Thread: hmmm, new BD origin theory? Would like a little advice...

So here's the scenario:
My hubby's best mate has a new girl, whom I haven't really met yet. Hubby was out with them last night (I was working - so sad, I know), somehow the subject got onto bellydance, and the new girl immediately bucked at the idea, very wary, claiming some sort of original occult link to sex with snakes...

Yeah, I know! 2nd hand information here via my absolutely gorgeous hubby who nevertheless hasn't the best memory or attention span to anything MED. Other than "my wife does it, and she's alright", he didn't have much to counter with.

I must admit, I actually burst out laughing when he told me what she'd said (apparently it was all he could do to not react the same way in front of her). I have heard of many various theories and ideas about the origins of belly dance, but this is the first time I've ever heard this one

I've tried a little research on the net but not turned up anything I haven't seen or heard before.

As I envision spending a bit more time with her in the near future, I want to be prepared to tackle this one. My question is two-fold:
Firstly, other than vague links to goddess worship and earth dancing, or a perception that some BD moves look rather serpentine, is there any background story to a belief linking BD and sex with snakes? If I could find out what this idea is based on I'd be better prepared to counter it.
Secondly, seeking advise as to the gentlest way to go about alleviating her fears (seems like she might have been 'burnt' by some sort of bad experience previously). I'm not sure that a simple explanation from me is going to do the trick....

Thanks in advance!

It sounds like a 70s-80s mythos tangle to me, which I would attempt to unravel if I had my books with me, but I don't. But there are solid western-made links between BD and serpents, and goddesses, and priestesses, and sex, and sex cults, and temple dancers, and priestesses in temples with snakes, and kundalini energy and serpent energy being feminine energy, and so on and so forth, and one mashed up thread is probably "belly dance originated as a snake sex cult."

The only thing I can think of is, historians found that bestiality was very common (duh) "way back when", particularly in ancient Rome. Women were known to...ahem..."service" themselves with snakes. But, I'm not exactly sure how that has anything to do with belly dance. Then again, ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, and all those mystical time eras/places were the same, and since belly dance has everything to do with sex, I've no doubt any sort of raunchy exotic past influenced its creation

But in all seriousness, I have no clue. I understand the whole snake relation to MED, as it can look "snakey" but the additional aspect of the theory leaves me clueless

I've heard of 'Snake Worship' and 'Snake Dance' but never 'Snake Sex' in MED/Bellydance. Not sure I'm wild enough to stick a snake up there

You should just tell your hubby's mate's girl (did I get that right?) the bellydance history/origin as you know it and provide sources. She'll either run with it or continue to live in delusion. That's all you really con do...

you don't need to look much further than Jamilia Salimpour's myths and legends that she spread and helped create. In her troupe's repertoire were snake dances with topless females in masks and wigs. Bal Anat, the name of her troupe, is the name of a Goddess.

Just google her or the name of the troupe.

Marya

Jamila Salimpour included a lengthy section about the snake fertility cult of Crete in her 1979 book Bellydancing, From Cave to Cult to Cabaret. I believe her purpose for including it was to somehow justify the fact that her troupe Bal Anat did a lot of dancing with snakes.

And why did Bal Anat dance with snakes in the first place? See this link, the second page of the PDF (it's labeled as page 18 of the original Habibi magazine from which the PDF is copied): http://www.suhailainternational.com/...any_tribes.pdf

The thing is, Jamila created the snake dance first, in 1969, and then 10 years later tried to legitimize it as having something to do with belly dancing by putting information about Minoan/Cretan snake cult into her book. Of course, she fails to acknowledge that culturally ancient Minos was vastly different from the Phoenicians of the Levant or the Kemetic culture of ancient Egypt....

That said, I'm not aware of Jamila ever making any claims about women having sex with snakes. If she did, I haven't seen them. But, she did link belly dance to snakes.

I think the best way to handle this is to be really upfront. Meet the girl, be polite, form a bond of friendship first, but when the time is right I'd turn to her and say "Oh, my husband said you had some idea that bellydance was connected with the occult and snakes or something! I've been studying for XX years and I've heard a LOT of myths about the origins of my art form, but that's a new one on me. Where did you hear that?"

