Historical Info - The Navel Academy

Middle Eastern Dance (commonly known as Belly Dance) is one of the oldest dance forms in the world. It is theorized t have originated in Northern India, about 3000 years ago, as a temple dance, revering the feminine powers of fertility and childbearing. Such dancing was sacred and an important part of all religious rituals in attaining union with the deity.

The rhythm of the feminine dance is, not by coincidence, the basic heartbeat rhythm underlying most human music. Tantric Buddhist tradition refers to this rhythm as the "Nada, the Sound of Power or Heartbeat of the Absolute." Even Jesus danced and said to his disciples, "To the Universe belongs the dancer..." (Gnostic gospel "Acts of John").

Ancient dances are an important connection to our core essence, our "navel," always constant yet evolving.......

Long before people thought of God as a man, God was a woman -- the Great Goddess, she who created the heavens, the Earth, and all the people who live on it; she who controls the cycles of life, birth, and death, of day and night and the seasons; out of whose body seeds grow into plants, then die back and are reborn the following year; and in whose image women bring forth both male and female children and provide them with their first food. The Great Goddess was also honored as giver of civilization, since most of the early civilized arts, such as agriculture, textile and pottery-making, healing, etc. were probably developed by women.

Although many peoples throughout the world (including the primitive tribes of Europe) worshipped the Great Goddess over thousands of years, some of the greatest centers of her worship were the highly developed agricultural cities and towns of the ancient Middle East -- in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, early Egypt....From this part of the world also, emerged the art we call "belly dancing," which is still practiced today in the countries of the Middle East, Asia Minor, and North Africa, both as a folk art and a form of entertainment. We now think of this area as the heart of patriarchal Islam, but that came much, much later (circa 600 A.D.).

to be continued.........