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Chapter 5 - Chanting and Dancing into Dissociation

The Case of the Salian Priests at Rome

from Part II - Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

By
Maik Patzelt
Edited by
Esther Eidinow ,
Armin W. Geertz  and
John North
Esther Eidinow
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
Armin W. Geertz
Affiliation:
Aarhus Universitet, Denmark
John North
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

Starting from a cognitive point of view, this paper provides an entirely new reading of the dances and chants of the Salian priests. By focusing on their dances and chants in the perspective of embodied cognition and by putting a diligent analysis of (a) the reports and (b) the prayer texts into historical comparisons with other ‘prophetic’ practices of that time, this study is able to elucidate the Salian performances as body techniques that go beyond a mere facilitation of sociality. These techniques alter the practitioners’ states of mind and thereby elicit an experience that one may call religious experience, divine experience, or ‘possession’.

Keywords

carmen SaliarepriesthoodRoman religionSaliiprayerpossessiondissociationtripudiumdancereligious experience
Type
Chapter
Information
Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience , pp. 118 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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