Among the maritime tribes of New Guinea, when the men go hunting, fishing, or fighting, the women spend the whole night dancing. Perhaps these facts demonstrate a “savage telepathy,” as Frazer says. But it is an active telepathy. The whole social body comes alive with the same movement. They all become, in a manner of speaking, parts of a machine or, better, spokes of a wheel: the magical round dance, performed and sung, becomes the ideal image of the situation. This image is probably primitive, but certainly still occurs in our own times. The rhythmic movement, uniform and continuous, is the immediate expression of a mental state, in which the consciousness of each individual is overwhelmed by a single sentiment, a single hallucinatory idea, a common objective. Each body shares the same passion, each face wears the same mask, each voice utters the same cry.

From Marcel Mauss’ A General Theory of Magic, translated by Robert Brain, London: Routledge, 1972 (first published in 1902), p. 163.

Addendum (February 3, 2011)

This morning I practiced savage telepathy together with my beloved. This time it was she who went out, fighting. I stayed at home, walking from room to room and humming to myself, her face etched in my mind’s eye. I even tried dancing, but not for long. We were together all the time, though. Like one, we charged. We parried. United, we dashed forward. And we came out victorious in the end. My beloved and I. Lucky savages, courtesy of Marcel Mauss.