Goddess Dance, Women's Mysteries: an exploration of belly dance and sacred femininity

The belly dancer’s movements embody the natural elements that are present in everything both around and within us: quaking earth, flowing air, rippling fire and undulating water are all described in the movement of arms, hips, belly and stamping feet. As the dancer shimmies, pulsates and spins – a moon in orbit around her own centre of gravity - she becomes the Goddess, a Priestess invoking divine powers upon herself in a deeply intimate yet communally observed rite which joins the sacredness of sexuality with the magical ability of birth. This is, I think the strongest public declaration that our bodies (especially women’s bodies, which have been most strongly censored) are not impure and to be transcended, but divine.

Origins of the dance

Belly dance is a Western name for what in the Arabic language is known as Raqs Sharqi and in Turkish, Oryantal dansı (hence our phrase ‘oriental dance’ although it translates better as ‘Dance of the East’). The dance made its modern come-back at the 1893 Chicago World fair in which ‘Little Egypt’ (real name: Farida Mazar Spyropoulos) both appalled and entranced the Western world with her shocking sensuality, vigorous hip shakes and abdominal thrusts. For a long time, oriental dance was believed to originate in the traditions of Ottoman harems, with an emphasis on male sexual titillation rather than female spiritual empowerment.

While it is now generally believed to have originated in Egypt, the origins of belly dance have still never been fully agreed upon. It could have been brought there by the travelling Ghawazi, a group of professional dancers who may have migrated from northern India; oriental dance is also deeply ingrained in the traditional customs of the mysterious Ouled Nail people of Algeria. The latter use ancient symbols emanating from ancient Carthage or Babylon during their dancing rites. In modern times, Turkish belly dance displays more affinity to Romany traditions than its Egyptian and Lebanese forms.

The motions of modern belly dance can be traced through Judaism, Islam and initial Christianity back to early Pagan rituals of birth. The whirling dervishes of Rumi’s order, the Mevlevi Sufis, concentrated on two movements routinely practiced in modern belly dance - the hip circle and the figure-eight - in their quest for spiritual enlightenment and ecstasy. Jewish women handed down remnants of ceremonial dance throughout the ages, while early Christians such as the Therapeutae, and the Gnostics, used it to express joy in the divine power.

Depictions of female ritual dancers - dancing Priestesses - have been found on Tanzanian cliffs, ancient Ukranian vases, and Ice Age cave paintings. Goddesses also danced; Cybele taught dance to the people while carrying cymbal and drum, Aphrodite whirled hand-in-hand with the Graces and the Hours, and Hathor is named ‘queen of leaping’. I have had particularly vivid impressions of a colourful snake-armed goddess, though I do not know from where she emanates and would like to, having ‘experienced’ her during my own dance on some occasions.

Dances of life and death

In 1923 Armen Ohanian, an Armenian dancer and oriental dance apologist, described how belly dance first emerged from Pagan birthing rituals; Varga Dinicu, a writer and dancer in search of the roots of her art, witnessed this form of it first-hand during the sixties, in a birthing ceremony in a village some days’ travel from Marrakesh.

I will now mention a certain bugbear that is probably shared with other readers, namely the selective way in which some ‘Western’ historians have disregarded the ancient Goddess religions as ‘simple’ fertility-cults. As pointed out by Riane Eisler, this is equivalent to discounting Christianity as ‘merely’ a death-cult. Assumptions that women in ancient times were only concerned with increasing the tribe are not only insulting but also incredibly naïve, indicative of our own culture’s preconceptions rather more so than of those of the ancients. It furthermore ought to be said that there is nothing ‘simple’ about giving birth; it was, and still is, quite literally a life-or-death event, and also profoundly spiritually meaningful. What better need for ritual than this?

Before the days of medicalisation and scientific ‘knowledge’ over the wisdom of the body, the birthing event was seen as enacting the most basic mystery: our origins, the dance of life and death, that which can only be experienced but never properly described. The magical entrance into this world of a new person is a liminal event; so natural and everyday and yet also such a miracle, two bodies detaching themselves from another yet without harm to either. Some mothers have described feeling psychically drained during pregnancy; the expectant woman, in her role as mother-Goddess, surrenders more than simple physical comfort. No wonder ancient Pagan cultures expressed feelings of awe in the magics of conception, pregnancy and birth; one rather wonders how our own culture could ever have come to regard them as ‘unclean’.

Goddess Dancer

While the exploitation of oriental dance for cabaret purposes - which emphasises its performance as sexual titillation to the detriment of the dancer’s power - is a perversion of older birth-rite forms, that does not mean there is no place for sexuality or sensuality in belly dance. Far from it! As well as being ‘clinically proven’ to reduce the pains of childbirth (at least two of these ancient movements appear in the Lamaze method, for example) oriental dance is also an exploration and celebration of female sexuality, and is believed by some to improve women’s sexual gratification. It certainly creates, through a background of mutual support and companionship, a greater acceptance of the feminine figure; it is wonderful how even the curviest dancer can look incredibly graceful in the costumes and poses of oriental dance, and the ‘scene’ certainly seems to attract women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Anyone can learn it, from the youngest maiden to the most ancient crone; it is particularly attractive to pregnant women, whose bodies seem tailor-made for its circular movements as their shape transforms (the rest of us have to work a little harder to achieve the same range of motion).

While I would be the last to claim that womanhood and women’s mysteries are ‘just’ about the body, our sexuality or the experience of giving birth, I do think that we can all benefit from celebrating these aspects of woman-power.

Universal Dance

By focussing this article around the dancing Priestess and my personal experience of Goddess dance I do not mean to suggest that men should simply be left out in the cold. The universal dance is regularly described as being that of two opposites, yin-yang, dark-light, female-male or inner-outer. Thus comes the dance of Kali and Her consort Shiva, both important Tantric figures, where the dancing Goddess and God drive each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling. Yet at the same time, their energetic motion ensures the continuation of life; true balance requires constant movement, a dance never-ending.

Paganism as I understand it allows for the powers of Goddess and God to be explored by all, regardless of sex or sexuality. There is, in fact, a tradition of males enacting and exploring the mysteries of Goddess Dance - yet why not also consider the dancing Gods? This would differ greatly to Goddess dance, I think; the ecstatic rituals of Dionysus might serve as a useful starting-point. Naturally I do not wish to exclude males from the process of spiritual dance, though I would add that there are certain benefits to experiencing all-female and all-male groups, perhaps as an addition to mixed-sex meetings where the concept of interrelatedness can then be explored.

Further reading:

Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance by Iris J. Stewart (ISBN # 0892816058).

Also, online reference to men and oriental dance: www.shira.net/cross-dress.htm

24-year-old Sarah Fisher is a trainee Interfaith Minister, law graduate and Wiccan from South Wales. She has been Pagan for as long as she can remember and has worked with a Gardnerian coven for about four years. She can be contacted at Telesilla@aol.com