Tickling sect – a real one

[Ickis]

Well, we all have heard of many strange sects and bizarre spiritual practices, but can you imagine a cult of tickling? Actually, in the late 19-th century, there was indeed such a sect in the remote region of Russia.

The trace of it can be found in one issue of “The Missionary Review” – the official Church journal. The article published in 1899 described sects that appeared far in Siberia, in the territory they called as a “priestless land” with no or little official church presence. Among those cults was one with tickling as a main spiritual ritual.


The report goes like that: one peasant man interpreted Holy Writ quite peculiarly, so he started to live with his wife in a “spiritual way”, whatever it could possibly mean. Soon he made acquaintance with a “holy man” in the neighboring hamlet and involved some people from the neighborhood into quite an unusual practice.

The cult followers, men and women, used to gather for the “wedding feast” to tickle one of few of them to achieve spiritual enlightenment this way, so locals called them “Ticklers”. The report documented few cases when young women came close to their gathering out of curiosity but were captured and forcibly tickled almost to unconsciousness. Their tickling rites were sometimes health-wrecking, but the sect and their teaching existed for some time.

A search revealed that later on the same Ticklers sect was mentioned in "Sacred Fire: A History of Sex in Ritual Religion and Human Behavior" by B. Z. Goldberg: "In their services, the males tickled the females so long that the latter fell into swoons. And as it was believed that each death added to the holiness of the service, no effort was exerted to revive the exhausted ones."

The whole story seems quite plausible – the only one of its kind, the cult of tickling.

 

[OmahaTickler]

It makes sense, really, that in such remote areas of the world, any conscious state other than "normal" might be interpreted as something supernatural. For such a culture, the reactions elicited from tickling might be interpreted as entering another plane of existence, considering the excited movements, laughing, etc. Consider that a mere skin blemish in 17th century Salem was seen as a mark of the devil. In such superstitious cultures, anything outside the normal zone is assigned all kinds of otherworldly qualities.

 

[tickletherapist]

Nice one.
But stop scaring people 🙂 It's obvious already that tickling can't do bad things to your health 😉

 

[surfnskate]

Very interesting, thanks for posting this.

 

[Ickis]

That “spiritual leader” looks more like a regular 19-th century ticklephile, who came up with a cunning scheme to lay his hands on all the young women in his neighborhood – something he succeeded in indeed.

Actually, that sect could become the real MaxSpeer’s Kittletown come true, since at some point the whole village was involved in tickling rituals. And it is not a Tarantino movie.