I'd continue to ask questions for as long as it seems productive (probably just long enough to expose that she has NO idea where she got that notion, I'd guess) and then give a brief history and invite her to a show so she can see what it's REALLY about.

The line I use to defuse all kinds of nervousness about bellydance is that in countries like Egypt and Lebanon, this is smply how everyone dances. Little girls, old men, matronly women, pretty much everyone. It's like American club dancing, but just like in American music videos, some people dress up & 'perform' it onstage and those tend to be attractive women (though there are famous male bellydancers as well.)

That Lebanese grandpa bopping at a wedding would be very surprised to learn his dance was originally about worshipping snakes!

Maybe she saw that awful rap video with Kaya and Sadie on YouTube


For the sake of accuracy, Jamila's original troupe Bal Anat did NOT dance topless, but when Suhaila re-created Bal Anat several years ago, she included a topless dancer doing the Mother Earth Goddess Mask Dance, which has no snakes involved, to my recollection.

Dunyah,

Thanks for the clarification. I only have the DVD of the recreation, although I could have sworn there was a snake in there. Does this mean I have to watch it again?.

Marya

There is a lot of misinformation and jumping association in this dance, but that is true of any thing in the world. Street performers in India used to perform with snakes so obviously belly dancers did also! And we know that there were cults with snakes - it was in one of the Indiana Jones movies! - and everyone knows that all those heathen religions had temple dancers who were belly dancing! Or something like belly dancing! So it must be true!

Personally, I don't have any problem with the idea that somewhere, at some point in time, someone danced with snakes. Before Mesmera, that is. Nor do I have a problem with some where along the line, there was a cult of snake worshipers. It's the leap and the marriage of those with belly dance which I take issues with.

The best way to combat this misinformation is, when the opportunity arises, is to either gently present the correct information or go so over the top that the person asking goes into complete shock and either runs screaming from the room or figures out that you are playing them - goodheartedly, of course - and is then open to hearing another version of the history of belly dance.

{{{HUGS}}}

I saw the most amazing video on one of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth series from the 1980's, in which a priestess -- Indonesian, maybe? -- "danced" with an enormous cobra, which was reared up about as tall as she was, and kissed it three times on the nose. Now that's snake dancing!

Random comments: Belly dance doesn't need an origin. It's a folk dance. Unless you mean OUR belly dance, in which case you can talk about cosmopolitan Cairo in the 1920's-30's.

After some 25 years as a Classics professor, I never heard of any ancient Roman pleasuring herself with a snake. Or himself, for that matter. Who knows what happens anywhere at any time, but this wasn't a part of the ancient Roman catalog of perversions ... Which we continue to add to, in the modern age, since the ancient Romans are fair game for our fantasies of degeneracy.

Ancient Cretan snake cult: Duh, how did New Age belly dancers figure all that out when archeologists and scholars are still wondering? All "evidence" for such a thing comes from a couple of figurines of females holding snakes, one of which might be a forgery. I'm not saying there was no such thing, just that we probably can guess very little about its details and meanings for the people whose practices we claim to be elaborating. You can then begin to stitch in the ancient Mediterranean appearances of snakes in cult, which may or may not have any relevance in Crete; we've never even managed to associate their language with any known group. Wait -- maybe they're space aliens! Now that would explain it all.

Belly dance came from outer space.

For the sake of accuracy, Jamila's original troupe Bal Anat did NOT dance topless, but when Suhaila re-created Bal Anat several years ago, she included a topless dancer doing the Mother Earth Goddess Mask Dance, which has no snakes involved, to my recollection.

Thanks for the clarification. I only have the DVD of the recreation, although I could have sworn there was a snake in there. Does this mean I have to watch it again?.


When I saw Ban Anat in 2007, there was a snake dance in the show but it as not the Mother Earth Goddess Mask Dance. The snake dance was later, but it was also a solo, so maybe the two things got mixed up in your memory.

Originally Posted by rachelw

For the sake of accuracy, Jamila's original troupe Bal Anat did NOT dance topless, but when Suhaila re-created Bal Anat several years ago, she included a topless dancer doing the Mother Earth Goddess Mask Dance, which has no snakes involved, to my recollection.

Thanks for the clarification. I only have the DVD of the recreation, although I could have sworn there was a snake in there. Does this mean I have to watch it again?.


