From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 19 2003 - 23:16:27 GMT
Toward the end of Lila Pirsig asserts that ritual is a kind of connecting
link between the social and intellectual levels. I don't doubt that, but
I've asserted that ritual is also the connecting link between the biological
and social levels. (These are not mutually exclusive ideas.) Similarly, I've
asserted that some elements of myth and ritual pre-date the human species
itself. I have since found in Jospeh Campbell's PRIMITVE MYTHOLOGY, which is
the first volume in his MASKS OF GOD series, a fascinating picture of what
this might look like. Campbell discusses the observations of Dr. Wolfgang
Kohler. The following account comes from Kohler's book, which is titled THE
MENTALITY OF APES. He watched two chimps in the wild as they...
"...invented a game of spinning round and round like dervishes, which was
taken up by all the rest. Any game of the two together was apt to turn into
this 'spinning top' play, which appeared to express a climax of friendly and
amicable joie de vivre. The resemblance to human dance became truly striking
when the rotations were rapid, or when Tschengo, (a particular chimp) for
instance, stretched her arms our horizontally as she spun round. Tschengo
and Chica - whose favorite fashon during 1916 was this 'spinning' -
sometimes combined a forward movement with the rotations, and so they
revolved slowly round their own axis and along the playground. The whole
group of chimpanzees sometimes combined in more elaborate motion patterns.
For instance, two would wrestle and tumble near a post; soon their movements
would become more regular and tend to describe a circle round the post as a
center. One after the other, the rest of the group approach, join the two,
and finally march in an orderly fashion round and round the post. The
character of their movements changes; they no longer walk, they trot, and as
a rule with special emphasis on one foot, while the other steps lighly, thus
a rough approxiamate rhythm develops, and they tend to 'keep time' with one
another... It seems to me extraordinary that there should arise quite
spontaneously, among chimpanzees, anything that so strongly suggests the
dancing of some primitive tribes."
In this, Campbell sees a way to imagine the beginnings of "the ritual
activities of the first societies. The psychological crisis that we have
termed 'seizure' is already present, and the joy in group motion patterns
that underlies both public ritual and the art of dance is also in evidence.
We note, futhermore, the surprising detail of the central pole, which in the
higher mythologies becomes interpreted as the world-uniting and supporting
Cosmic Tree, World Mountain, axis mundi, or sacred sanctuary, to which both
the social order and the meditations of the individual are to be directed."
We can see this same central axis even in Christianity, namely both the tree
at the center of the garden of Eden and the cross of Christ. Mythologically
speaking, both the tree of knowledge and the cross are places where world
changing events take place.
Too bad that I was raised as a Baptist and taught that dancing is a sin. #
:~ o
Is anyone else rocked by this monkey dance? I think think its a real kick in
the head. Sent chills down my spine.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
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