Whisperers

by J H Brennan

  At much the same time, the idea arose that demons living in the air played an important role in the fate of human souls. It was believed that after death a chief demon would act as a judge to decide whether the individual merited punishment or reward. It is easy to see how this notion foreshadowed more developed religious ideas of God’s postmortem judgment separating saints from sinners, with the latter condemned to eternal punishment at the hands of the chief demon himself, Satan. By the second century CE, the Chaldean Oracles show the modern distinction between good and bad daimons, with the former now usually called “angels” and the latter “demons.”

  A developing Judaism began by accepting that other peoples were entitled to their own gods but then insisted any other god (not to mention several classes of mythological beings) must be subservient to JHVH in his royal court. And even this grudging acceptance eventually collapsed when it was decided that foreign gods must actually be evil. “All the gods of the heathen are devils,” sang the psalmist.10 Christianity, and later Islam, adopted these ideas wholesale, populating their own anti-pantheons with hellish hosts. But however wicked they became, demons remained essentially spirits. They inhabited an otherworld and could be visited or summoned.

  The development of angels followed a somewhat similar and equally convoluted path. At first, the distinction between good and evil seemed largely arbitrary, even where the entity was perceived to be on God’s side. The Destroying Angel who slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt11 was working under JHVH’s orders, as was the case when he returned to murder selected Israelites following David’s census.12 Satan himself underwent a gradual metamorphosis from simple messenger of God13 (the Greek angelos means “messenger”) to the dislikable Accuser of Job at the heavenly court14 to the archenemy not only of humanity as a whole but of God himself. The Fall of Satan seems to mark the clearest demarcation point between angels and demons, although his followers were still at times called “fallen angels.” The situation was neatly rationalized in the Qumran community where it was believed that God created two important entities, the Spirit of Truth, aka the Prince of Light, and the Spirit of Lies, often called the Prince of Darkness. As a consequence, two classes of beings appeared—the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. Inevitably, they went to war.

  Early Christians were quick to adopt and combine the various forms of Greek and Jewish demonology/angelology that existed in their day. In the Gospels, Jesus frequently confronts demons of one sort or another, from his temptation by Satan in the wilderness15 to his banishment of evil spirits into swine.16 New Testament references to angels are equally frequent, and in the Annunciation we find an angel in its archetypal role of messenger. As mentioned above, the original Greek of “angel” translates as “messenger,” but the entities were, of course, believed to be much more than that. The Christian theologian, Clement of Alexandria, quotes an Orphic hymn that refers to angels surrounding the throne of God and caring for humanity. In the Near East, the old pagan gods, including Zeus and Jupiter, sometimes attracted the term angelos, and in the dark, crypt-like adyton under the temple of Apollo at Clarus, the gods themselves delivered an oracle in which they claimed to be “only a small part of [the Supreme] God … his angels.” Their statement is preserved to this day on a wall in the Lycian city of Oinoanda, now in southwestern Turkey.

  Neoplatonism brought a further refinement to humanity’s ideas about angels by expanding the term to mean the various levels of being between heaven and earth, thus allowing for paradoxical concepts like angelic demons. It had all become very convoluted, but the complications arose from human interpretations, not from the entities themselves. The same held true for less well-known intermediary beings. The inhabitants of folklore were reported in a multitude of differing forms, from elves to elementals, but could reasonably be classified as spirits in their essence. Thus, daimons remained daimons and, as we shall see, daimon spirits were everywhere. Nor is any of this an academic exercise. As spirits changed their form of manifestation down the centuries, one thing remained constant: the flow of reports that claimed humans could and did communicate with these Whisperers.

  This is a hugely important and overlooked aspect in most histories. We talk about the influence of religion and various belief systems on politics and society, but the supernatural is still mostly taboo. Yet my studies—and, indeed, personal experience in the field—all indicate that the supernatural, real or not, has had a profound effect on certain individuals, and through them on society as a whole … often in astounding ways. Thus the same basic question returns to haunt us: to what extent has contact with a “spirit world”—whether one believes in such a thing or not—influenced the course of human history?

  For conventional historians, the answer seems to be not at all. But this conclusion is reached by ignoring the evidence rather than examining it. Spirit contact lies at the heart of shamanism, the prehistoric belief system that guides, to this day, tribal communities throughout the world. It lies at the heart of almost every ancient religion, including those of the classical civilizations that laid down the intellectual and political foundations of our twenty-first-century world. It appears in the visions of prophets and psychics whose doctrines are accepted by men and women in positions of power. It arises, often heavily disguised, in systems of modern psychology and the experiences of individuals moved to experiment with mind-altering drugs or mystical techniques.

