The Nomadic Alternative – Page 181

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The errant life of the hunter hitches his body to the mobile aspirations of his soul. As age hangs heavily upon him, he seems to disturb the earth less and less with the rhythmic cadence of his footfalls till he feels it melt away beneath them. Like the Taoist, the hunter "rides on the normality of the Universe", and as he follows the swirling of the seasons, he worships with lean muscles the power immanent in nature. Journeying from one horizon to the next, he also treads an upward gradient that spirals towards his ultimate place of release. His wandering is a religious exercise.

But for the settler, pilgrimages and processions on foot, seasonal fairs and festivals were occasions to unwind the springs of grief and relieve the leaden inertia of confinement. The cathartic dancing, orgiastic revelry and insatiate gluttony re-established for a few privileged hours and days the social harmony, the sexual gratification and the abundance of the Golden Age. And to honour this brief revival, the victims of confinement discharged quantities of unused adrenalin, and exercised their legs, lungs and sexual organs, usually without after-effects but the birth of a few children nine months later. Often the revellers were admirably prepared for ecstatic visions through vitamin deficiency and the visual depriva-tions of winter, and when the sap began to run, they too experienced a power of their own arising within their bodies. Their muscular exertions were a direct source of joy and brought them a sense of omnipotence and equality with the divine.

The rondels, ring dances, processions to mountain shrines, rhythmic prostrations, bowing, scraping and other cavortings revived the mobility of former times and hurled the performers into other worlds of consciousness. Maypole dancing and merry-go-rounds dizzied them, and at the same time imitated the revolution of the life-giving sun. In Japan Zen aesthetes progress round Mount Fuji to absorb the wonders