From: Nick Brooke (100270.337@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Mon 04 Apr 1994 - 11:08:01 EEST
Enjoyed Roderick's piece on dances. Several big grins raised.
He wrote:
I asked Her, and She told me that some sects of Lunar Dervishes dance in a wildly whirling spiral dance. This is the path on which the Goddess Herself trod when She "danced her last dream upon the face of the earth". When they finish spinning around and inwards, they're in a state of Balance or Lunar Consciousness (it only *looks* like frothing insanity), and you can get oracular answers from them. If you're ever in the marketplace and see the spiral-dancers starting inwards, make sure you're not caught in the middle: it can sometimes get pretty confusing and frightening. But it's worth hanging around to hear what they say when the frenzy is on them at the end.
You're still most likely to find dervishes in the East, out towards Torang where the old ways of Lunar Mysticism are still strongest. It's known that the Emperor's servants dislike giving oracular accesses to the people -- just think about the way the Moonbroth Whispers have been sealed away! But it's in their nature to travel, and I hear groups and individuals have been seen as far away as Prax and Carmania. In the Redlands, the dervishes are one of the main sacred traditions to be found: they easily survive without the state-cult support that most Lunar religion requires within the Empire.
Once, I saw a dervish at the centre of her spin sink down below the ground, then levitate ten feet into the air, before starting to prophesy in a quite serene manner. She was speaking about how the Lunar Way is the New Way of Rebellion: that the Storm Way was the Old Rebellion, whose time had passed. She talked about the Empire as an eggshell, protecting the people. It all made perfect sense when she spoke to us. That was the day I learned to stop worrying, and love the Bat. Of course, she died when the fit was over...
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