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THE NEW ENGLAND SHAKERS AND THE INDIAN SPIRITS
This was a time of unusually vivid visions and violent shaking and whirling. . . . It was during this period that Indian ways crept into Shaker ritual. . . . Gifts flowed from the Indian spirits to the Shakers steadily until 1845. Directly after one of these exchanges, a display of lights was seen in the sky.
CONTEMPLATION
In 1837 a wild revival of spiritual activity spread through many Shaker Church communities in New England. The Shakers, so named because of their shaking behavior, were well known for their ecstatic experiences. But at this time in their history, they began to enter the spiritual realms of their Indian neighbors. The characteristic experience usually began with involuntary shaking, jerking, spinning, and energetic body motions. Eventually going into trance, the seekers would sometimes have visions of Indians. While inspired, the recipient of such a vision would fall to the floor and become rigid, while the Indian spirits would gift them with images, songs, and revelations. One girl spoke in an Indian language and continued doing so for weeks after her trance.
Visions of Indians became common among the Shakers in the 1840s. Clairvoyant communication between one Shaker community and another occurred frequently, a spiritual phenomenon not unknown to the Indians. There were several well-documented cases of clairvoyant messages being sent between congregations in the state of New York. The Indian spirits presented the Shakers with the holy pipe and taught them that God was both a Father and Mother.
Shakers began purifying themselves with sweat baths. Meeting at sacred places in the woods, the Shakers would allow themselves to take in the spirits of many Indians. On top of a mountain at Hancock, Massachusetts, they held ceremonies that began with fasting, prayers, and the distribution of spiritual offerings. They then proceeded to walk up the mountain, singing and dressed in ornate clothing.
At the top of the mountain, the participants opened themselves to direction from the spirits. Everyone removed their coats and danced with high energy, sometimes leaping, skipping, clapping, and shouting. At a certain moment in the ceremony, spiritual seeds were distributed around a stone they called “the fountain.” The people spiritually watered these seeds from pots they had carried with them. It was at this time that the Indian spirits would come into their presence. After some of these spirit encounters, the Shakers saw a display of lights in the sky.
Scholars later noted that the shamanic dances of the California Yurok were very similar to those danced in Shaker rituals. On the west coast of the United States, the shamanic practices of Indians and Christianity also blended in the group called the Indian Shakers. They danced a holy dance that anthropologist H. G. Barnett saw and described as similar to the sacred dance of the Holy Rollers of Appalachia and the New England Shakers.
Christianized Indians and “Indianized” Shakers spread throughout the Midwest in the seventeenth century. In every case, spirits would enter the body and cause it to move and shake. The movements became a circular dance that gave birth to visions and spiritual gifts ranging from revelation to healing. The most famous expression of this sacred dance is called the Ghost Dance. It led to such profound spiritual experiences that the United States government at that time made it illegal to perform.
Government agents forbade the Ghost Dance because of its “physical and mental effect on the participants.” On November, 1890, Agent
D. F. Royer telegraphed Washington, D. C., and expressed concern that the dance was making Indians go “wild and crazy,” thus justifying the need for thousands of soldiers. In the same month the President of the United States ordered the Secretary of War to use the military to control the situation and limit any further outbreak of the dance. The subsequent ugly violence—the slaughter of American Indian women and children when they danced the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee—is now history, a story not told enough in our schools or churches.
The Shakers, like the Indians, were also persecuted for their dance. In 1810, eighty years before the massacre at Wounded Knee, five hundred armed men and two thousand spectators attacked the Shaker community at Turtle Creek in southern Ohio. Barton Stone, the leader of the ambush, wrote that it was necessary to launch this assault because “they have made a shipwreck of our faith, and turned it aside to an old woman’s fable.”
The lesson is clear. It is no surprise that the shamanic expression of Christianity seems absent in our culture. Most if not all shamanic practices have been silenced and often attacked. Religions that have been reduced to vehicles for social and mental control do not want people dancing. In states of ecstasy, people may go “wild and crazy.” Those who are committed to exercising authority over others simply cannot tolerate the bliss that leads to dancing in the fields. In the dance of Holy Communion with saints and spirits, all earthly authority is illuminated and seen to be nothing important. This is a dance that sets people free.
MEDITATIVE FOCUS
In your mind, travel back in time to the early days, when the Shakers were active in New England. See them climbing the holy mountain with their blue and white garments and handbells. As they reach the top observe the wild movements that transform their weathered faces into the young faces of children. See them skipping and jumping with joy.
Hear them sing a song that brings them together in a large circle. They begin moving to the right and then to the left. Back and forth, the movement continues, bringing a trance to every dancer. One by one the dancers begin to whirl as they move to the right and then to the left. The circle appears to be one great entity that breathes, first to the right and then to the left. As the body of the Great Dancer pulses, breathing this way and that, a wind begins to blow upon each individual participant. Each Shaker is now still. Now it is the wind that moves them and creates the inner vision of a dance in motion. The danced bodies surrender their minds to the movement of the dancing wind until each individual collapses onto the ground. In their minds, they fall through the ground and enter another world. Here the wind takes them to the saints and spirits.