When I saw Ban Anat in 2007, there was a snake dance in the show but it as not the Mother Earth Goddess Mask Dance. The snake dance was later, but it was also a solo, so maybe the two things got mixed up in your memory.

I'll have to watch this again, I have it on VHS. The point I was making was that there was a topless dancer in the recreation but not in the original.

There is a lot of ancient art showing goddess figures with snakes.

This isn't an invention of Jamila's.

Meanwhile back in Modern Times, a tragedy occurred to a poor snake who bit a model and died of silicone poisoning:

Model Plays With Snake. Snake Bites Model’s Breast Implant. Snake Dies. -- Daily Intel

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

There is a lot of ancient art showing goddess figures with snakes.

This isn't an invention of Jamila's.

Meanwhile back in Modern Times, a tragedy occurred to a poor snake who bit a model and died of silicone poisoning:

Model Plays With Snake. Snake Bites Model’s Breast Implant. Snake Dies. -- Daily Intel

Poor snake, what a way to die. The way the model - (could have fooled me - a model!) was posturing, who can blame the poor snake for biting her, sad that he choose the wrong place. Lesson to snakes do not bite boobies, one never knows what is inside, bite bellies, hands, or whatever, just not boobies. Lesson to models, don't posture so ridiculously with snakes, & remove those silicon implants they are killers.

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

There is a lot of ancient art showing goddess figures with snakes.

This isn't an invention of Jamila's.

Jamila's invention was incorporating snakes into belly dance, and then trying to use ancient goddess art to suggest that doing so was somehow historically relevant.

Just because a statue exists depicting a woman holding a snake does not mean that snakes were utilized in some ancient goddess dance that was an ancestor to raqs sharqi.

Originally Posted by *Shira*

Jamila's invention was incorporating snakes into belly dance, and then trying to use ancient goddess art to suggest that doing so was somehow historically relevant.

Just because a statue exists depicting a woman holding a snake does not mean that snakes were utilized in some ancient goddess dance that was an ancestor to raqs sharqi.

Why wouldn't they have been? Why else would quite detailed pictures of dancers and/or goddess figures holding serpents NOT have reflected something that really happened?

OK let's look at this another way. We also have many depictions of bull dancers. We are quite certain that people had bull cults, they worshipped bull gods and bulls are well known as sacred (and sacrificial) animals. So there was an element of death as well in some cases which as "sacrifice" directly meant "sacred" ie this wasn't just sport or dance it involved the spiritual world (plus, in some cases it wasn't the bull who died - if anybody died - in Crete the bull dancers were unarmed and often nude.)

This is an old and powerful connection with sacred and religious connotations. Just like the religious associations with snakes - in which they play many roles - some as protectors, others as seducers, living phallic symbols etc, depending. They are extremely important totem animals in many cultures, including in the Middle East.

So - let's go to the bulls.

People danced with bulls and in some places, to this day they fight them, often to the death (of horses, bulls and matadors, even spectators as in the Running of the Bulls.)

The specific sacred & (religious) ritual elements of the bull dance/bull fight have been lost - that doesn't mean they weren't there.

By the way horses were similarly sacred/sacrificial animals in many of these same cultures; they are also associated with the goddess in some regions, ditto vultures, ravens, dragons, cats etc.

Anyway, given the parallel plethora of snake imagery and snake + dancer and/or goddess imagery, why are we supposed to believe the non-connection is more likely than the connection?

I'm puzzled about this. History in the Middle East/Persia/North Africa/India etc long predates the modern Egyptian cabaret and talking to people there and not finding goddess connections doesn't prove a darn thing.

?

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

Why wouldn't they have been? Why else would quite detailed pictures of dancers and/or goddess figures holding serpents NOT have reflected something that really happened?

My point is that an image of a woman holding a snake does NOT automatically mean she is a goddess, nor does it automatically mean she is a dancer. She is a woman. Beyond that, it's all conjecture.

