RAIN DANCE

ceremonial dance performed in many cultures, from the ancient Egyptian to 20th-century Balkan, to invoke rain, ensuring an abundant harvest. Because most primitive dances have the same goalslife, health, abundance, powerit is not unusual for phallic and other fertility dances to be performed as rain dances. Thus, the Hopi Indian rain dance includes holding live venomous snakes in the mouth, an apparent phallic gesture. Agrarian cultures, including the Mayan civilization and that of ancient Egypt, have most commonly employed rain dances; Egyptian tomb scenes depicted rain dancers as early as 2700 BC. Rain dances often feature dancing in a circle, the participation of young girls, decoration with green vegetation, nudity, the pouring of water, phallic rites, and whirling, meant to act as a wind charm. Thus, the South African Angoni carry tree branches, and Papuan mythology teaches that grass carried in such dances pierces the eye of the sun, causing it to weep and be covered with clouds. The Sioux Indians danced four times around a jug of water, threw themselves to the ground, and then drank from the jug. The Hopi snake dance, based on the belief that the snakes carry prayers to the Rainmakers beneath the earth, doubtless traces back to earlier snake cults in Mexico and Central America. In southeastern European ceremonies, a group of girls proceed from house to house, their leader clothed only in leaves and grass and whirling in their midst while housewives pour water on her.