I have recently spent an entire weekend working with Terpsichore through the medium of belly dance. Dance is often conflated with magical practice due to its ability to enable us to connect to a deep core of our being; a part of ourselves that cannot be expressed through every day speech but can be experienced via the medium of movement and music. Dance reminds us again and again that there is a part of us that goes beyond language, something deeper and inexplicable, but nevertheless is a core part of our being. This is why dance is often a very effective ritual tool that brings us to greater and greater emotional depths that we can pour out into our magical workings.
An interesting aspect of belly dance is that it frequently works in circles, in figures of 8 and in spirals. Through this I feel a sense of connecting to the circles of the multi verse, the circular movement of the earth around the sun and the harmony of circles around our galaxy and within the entire multiverse. I dance the dance of life and death birthing and destroying, mirroring the workings of chaos, mixing the polarities of life and death together, weaving and winding my magical intentions, creating something new.
At the start of the weekend I asked myself 3 questions and drew a tarot card for each. “What do I want?” I got the hanged man- I am wanting to see things from a different perspective and wanting the fast paced life that I lead just to stop for a minute so I can reflect and gain insight. To the question “what do I need?” I obtained the page of cups. Many people may interpret this differently; but as I used the page of cups as my signifier when I was in my 20’s, so I took this to mean I need to recover some of my heart felt youthful enthusiasm for life, which over the last few months has become depleted due to facing many challenges. The question, “What will help me with my goals?” was the Emperor, discipline, good organisation. With the aid of Isis wings I then wove those tarot cards into manifestation with each step, circling, spiralling along within the universe’s cacophony of song.
Art is an interaction between the deepest parts of us and the multiverse; it is the meeting point, an expression of our communication and interpretation of the cosmos. It is the place where I can directly interact with the chaos that birthed us bringing myself into alignment with the creative forces; as means of a metaphor let’s call this place Xanadu.
Yes, the movie Xanadu had mixed reviews but the music is fantastic, and the general theme of the film, how the muse inspires our leading man to reach fulfilment via the creative process, is a theme worth exploring. Xanadu can also be found in the unfinished poem “Kubla Khan” or “A Vision in a Dream” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The story behind Coleridge’s composition is that having read a book about Kubla Khan’s summer palace and consuming a quantity of opium, Coleridge experienced visions of Xanadu in his dreams, which he composed into a poem on awakening.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
The word Xanadu has now come to mean a place that is idyllic and beautiful. For me it is the place where I go when I have forgotten my ego and I am connected to chaos within the flow, the outpouring of creativity, of life and death in the multiverse’s quest for diversification. It is an experience of oneness where the “I” is no longer present, only the ebb and flow of the multi verse. It represents that moment where all the elements of the creative flow come together in one glorious moment of being.
Via the muses of creativity we can reach our own internal Xanadu as a place within us, the well spring of our interaction with the cosmos. That is the power of the dance linking one with all of creation. As a work of yoga it matters less whether your technically correct, as often I am not and often my body in its 50’s will not do what my 20 something body could do. What is important is the connections one forges with the multiverse.
Sources
Kubla Khan | The Poetry Foundation accessed 12.08.25