Posted on 08/21/2018 3:29:25 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed by the mania of the dance.
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:^D
All it took for the Shakers religious sect to exhibit these same symptoms was celibacy.
A desert island disc for me. Every song on that album is great.
Moribund the Burgermeister
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpJbebfLmJ0
Caught in the chaos in the market square
I don’t know what, I don’t know why, but something’s wrong down there
Their bodies twistin’ and turnin’ in a thousand ways
The eyes all rollin’ round and round into a distant gaze
Ah, look at that crowd!
Some are jumping up in the air say “We’re drowning in a torrent of blood!”
Others going down on their knees, seen a saviour coming out of the mud
Oh Mother! It’s eating out my soul
Destroying law and order, I’m gonna lose control
What can I do to stop this plague, spread by sight alone
Just a glimpse and then a quiver, then they shiver to the bone
Ah, look at them go!
Bunderschaft, you are going daft? Better seal off the castle grounds
“This is Moribund, the Burgermeister, I’m gonna keep this monster down,
Somebody sent the subversive element; going to chase it out of town.”
No-one will tell what all this is about
But I will find out.
This thing’s really outrageous, I tell you on the level
It’s really so contagious must be the work of the devil
You better go now, pick up the pipers, tell them to play
Seems the music keeps them quiet, there is no other way.
Ah, close the doors!
“We’ve tried potions and waxen dolls, but none of us could find any cures, “
Mother please, is it just a disease, that has them breaking all my laws,
Check if you can disconnect the effect and I’ll go after the cause
No-one will tell what this is all about
But I will find out
I will.
Just as an interesting bit of trivia, at present there are only two living Shakers in the world.
I'm surprised any are left. The last of the male Shakers died in 1960 (thereabouts), and with none to instruct new male converts (of whom there had been none in quite a number of years), the surviving female Shakers voted to close the covenant. Since that time the last of the female Shakers have continued to worship, but have been living off the somewhat substantial endowment accumulated and administered by the sect over the two hundred or so years of its existence. In recent years young men and young women have lived among the survivors, helping them out with chores and trying to learn their lifestyle, but the Shaker women described this as "living in a Shaker-like manner".
Ah, the 1980s. Or maybe the 1680s.
We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're no friends of mine...
There is also reason to attribute panics about witches in Europe to their promotion of herbal salves and potions containing toxic, mind-altering alkaloids. In effect, outraged locals were in an uproar against witches who were peddling drugs, often to local teens. With that in mind, many accounts of magic by witches sound like contemporary descriptions of acid trips, with occasional violent episodes corresponding to what cops and ERs today recognize as drug psychosis.
Early humans, the ancient Greeks and others, and even aboriginals today all aimed at altered states through herbal preparations of one sort or another. Even smoking a peace pipe was more or less a session of getting buzzed on tobacco. Of course, being primitives, they lacked the whiskey or brandy that modern man knows to be the perfect accompaniment to strong cigars!
Maybe the whole world is on drugs now? It seems that way in some areas where killing is done for kicks.
There is one Shaker Brother and one Shaker Sister left at a compound in upstate New York.
Just no beer if the top is off, if you're Robert Johnson and playing in some jook joint.
And no fooling around with women who are already spoken for, and no crossroads deals with demons.
Particularly if there are hellhounds on your tail.
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