Bad Spirits, Blood, And Death: The Rain Dance Is Horror In The Making

It’s happened almost every winter in recent years in many places across the globe. The rain doesn’t come in sufficient quantities, to the point of a drought. Naturally, experts warn of the possible effects of the dry weather and urge us to do everything we can to save water because “we have no water to waste.”

To think that in history, and in a certain sense to this day, many believe that one means could change the situation: the rain dance, or rainmaking ritual. It appeared in diverse cultures and has quite a few aspects that seem to have come out of a horror movie, related mainly (but not only) to the encounter these dances have with spirits, sometimes even malicious ones. So it’s no wonder we included them in our scary dances section.

What Is A Rain Dance?

In the old days, when the sky remained empty of clouds, and the ground was dry, many tried to turn to the “higher powers” for help. The reason is that humanity, since the beginning of time, needs rain to exist. A lack of rain poses an existential threat to agriculture, animals, and life itself. Various cultures have developed rituals designed to summon rain, which have names like “rain dances” or “Rainmaking.” The purpose of this weather modification ritual, as you can tell, is to invoke rain.

Rain dances are not only a means of summoning rain, which is essential for maintaining crops and agriculture. They are a meeting point between the physical and spiritual worlds or between the living and the dead. The belief underlying the rain dance is that humans can influence nature and the factors that delay rain or may alternatively bring rain, whether ghosts, ancestors, or others. In other words, this is not a purely symbolic or ceremonial action but one that has been believed for years to be able to intervene in nature.

Throughout history, the rain dance has usually been performed during difficult times, crises, collective despair, and even death. Drought has been associated with hunger, disease, and death for years in various parts of the world today. Rain dancing sometimes came into the picture as a last resort, a lifeline before a colossal crisis. The participants gave their all in these dances, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, entering a state of trance and ecstasy.

How To Do A Rain Dance?

It is important to note that in different cultures that have had and still have the rain dance (which happens mainly in African, Eastern European, and Third World countries), there may be a different “choreography” for the rain dances.

Among the elements you can find in these dances, in many cases, are circular movements, jumps that simulate the movement of raindrops, noises that imitate thunder, musical instruments that are supposed to awaken the relevant gods, and so on.

Participants in the dance may wear unique decorations, such as feathers that symbolize the wind, turquoise stones or other blue objects that symbolize rain, and, of course, masks that resemble the spirits or gods.

There Are Different Versions Of Rainmaking Worldwide

In many cases, the first term that comes to mind in the current context is the Indian rain dance, which is probably the most famous. Rain dances in North America (especially in the southwestern part of the United States) were previously performed by Native American tribes, who saw drought as an existential threat. Some of them still practice them today.

Some of the most unique rain dances, some are even scary, are:

The Hopi Snake Dance

There were bizarre versions of the Indian rain dance, such as the “Snake Dance.”: This is not the super sexy dance of Salma Hayek in “From Dusk Till Dawn,” which features a snake, but the one of the Hopi Indian tribe. During the nine-day ceremony, which took place every two years, the dancers stuck live snakes, which they had collected from various nearby areas. They hold them in their mouths without being able to touch them with their hands.

The emphasis was on sticking the teeth in the body’s center so that its head and body could move in different directions. One of the tribesmen gets the role of “busy” the snake with the help of a feather so it would not attack the priest holding it. At the end of the snake dance, the snake is allowed to fall to the ground, and they throw cornmeal on it. They were respectfully carried out of the villages to convey the news of the ceremony and the desire for rain to the rain god.

African Rain Dance

In Africa, throughout history, the power to bring rain has usually been attributed to kings and rulers. In some African societies, kings who failed to summon Rainmakers could be accused of being hell-bent or even executed.

Among the Lobo tribe of South Africa, for example, the rain queen (“Queen Modjadji”) was believed to have special powers, including the ability to control clouds and rain. She was known as a mystical and historical figure who brought rain to her allies but drought to her enemies. She could even summon malevolent spirits to punish those who disobeyed her.

Meet The Lady Cat

In Thailand and Cambodia, various rituals are performed to bring rain during droughts. Perhaps the most bizarre ritual is the “‘Procession of Lady Cat” (originally, “Hae Nang Maew),” in which a cat is carried in a procession through the village streets while local villagers sprinkle water on the cat. The belief is that rain will fall on the land and people in the same way that water drops on the cat.

Rainmaking In China

In ancient China, Wu shamans performed rain dance rituals during drought. Shamans, who served in the past as intermediaries between humans and the spirits of nature that control, among other things, rainfall and floods, would perform a particularly grueling dance inside a ring of fire. Unsurprisingly, the intensive dance caused them to sweat in commercial quantities. Beyond the ritual being physically dangerous, many believed that failure to dance could result in the spirits punishing the Shaman.

The Tiban Dance

One of the most extreme examples of an unusual rain dance is a dance called “Tiban,” which occurs annually in some areas of Indonesia. During the “dance,” participants beat each other five times in the center of the body (not below the belt or above the neck) with a whip made of twisted palm leaves.

The result is columnar scars and some bleeding, in the belief that the blood is an offering to the gods. The beaten dancers maintain smiles and joy throughout the ceremony.

The Scary Sides Of The Rain Dancing

The fear dimension of rain dancing is mainly related to the encounter it offers with the world of the dead, according to several traditions. Some believed the rain contained the souls of the dead, who returned through it to visit the earth. However, as you have probably learned from horror movies, opening the gates between the worlds and the encounter between the living and the dead can be dangerous.

One of the main fears is that the rain dance will summon hidden, even malicious, entities that are not necessarily related to rain. Therefore, the concern is that they will use it to invade the world of the living. In this context, you can see the rituals as a kind of “double-edged sword”: on the one hand, they allow the spirits to seek help in a crucial matter, but on the other hand, they may enable dangerous spirits to penetrate the world.

Another concern is for the health of the people participating in the ritual. The fear is that the spirits may “take over” the participants or use their bodies to communicate. All those expressions we know from horror movies, such as losing consciousness, losing body control, and speaking in unknown languages, may come into play here, at least according to horror mythology. Some traditions describe cases of dancers who entered a deep trance during the ritual and could not recover.

With or without this, some of the rituals involved a considerable degree of danger for the participants: from physical exhaustion due to the effort of the prolonged dance to the use of various substances during the ceremony, which cause hallucinations and other sensory experiences. There was a fear that participants in the ceremony or even witnesses to it would participate in acts of a ritual nature as a result, some of which were even dangerous.

Can Man Interfere With Nature?

To this day, we see claims – real or conspiratorial – that man disrupts the weather in the world thanks to actions such as cloud seeding, some of which have not yet been proven compelling enough for this vital purpose. This aspect also exists to a certain extent around the rain dance throughout history because we try to influence the forces of nature and the natural order. In some traditions, stories have emerged about people who performed the dance incorrectly or for the wrong reasons and paid for it. For this reason, some cultures have restricted the dance to only highly respected individuals or those who have undergone special training, such as religious priests.

One can argue that the possibility that humans can interfere with the cycles of nature is a source of fear, as it undermines the existing order and disrupts the delicate balance in nature. In a sense, the fear and terror associated with the rain dance reflect humanity’s fear of uncontrollable forces of nature and the possibility that beneath the surface of rational reality lie ancient and dangerous forces you can wake through rituals and dances. The rain dance reminds us of the gaping chasm between modern culture and the dark and primal forces that still simmer beneath the surface of the civilized world.

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