  In examining these factors, and more, this book aims to correct the record by investigating a recurring theme that most historians elect to ignore. The results are just as chilling, but far more wide-ranging, than Himmler’s antics in the crypt of Quedlinburg Cathedral, for it has become clear that, whether we realize it or not, your life and mine have been profoundly influenced by voices from the Beyond.

  PART ONE

  GODS AND MEN

  THERE IS SOLID EVIDENCE THAT CONTACT WITH A SPIRIT world has been an important—indeed even vital—part of human experience long before the dawn of history. But the contact was dynamic. With the advent of civilization, the early spirit journeys of the tribal shaman evolved into a much wider two-way interaction between humanity as a whole and spirit entities considered to be gods. These entities were not the cold, impersonal forces of later philosophies, nor the mystical abstractions of some Oriental religions, but personalities taking a direct and intimate interest in the individuals who worshipped them.

  But when these “gods” eventually withdrew, possibly under the pressure of a population explosion, the evolutionary process continued. In a desperate attempt to renew contact, humanity developed new institutions, including oracular mediums and an interpretive priesthood. These laid the foundations of the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and changed common perceptions of spirits from an accepted, everyday aspect of human existence to denizens of a distant domain, tightly controlled by a centralized Church.

  1. FIRST CONTACT

  DURING THE SUMMER OF 1877, EVERARD IM THURN (NOT YET SIR Everard, as he became later) arrived in British Guiana to take up his appointment as curator of the museum and begin his practice of a new branch of science, social anthropology. In pursuit of the latter, he began a series of trips to the interior of the colony and there managed to charm the indigenous Macusi people to such an extent that they permitted him to take up residence in one of their tribal villages. There he fell on an experience so bizarre that his account of it reads like the exotic adventure fiction of the Victorian author Rider Haggard.

  The whole thing began when he developed a slight fever and headache. He had, at the time, been attempting to forge a relationship with the local peaiman, or witch doctor, apparently successfully since the man promptly offered to cure him of his illness.

  An hour or two after dark, Thurn turned up at the peaiman’s home equipped, as previously instructed, with his hammock and a pocketful of tobacco leaves. He slung his hammock and handed the tobacco to the peaiman, who steeped it in a calabash of water and pl
aced it on the ground, surrounded by several bunches of green boughs he had cut from bushes on the savannah. The peaiman was not alone. Some thirty Macusi had crowded into the house, attracted, as Thurn wrote later, “by such a novel performance as the peai-ing of a white man.”1 Someone closed the door and doused the fire, leaving the chamber in total darkness. (Macusi houses had neither windows nor chimney.) Thurn was instructed to climb into his hammock and was sternly warned not to set foot on the ground, otherwise the kenaimas (spirits), who would soon be on the floor, might catch him and do dreadful things to him.

  It seemed the stage was set for the healing to begin, but the peaiman suddenly had second thoughts. He was, it appeared, wary of working in front of a white man. Thurn tried to reassure him by swearing he would not stir from his hammock, nor look at anything, nor attempt to lay hands on anything that might touch him. The peaiman reluctantly agreed to go on with the ceremony.

  For a moment, there was utter silence, then the darkness exploded with “a burst of indescribably … terrible yells … roars and shouts which filled the house, shaking walls and roof.”2 The noise ebbed and flowed in a steady rhythm, sometimes rising to a roar, sometimes sinking to a distant growl, but continuing without pause for six full hours. Thurn knew very little Macusi, but it seemed to him that questions were being roared out and answers shouted back. A Macusi boy, whose hammock was close by, did his best to translate and confirmed that the peaiman was roaring out his commands and questions to the kenaimas and the spirits were yelling and growling back their answers.

  At intervals through the cacophony, something even more weird occurred. There was a sound, indistinct at first, but growing louder, like that of some great winged creature approaching the house, then passing through the roof to settle with a thud on the floor. As it did so, distant yells came closer and reached their peak as it landed. Then, so it seemed, the thing lapped tobacco water from the calabash while the peaiman shouted questions. After a time, it seemed the creature took flight again and passed through the solid roof to return the way it came. Each time this happened, Thurn felt the air of its wings on his face. This was, he decided, the kenaimas coming and going. In the darkness, his imagination gave them forms—tigers, deer, monkeys, birds, turtles, snakes, and even Indians of the Ackawaoi and Arecuna tribes. Each shouted hoarsely in tones appropriate to their nature, each apparently promised the peaiman not to trouble Thurn anymore. As the last of them prepared to depart, a hand was laid briefly on Thurn’s face.

