"DANCE OF WAR", by Ron McVan

"DANCE OF WAR", By Ron McVan


"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the
curriculum of all noble education"
.................Friedrich Nietzsche

The ritual dance in Aryan history has long been the ideal means to bridge the chasm between the physical and spiritual world. Dance serves many of the human emotions and symbolic, ethnic expressions. Behind the ritual dancing stands the long-held belief that it is through rhythmic body movement that man speaks directly to his gods, ancestors and the collective consciousness of his folk. In
ancient Egypt, women performed veil dances in honor of the goddess ISIS. The swirling veil served as a symbol of the crescent moon. Symbolically the opening and closing of the dancers veil represented The Veil Of Isis as pertaining to the sacred mysteries which like the sacred mysteries could be revealed or concealed. The Egyptian goddess Hathor, was known as a goddess of love, dance, and beauty, and a near-twin to Isis.

For the most part, the Western world today regards the dance as a casual pastime and entertainment. In ancient times however, dance had a high significance and purpose. It was an ordered expression in motion of the exhilaration of the soul, which could further create a conscious effort to become part of those powers beyond the might of man which control our destinies. To the spiritual degree it became a sacrificial rite, a charm, a prayer and prophetic vision. Our ancient forebears viewed dance as a very serious activity of the entire tribe. It was the folkish high point of all meaningful occasions, transcending our earthly chains. Dancing for the gods was quite common in the ancient temples. In Egypt, pharaohs danced before gods and goddesses during the performance of sacred rites. One might say that dance in its essence is simply life expression on a higher level.


"The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts
that express themselves first in the human person. The
art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the
arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite"
......................Havelock Ellis

To distant warriors of Aryan history, dance was a means of assuring victory in battle. Ancient Greek warriors, for example, practiced riding, archery charioteering, fencing, sword play, discus throwing, wrestling, spear tossing and various martial arts to include the kata like forms of war dance. This Greek war dance eventually developed into what would later be known as "Pyrrhic dancing", an armed or unarmed war dance devoted to ethnic themes. The name derived from its eponymous heroic warrior figure, "Pyrrhichus". It was Socrates who stated,, "Whoso honour the gods best with dances are best in war". The dance of war was a significant part of young Greek warrior training and intrinsic to the romance and passion of combat. Pyrric dance in combination with the fighting art of Pankration would develop through the Olympic Games into one of the first major forms of Aryan Martial Arts.

In early Greek mythology a warrior class known as the "Corybantes" were frenzied armed dancers who guarded the infant Zeus. These strange nurses, who frightened away enemies by the clanging of metal, were believed to have magical powers of healing. Armed with sword and shield, they would clash together as they danced around Zeus's cradle to prevent his father from hearing his cries. It was the great god Pan, the embodiment of nature who was celebrated as the author and director of the sacred dances which he is supposed to have instituted to symbolize their circumnabulations of the heavenly bodies. In Homer's Iliad, Hector was to boast in the beginning of a duel, "I know and know well how to fight and how to kill, how to take blows upon the right or left, shifting my guard of tough oxhide in battle, how to charge in a din of chariots or hand with a sword or pike to use timing and foot work in the dance of war."

When performing a traditional dance of war, often a sword is favored. Although many sword dances are now for entertainment purposes, it is thought that they originated as rituals, honoring and promoting virility, victory and fertility. The swords may be used more as props than as weapons. But in the Pyrric dances, in which a combat is danced out, are believed to be descended from mock battles between individual groups representing opposing seasons or fertility and sterility.

In Scotland, a pyrrhic dance of sorts is traditionally preserved today in the form of a sword dance or Gillie-Callum (so-called from the tune which accompanies it), performed over two drawn Scottish claymore swords and accomplished by bagpipes. Stepping between two crossed swords, or a sword and scabbard, or perhaps two cross sticks or pipes, originated as a victory dance. Gillie-Callum is now as popular among Scots in America as it is in Scotland.

The renowned Berserker warriors of the Viking Age were known to perform traditional war dances, chanting wildly with upraised weapons before battle. In a frenzy of raw animal-like fury, they would become 'heated' to an extreme degree, flooded by mysterious and irresistible force. A faint memory of these dances lingered on after the Viking Age, which were performed at Yulefest. Two companies would dance in a ring, striking their shields with sticks and shouting, 'Yule, Yule, Yule!' In each company two men dressed in furs and masks.

In the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, the heroic Viking past is kept alive in folk ballads, sung to accompany intricate ring dances. It is said that some of these ballads actually last for three whole days and nights, recounting endless tales of Viking daring-do, while dancing and singing continuously for as long as anyone can remember the words and stay the course.

Pyrrhic sword dancers wield their swords to build up mesmeric visual patterns and effects through skillful weaponry display. There are naturally many variations and types of war dances, but they share similar characteristics, for instance, most often they are exclusively performed by men, they are highly stylized, even when they portray combat, and they derive more often than not from mythological sources. Most Aryan war dances today date back to pre-Christian rituals in honor of virility, victory and winter, night and day, and the leaps and high kicks symbolically were believed to promote growth. Much of the pyrrhic dancing of modern times relies heavily on geometric patterns alone and lack the element of
dramatic warrior combat. They create excitement by the steady evolutions of patterns and metric beat of the drum and stepping. In these dances swords are not weapons as much as they are a means to connect and unify the dancers. In mountainous regions of Europe hilt and point sword dances abound in regions of northern Spain and the Basque provinces and, also, Austria. Everywhere the dances share basic formations and types of costume and music, although regional differences are evident.

Ritual sword dances usually progress in a sunwise circle or weave within a circle. But the Flamborough sword dance, for instance, straightens out into longways formations. Parallel swords are successively raised and lowered and the dancers pass under and over, the 'Reed', or circular hey with raised swords, and the 'Threedling' with double overhead arches. In the final triumphant 'Lock', the swords are linked into a star shape, then the leader displays the star during stepping, or the group wraps the lock around the neck of a specific participant and circles clockwise in the 'Rose'. This leads to a mock decapitation then to the resurrection that symbolically follows. Such similar dances were performed, also, in ancient times for initiation purposes.

A state of ecstacy can often be reached in the more intense forms of pyrrhic dance. The Greek word 'ekstasis' means, 'standing aside'. The great driving forces of body and motion can stimulate the mind to the higher mental vision outside the self. Man is alive and his mind and body contain energy, and correspondingly, the universe as a whole and each individual piece of it contain energy. The pyrrhic dance throughout Aryan history has served as a vehicle in this communion of forces and releases the mental self from the physical, mundane world. It is believed that the art of acting found its origins with the estatic dancing of the ancient Dionysian rites.

The combination of aural and visual experiences with the
additional interest of dramatic action has always exercised a fascination to the audience. The impression thus created is further deepened by the beautiful and imaginative complexity of form and rhythm. In every setting, from mainstream performances to pagan revival ceremonies, the instinctive elements of the pyrrhic dances continue to stimulate the performers and enchant audiences with its artful skill and beauty of execution. The captivating magic of this mystical animation, moving geometry and primordal essence, rooted deep in our folk myth and heritage, make the pyrrhic dance a high point of our Aryan folk tradition.


"Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful
of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction
from life; it is life itself" ..............Havelock Ellis


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