Imagine yourself as one of these dancing Shakers. You are in the spiritual world of the dancing wind. Any spirit or saint you wish to see will come if you simply ask. Jesus and Mary are available, as are all the saints and spirits of Christianized Indians and Indianized Christians. Allow the inner wind from the deepest part of you to dance you toward these holy presences and spiritual guides.
LOST PARABLE: THE MYSTERIOUS CROSS AND DANCE OF THE MIRAMICHI
Sometime in the 1600s a Jesuit priest named Father Le Clercq took off on a great voyage. He sailed across the ocean and met up with the Miramichi Indians on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Canada. He met shamans who showed him how they communicated with spirits. Assisted by spiritual objects, they went into ecstatic states and were completely transformed. The spirits used the shaman’s body and voice for expression. To his great surprise, Father Le Clercq discovered that the Indians already knew of Jesus from Nazareth.
Le Clercq actually wrote down a story told to him by the Miramichi Indians. A man once appeared to these Indians in their dreams and showed them a cross he was holding. He told them to make these crosses in order to heal illness. The Indians began making crosses and undertook no task without wearing them. Crosses are still found today in their burial places. In 1682, Father Emanuel Juneau arrived and declared the crosses had to be associated with Christian mission work. An elder corrected the priest, maintaining that the Indians had been making the crosses before the black robes ever stepped on their soil. Father Le Clercq also strongly insisted that the crosses were there long before the arrival of the Jesuits.
The black robes called these Indians “the cross-bearers.” They decided that the crosses had nothing to do with Christianity and abandoned their efforts to convert any of the Indians along the Gaspé Peninsula, believing they were too resistant to the faith. They pulled out and went to the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River. The Church was mystified that they gave up on these Indians because of Le Clercq’s own admission in a letter that “the Gaspesians were the most docile of all the Indians of New France and most susceptible to the instruction of Christianity.”4
What Le Clercq did not know was that Jesus and the wolves that accompanied him had visited these Indians. He had come to them in their dreams and showed them the four directions of the cross. During his visit they discussed the ancient Indian practice of fasting for a vision. They told him that when they entered the woods to undergo a fast, they sometimes encountered an oiaron or manitou, a personal spiritual guardian.
Jesus showed the Indians a dance that would enable them to encounter spirits in the same way they did on a vision fast. In this dance, they would begin by singing and clapping hands, allowing their bodies to get jolted and jerked around as the spirit tried to get into them. Once the spirit was inside their body, it danced them into states of ecstasy, allowing them to cross over into the spirit world. They would behold visions and sometimes be given the spiritual gifts of prophecy, healing, or vision for creating some work of art. Jesus told them how to dance the dance that would later be known among Shakers and Ghost Dancers. He also revealed to the Miramichi the story of how he learned to dance:
A long time ago I went into the desert to fast and pray for guidance. Many temptations were offered, and my sincerity and steadfastness endured each challenge. On the night of the thirtieth day, an angel of light appeared to me and said she would teach me the secret of the firefly’s light. She told me God gave the firefly its gift because of its faith. With the angel’s help, the firefly then taught God to teach human beings to dance.
The angel of light then showed me a circle of people holding hands. All holy dancing moves around a circle, and making the circle dance requires two magical ingredients—a melody and a rhythm. What I learned in the desert was to chant and pipe so others could dance. Unless one dances, one cannot know what the dance can bring. When I pipe the music, the dancers enter the spiritual air. This cannot ever be known outside the experience of the holy movement.
The art of dancing requires the ability to create different patterns of spinning. The most powerful dances are the circle dances. Melodies feed the longings of the mystical heart and set it free to soar above a doubting mind. At the same time, cadences of rhythm call the body to move and jump, loosening the bind of gravity. In this flight, music speaks a sacred truth and rides the pulse of rhythm.
Jesus and the Indians danced together in a holy ring dance. People were healed, given sacred guidance, and shown unspeakable mysteries. When Jesus left he reminded them that they now knew how to meet him in the dance. “I will show you something to make in a future dance. It will keep your faith strong.” Those were the last words of Jesus to the Miramichi Indians. Years later they dreamed of a man holding a cross in his hands.
ACTIVE MYSTICAL PRACTICE
With a group of friends, go to a woods or open field and gather some large stones. Make an inner circle of eight stones large enough to contain a fire. Around this circle, make a larger circle of twelve stones. These are the stones the dancers will move around, and the inner circle will hold the inner fire.
As evening falls, start a fire in the inner circle. There should be wood piled in all directions within the stone circle. When it becomes dark, stand around the outer circle stones and hold hands. Listen to the sound of the fire as if it were singing a song. Stomp the ground with your feet to create a rhythm using the Earth as your drum. Some of you may choose to wear bells around your ankles.
With time, the group will begin moving in a circle around the fire. Allow any sounds or movements to freely come forth and give them no interpretation or evaluation. Allow every dancer to become tuned to the dance. When dancers want to break away from the circle and move into their own space, allow this to take place naturally. Do not shape the dance or the ceremony. Let the dance shape your experience.
Know that people have danced spiritual ring dances since the beginning of human history. Jesus and the Indians, as well as the Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert and the Sufis in the Middle East, have danced and whirled themselves into great mysteries.