that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the
Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not initiated,
he said: 'Only the initiated men of that dance know these things.' To
'dance' this or that means to be acquainted with this or that
myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action. So widely
distributed is the practice that Acosta in an interesting passage
mentions it as familiar to the people of Peru before and after the
Spanish conquest." (And we may say that when the 'mysteries' are of a
sexual nature it can easily be understood that to 'dance them out' is
the only way of explaining them!)

(1) Meaning apparently either simply to represent, or, sometimes
to DIVULGE, a mystery.

(2) [gr peri 'Orchsews], Ch. xv. 277.

(3) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 272.

Thus we begin to appreciate the serious nature and the importance of the
dance among primitive folk. To dub a youth "a good dancer" is to pay him
a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in
the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in
deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of
Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often
such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is
a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects
one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes
what is really meant--namely the fitness of the loved comrade to lead in
religious and magical rituals--then indeed the compliment takes on a
new complexion. Religious dances, in dedication to a god, have of course
been honored in every country. Muller, in the work just cited, (1)
describes a lively dance called the hyporchema which, accompanied by
songs, was used in the worship of Apollo. "In this, besides the chorus
of singers who usually danced around THE BLAZING ALTAR, several persons
were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate
pantomimic display." It was probably some similar dance which is
recorded in Exodus, ch. xxxii, when Aaron made the Israelites a golden
Calf (image of the Egyptian Apis). There was an altar and a fire and
burnt offerings for sacrifice, and the people dancing around. Whether in
the Apollo ritual the dancers were naked I cannot say, but in the affair
of the golden Calf they evidently were, for it will be remembered that
it was just this which upset Moses' equanimity so ba