THE DANCING GODDESSES
Annotated Table of Contents
Introduction: Dancing as Life
What this book is about, and how dance was thought to bring life
I. Dancing the Year: The Ritual Cycle of Fertility
1. Swan Maidens, Mermaids, and Tree-Spirits
Introduction, through folktales, to some “dancing goddesses”
(vily, rusalki, willies, etc.) of East European folklore
2. Marking Time
How nonliterate farmers devised and kept their agricultural (seasonal) calendar
3. To Bring the Spring
Fertility rituals of early spring
4. Dancing up a Storm
Dance ritual of leaf-clad orphans to end drought; problems of rain and hail
5. Crazy Week—Rusalia Week
Fertility rituals of Semik, Trinity, and Rusalia Week; dance brotherhoods of Rusalia; perils of Mad Wednesday
6. Flowers with Powers
Plants the willies love and hate; plants to heal, protect, or bewitch
7. Midsummer Rusalii
Fertility rituals of St. John’s Night: herbs, water, fire;
sleeve-dance (relic of the Swan Maidens); more trances
8. Friday, Saint Friday
Curious history of the weekday sacred to female deities
9. The Twelve Days of Christmas
Midwinter Rusalii, during intercalary 12 Days: propitiating good and bad spirits for the New Year (and where we got our Yuletide customs)
II. Bride-Dancing for Fertility: The Frog Princess
10. The Cosmic Arrow
Finding a bride
11. Bride-Testing
Rituals testing girl for marriage: can she make the food and clothing?
12. Trial by Dance
Is she strong enough to do all the farm work too?
13. The Magic Sleeve-Dance
More relics of dancing Swan Maidens
14. Second Skins
Shape-changing spirits
15. The Hut on Chicken Legs
Old witches keeping ritual knowledge, training young women
16. Koshchei the Deathless
Shamans and wizards, battling for communal good
III. Dancing Back through Time
17. Medieval Traces
Medieval evidence for these rituals and beliefs
18. Roman Show-Biz
Roman evidence for the rituals
19. Dancing with the Greeks
Classical and Archaic Greek evidence; Dionysus and Thrace
20. Back to the Bronze Age
Minoan and Mycenaean evidence; from Indo-European horse rituals to child’s hobbyhorse
21. Dancing at the Dawn of Agriculture
Evidence that this whole belief system began with first farmers of Europe, 6000-3000 BC
IV. Gotta Dance!
22. Keeping Together in Time
What cognitive science has learned about human dance; trance-dancing and firewalking
23. Dancing the Time-Warp
Possibilities of reconstructing the actual dances
Epilogue: Dancing Divinity
Parallel stories from Greece and Japan of angry fertility goddess made to laugh by obscene dance: dance restores life
Appendix: The bracelets from medieval Kiev
Illustration List
References
Bibliography