According to Wikipedia: "The Feast of Fools is the name given to popular medieval festivals regularly celebrated by the clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church from the 5th century to the 16th in several countries of Europe. The Feast of Fools was an imitation of the Roman Saturnalia, and, like that festival, was also celebrated in December. The young people, who played the chief parts, chose among their own number a mock pope, archbishop, bishop, or abbot. Participants would then 'consecrate' him with many ridiculous ceremonies in the chief church of the place, giving names such as Archbishop of Dolts, Abbot of Unreason, Boy Bishop, Pope of Fools. The ceremonies were often travesties mocking the performance of the highest offices of the church, while other persons, dressed in different kinds of masks and disguises, engaged in indecent songs and practiced all possible follies within the church building. . . The Council of Basel in 1431 imposed prohibitions, yet the feasts survived in France until 1644."

James McKinnon writes in the Encyclopedia of Medieval France: "In addition to processions required by the liturgical calendar, it was customary to arrange for them in special circumstances, for example, to pray for rain, peace, or relief from plague. Rogation processions and others of agricultural significance, moved out into the countryside, while the late medieval Corpus Christi procession made its way thru the streets of the town in a carnival-like atmosphere."

"Processions were led by an individual carrying the processional cross; originally associated with the movement of some ecclesiastical dignitary, this was simply a cross or crucifix mounted on a long staff so that it would be easily visible." Indeed. Such 'dignitaries' often appear as such times. Many of them Local Color with a broad ax.

There was a hot and sustained competition for the coveted Fool's Pope crown. Tex weighed in with his Bruno impersonation by dancing in the fire. A habit he picked up in a flaming pick-up truck back in the days.

Saddharma-pundarika is literally: "The Lotus of the True Law." It's called the Lotus Sutra and it teaches "among other things, that the truth can be indicated by means other than words, such as gestures and exclamations and silences."

Nietzsche writes: "For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. Intoxication must first have heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before that happens. All kinds of intoxication, however different their origin, have the power to do this: above all, the intoxication of sexual excitement, the oldest and most primitive form of intoxication."

"Likewise the intoxication which comes in the train of all great desires, all strong emotions; the intoxication of feasting, of contest, of the brave deed, of victory, of all extreme agitation: the intoxication of cruelty; intoxication of destruction; intoxication . . . of spring . . of narcotics; finally the intoxication of the will. . . The man in this condition transforms things until they mirror his power - until they are reflections of his perfection." from Twilight of the Idols.