One minute they’re making boisterous music, the next they’re jerking in wild spasmodic frenzy, deep in the throes of spiritual revelation, an amazing display of a wide range of physical expression that never fails to hold their adherents spell-bound.
Impelled by myriad troubles that seem to defy logical resolution, people of all stations retire from the city’s noisy karma to the pristine refuge of the elements, in the hope of finding respite from “the attacks of their enemies”, corporeal and incorporeal. Some come with broken bodies, others with broken fortunes. There are others yet who seek to arm themselves with fore-knowledge of what is to be. And the Aladuras welcome them all with characteristic enthusiasm, catering to their inherently superstitious natures.
The practically minded might wonder if their fantastic gestures, reinforced by ritual and assorted mystical paraphernalia, are not the crafty tools of practiced swindlers merely serving to hold suggestible people in their thrall. This sort of reasoning is however sacrilege to another sort of mind, the sort that believes that Aladuras genuinely seek to answer the puzzling questions of existence that lie beyond human ken.
