξυλλέγεσθαι καὶ ἀθροίζεσθαι of the soul (Plato), or its withdrawal from all that is finite and particular (the recojimiento of the Spanish mystics). The profoundest quietude of spirit brings [278] about the unification with the One behind all multiplicity; cf. the Neoplatonic mystics, the Buddhists, etc. Sometimes both are found together; absorption and passivity of the spirit side by side with wild excitement. Both methods were practised by the Persian Sufis. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, iv, 458 (cd. Langlés) says of them, cependant ils se servent plus communément du chant de la danse et de la musique, disant qu’ils produisent plus sûrement leur extase. It may be that the cult of religious exaltation is always the real origin of these ecstatic states. Though the cult sometimes falls into decay itself, its offspring the ἔκστασις survives.
[61] In the language of these mystics the words mean: he knows that the passionate longing for reunion with God, the Soul of the universe, breaks down the individual personality and its limitations—“for where Love awakes to life the Self dies, that gloomy tyrant.”
[62] Γέται οἱ ἀθανατίζοντες, Hdt. Iv, 93–4 (ἀπαθανατίζοντες, Plato and others, see Wesseling on D.S. i, p. 105, 32).
[63] . . . οὐδένα ἄλλον θεὸν νομίζοντες εἰ μὴ τὸν σφέτερον (the Zalmoxis just mentioned) Hdt. iv, 94 fin. There we are told that the Getai πρὸς βροντήν τε καὶ ἀστραπὴν τοξεύοντες ἄνω ἀπειλεῦσι τῷ θεῷ, οὐδένα κτλ. If it were true (as most people seem to think) that the god (ὁ θεός) threatened by the Getai during thunder was their own god Zalmoxis, then it certainly is difficult, or, indeed, impossible, to understand the point of explaining the threatening of this god by the statement that they hold him for the only true god. The truth is that the τῷ θεῷ refers simply to the “sky” during a thunderstorm. The usage is common in Greek and is only transferred to the Getai by a rather awkward extension. This thundering θεός is not Zalmoxis at all (hence Z. is not as some have thought a “sky-god”). The Getai regarded Zalmoxis as the only god: the Thunderer is no real god to them (at the most a bad demon or a magician or something of the kind). To show that they are not afraid of him they shoot arrows against him, probably in the hope of breaking the thundercloud. (Parallels in other countries: Grimm, p. 1088; Dobrizhoffer, ii, 78. In India, Oldenberg, 491–4. Excitement during an eclipse of the moon: Weissenborn on Livy, 26, 5, 9. Reminiscence of such customs in the myth of Herakles: [Apollod.] 2, 5, 10, 5. From Hdt. by indirect channels comes Isig., Mir. 42 [p. 162 West.]; cf. also the account of D.C. 59, 28, 6 about Caligula.—Pallad., RR. i, 35 [contra grandinem].)
[64] ἀθανατίζουσι δὲ τόνδε τὸν τρόπον . . . οὔτε ἀποθνήσκειν ἑωυτοὺς νομίζουσι, ἰέναι τε τὸν ἀπολλύμενον παρὰ Ζάλμοξιν δαίμονα (οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν τὸν αὐτὸν τοῦτον οὐνομάζουσι Γεβελέϊζιν), Hdt. iv, 94. Here, as regularly in Greek use of the words, we must not understand by ἀθάνατον εἶναι a mere shadowy (if timeless) survival of the soul after death as in the Homeric Hades. Such a belief if it had been held by the Getai would not have struck Hdt. or his readers as remarkable in the slightest degree. It must therefore imply an unending and fully conscious existence, in this last respect resembling the life on earth.