To illustrate my point, people refer to the Venus of Willendorf (and other ancient statues) as being goddess figures. But, were they? Maybe. I do acknowledge the possibility. But maybe not. These statues could have been created for entirely different reasons. For example, maybe they were an early version of pornography, created by men to serve as jackoff inspiration while away from the village on a hunting expedition. Or, maybe they were carved by men who wanted to honor their very human pregnant sweethearts by creating statues of them, in the same way that a guy with visual artist skills might paint a picture of his lady love. Maybe a woman about to become a grandmother created such a statue to honor her pregnant daughter. We really have no way of knowing. But one thing is clear to me - it would be incorrect to assume the statue was religiously motivated unless there was additional evidence to support that.

Back to our snake statue... Yes, I agree that such a statue suggests that some women may indeed have held snakes, and that the statues were depicting them doing so. But, were they goddess figures? It's a possible explanation, but another explanation could be that someone held snakes just for the fun of showing off, and another person in the village carved a statue of it because they admired her crazy sense of humor. Or, maybe people in that village ate snake meat, and the statue was created to show a successful huntress returning from her expedition.

So, my disagreement lies with referring to these snake-holding statues as depicting "dancers" or "goddesses".

How does one get a snake to cooperate with human sexual intention? It is hard enough to keep one from escaping while dancing with it....

Let's invent our own myth and time how long it takes to work its way into news articles and minds, mad libs style.

Originally Posted by anala

How does one get a snake to cooperate with human sexual intention? It is hard enough to keep one from escaping while dancing with it....

LOL I doubt if it's possible! Ones I've met try to hide in your skirt and/or get loose and terrorize the club.

Besides, they have teeth!

But, it's a very common myth in South America, when I was studying shamanism I came across some drawings of women with snakes doing Bad Bad Things and the explanation was, when "virgins" get pregnant it's generally blamed upon rapacious serpents.

Thus, everybody saves face.

@Shira about Venus figures, portrait art etc:

I'm pretty sure they are all goddess figures. That's certainly accepted art historical wisdom - it could be incorrect - I acknowledge the possibility - but I doubt it.

The Minoan figures in particular and others - animal totems from Luristan etc - they definitely have more than a casual power about them. They are idealized and generalized and highly unlikely to have been portraits.

Sexuality itself would have been regarded as sacred. If Venus figures were intended to arouse, this would have been seen as part of life's mystery.

There are sacred serpents and goddess dieties in so much Eastern mythology - as well as Western - plus - there is economics.

That alone makes it unlikely that cast bronze or carved stone in particular would have been made for casual purposes - these are difficult mediums to work in and there's expense involved plus time.

In societies where simply getting enough food to eat is a major challenge, art would have had real meaning and real power. Food itself - hunting as well as prey - would have held sacred meaning.

Just because ours is a throw-away society we should not assume others were.

We can look at certain living cultures - some Native American cultures for example - in which cosmology remains powerful. Animals and nature retain sacred power.

One thing we must resist: the temptation to take our own culture and project - we live in a world in which meat comes in plastic not in fur - we don't see things the same way as if we hunted or farmed, if we had to protect our own grain from rats we'd certainly see snakes for what they are: our friends.

In the 3 monotheistic religions serpents are also very powerful figures though less positive than in the Eastern world - similarly female sexuality and power are acknowledged even if only as something to be feared.

In other words animals and women have sacred and religious meaning; ditto the land, the sea and the plants (in Judaism) and sexuality was sacred because it created life. In many belief systems men "marry" the earth - the earth is female and the sky male - rain = semen - similarly sacrifice enriches the earth or the sea.

Thus the severed parts of Dionysos were cast upon the sea and Aphrodite rose.

Part II (apologies:)

Up until the beginning of the 19th century - coinciding with many secular revolutions including the Industrial Revolution - so much art is related to religion it's almost ubiquitous. Secular thinking is fairly modern - very modern actually - and quite unusual.

When we get to the Americas we see the same thing - people seek the sacred - meaning in all things; we seek patterns and we make them.

This doesn't mean the patterns or our gods and goddesses are "real" but our need for them, our need to see meaning in the world is very real.

You mention hunting, eating snake meat - given the importance of food - that would in itself have made them extremely important.

But, it's more likely that the snakes were revered and protected because they eat rodents.

The serpents, like cats, protect people's crops - it's unlikely that they would have been hunted and killed in any agricultural society in the East.

Stupidly, people in Europe demonized both. Many cats were killed along with "witches" - I've read as many as MILLIONS of women and cats were burned for fear of their supernal powers - plague broke out and devastated continents.

