Rain dancing

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A rain dance being performed in Harar East Ethiopia.

A rain dance is a ceremonial dance that is performed in order to invoke rain and to ensure the protection of the harvest.

Rain dances can be found in many cultures, from Ancient Egypt to certain Native American tribes. They could still be found in the 20th century Balkans, in a ritual known as Paparuda (Romanian) or Perperuna (Slavic).

The traditional Native American Cherokee tribe performed rain dances to both induce precipitation from clouds as well as cleanse evil spirits ^[1]. Cherokee legend says that the summoned rain contains the spirits of dead Chiefs who upon awakening from the clouds battle evil spirits in the transitional plane between our reality and the spirit world ^[2]. It was also believed that particularly elaborate and ornamental rain dances could inspire the participants as well as audience to partake in unusual acts of spiritual worship ^[3].

One story from the Elders is that the Windigokan 'backwards people' sect saved their culture. During the days of the Native Americans in the United States Removal and reservations, critical religous ceremonies were banned by the government. They were forbidden to perform the Sun Dance. The Windigokan came up with the brilliant backwards idea of telling government representatives, "No sir, this is not the Sun Dance. It is the Rain Dance!"

Julia M. Butree (a wife of Ernest Thompson Seton) in her book ^[4], among other Native American dances describes the "Rain Dance of Zuni"^[5]

Feathers and turquoise are worn during the ceremony to symbolize wind and rain respectively. Many traditions of the Rain Dance are passed down through history by oral traditions ^[6]

[edit] Hacker's jargon

The Jargon File of hackers' lore ^[7] describes an idiomatic usage of the term:

Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables, etc. “I can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance.”
Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals that include both an incantation or two and physical activity or motion. Compare black magic, voodoo programming, cargo cult programming, wave a dead chicken; see also casting the runes.