In Egypt, killing a cat was just unthinkable.

In such cultures in particular, snakes have a lot of power. They protect life and they are symbols of life.

That's true in the Western hemisphere too, they are symbols of infinity and rebirth - their winged mythological cousins, dragons, span the world and they too have mystical and sacred associations.

Our world has had tremendous destructive force. We are remote from nature and we are destroying it. Our value system thinks everything is cheap. We've made everything cheap; life is cheap.

So, we have trouble seeing goddesses. We don't even respect whales or the balance of nature itself.

That doesn't mean this was always the case.

Lol! I haven't read the whole thread yet but I have to laugh at the sex with snakes thing. What I wonder is how she could believe such a story? It seems like she is a very sheltered person who is ready to buy into any story she hears no matter how ridiculous.

Ah, we have many good points to discuss!

Originally Posted by Elibelinde

@Shira about Venus figures, portrait art etc: I'm pretty sure they are all goddess figures. That's certainly accepted art historical wisdom - it could be incorrect - I acknowledge the possibility - but I doubt it.

I agree that the "Venus" figures are generally accepted by art historians as goddess figures. But that doesn't necessarily make it so. I remember reading in Layne Redmond's book When the Drummers Were Women that many ancient figures of women holding a circular object on its end were identified by archeologists as "woman holding cake". Redmond comments on this saying, "Redmond says, "Most people know you wouldn't hold a cake that way, so it's more reasonable to conclude that the round object is a frame drum." So, I think we need to remember that just because one person's interpretation of an image has become widely accepted doesn't mean he was correct.

Another example: many, many historians talk about a dancer known as Little Egypt performing at the Columbia Exposition in 1893. However, in her book Looking for Little Egypt, Donna Carlton describes how she examined the primary sources of the day (pamphlets, newspaper articles, etc.) and not one of them mentioned a dancer named Little Egypt. That name wasn't found in primary sources until several years after the Exposition closed. So, all the "historians" who speak of a dancer named Little Egypt performing at the Exposition were incorrect.

Just because a bunch of historians have said something doesn't make it accurate. It could be that everyone is just repeating the first person's inaccurate hypothesis. That's why academic researchers are urged to go back to primary sources as much as possible.

Originally Posted by Mosaika

Poor snake, what a way to die. The was the model - (could have fooled me) was posturing, who can blame the poor snake for biting her, sad that he choose the wrong place. Lesson to snakes do not bite boobies, one never knows what is inside, bite bellies, hands, or whatever, just not boobies. Lesson to models, don't posture so ridiculously with snakes, & remove those silicon implants they are killers.

Just so no one gets the wrong idea, there's no proof that the snake died of silicone poisoning. The person who originally posted the video added that part as a joke. In the original story, the model only needed a tetanus shot, which would be little help to someone with silicone leaking out of her implant. I really wish journalists would do more fact-checking (says this J-school graduate). Oh No They Didn't! - Israeli Model Gets Boob Bitten By a Snake!

In portuguese culture (which was deeply influenced by the arabs), we have a representation of a woman with half of the body as a snake. She's called "moura", which means "moorish woman". I've studied those feminine characters in our folklore. They're chthonian deities, as snake goddesses were. These female characters actually dance and sing...
Here's the reference of my article from an international conference of classical studies (in portuguese):

- CHORA, Ana Margarida, «A fada-moura: do espaço galo-romano ao espaço peninsular» in OLIVEIRA, Francisco, OLIVEIRA, Jorge e PATROCÍNIO, Manuel (coord.), Espaços e Paisagens - Antiguidade Clássica e Heranças Contemporâneas - VII Congresso Internacional da APEC, Vol. 3 História, Arqueologia e Arte, Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos da Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, 2010, pp.197-203.

Wait! Let me share something else that I have here with me: a magazine cover with french serpent dancers (1934):

[IMG][/IMG]

Originally Posted by ANA_bellydancer

Wait! Let me share something else that I have here with me: a magazine cover with french serpent dancers (1934):

[IMG][/IMG]

Thank you!

With regard to the Venus of Willendorf figures, it is unlikely we'll be able to consult original sources since they were made approximately 24,000 years ago.