  The effect on the anthropologist was as strange as the performance itself. Before long he ceased to hear the whispered explanations of the boy and passed into something akin to a mesmeric trance where, incapable of moving, he seemed suspended somewhere in a ceaselessly surging din. Occasionally, when the noise died away and it appeared as if the peaiman had passed through the roof and was shouting from a distance, Thurn began to awaken. But when the peaiman returned and the noise increased, he would again sink into a stupor.

  Toward morning, the ceremony ended and the noise stopped. When the door was opened, Thurn rushed out into the open savannah. It was still dark, a wild night with heavy rain and incessant thunder. As lightning flashed, he could catch glimpses of the far-off Pacaraima mountain range. Although without hat, shoes, or coat, Thurn stayed out in the storm until dawn. It felt strangely refreshing after the noise and the darkness of the stuffy house.

  Spectacular though it was, the ceremony did not appear to be a therapeutic success. Thurn subsequently reported:

  It is perhaps needless to add that my head was anything but cured of its ache. But the peaiman, insisting that I must be cured, asked for payment. He even produced the kenaima, a caterpillar, which, he said, had caused the pain and which he had extracted from my body at the moment when his hand had touched my face. I gave him a looking-glass which had cost fourpence; and he was satisfied.

  Despite falling into trance, Thurn was quick to rationalize the whole experience:

  It was a clever piece of ventriloquism and acting. The whole long terrific noise came from the throat of the peaiman; or perhaps a little of it from that of his wife. The only marvel was that the man could sustain so tremendous a strain upon his voice and throat for six long hours. The rustling of the wings of the kenaimas, and the thud which was heard as each alighted on the floor, were imitated, as I afterwards found, by skilfully shaking the leafy boughs and then dashing them suddenly against the ground. The boughs, swept through the air close to my face, also produced the breezes which I had felt. Once, probably by accident, the boughs touched my face; and it was then that I discovered what they were, by seizing and holding some of the leaves with my teeth.

  Everard Thurn was not the only European to disapprove of peaimans. Contact with them (under several different names) began in the sixteenth century with the early exploration of the Americas. It was a particularly difficult time for anyone claiming contact with spirits. Witches were being burned throughout Europe, a custom carried enthusiastically to the New World where, notably in Central and South America, colonial and church authorities joined forces to torture and kill literally thousands of indigenous people for the crime of following their tribal traditions. Attitude and mind-set were neatly summed up in the writings of a French Franciscan named André Thévet.

  In 1557, Thévet found himself in Rio de Janeiro, then the first European colony in Brazil, and undertook to gather information about the area’s native inhabitants, the Tupinamba. He quickly discovered that “these people—being thus removed from the truth, beyond the persecutions they receive from the evil spirit and the errors of their dreams—are so outside of reason that they adore the Devil by means of his ministers, called pagé … or Caribo.”3

  Thévet had little good to say about the pagé, whom he described as “people of evil custom” who had given themselves over to the Devil’s service in order to deceive their neighbors. The pagé apparently had a nomadic streak, or perhaps simply favored the solitude of the forest in order to practice their profession, but Thévet saw this as a failing as well, claiming that they chose not to reside permanently anywhere, in order to disguise their nastiness. They did no honest work, but were supported in ones and twos by villages who inhabitants superstitiously believed them to carry messages from the spirit realm.

  What a pagé actually did in order to receive such messages was described in some (not entirely unprejudiced) detail by Thévet. First the witch doctor constructed a brand-new hut, where no one had ever lived before, and furnished it with a white bed. He then moved in large quantities of supplies, notably a native drink made from a plant called cahoiun along with flour ground from its roots. For a total of nine days, the pagé abstained from sexual intercourse, then entered the hut where he was ceremonially washed by a young virgin girl of ten or twelve years. The girl withdrew, as did any villagers standing close to the hut, and the pagé stretched out on the bed to begin his “diabolical invocations.”

  Thévet was not privy to exactly what went on in the hut, but he noted that it lasted for more than an hour, at the end of which the spirit—the evil spirit in Thévet’s account—would make itself heard by “whistling and piping.” He was told by some of the Tupinamba that no one ever saw the supernatural creature but only heard the howling and other noises it made.

  When the consultation was finished, the pagé emerged and was immediately surrounded by his people, who stood by while he described what he had heard. Few important tribal decisions were made without spirit advice, so the pagé was typically the recipient of many “caresses and presents.”

  Brother Thévet summed up his analysis of the experience with a brutal recommendation:

  Of this magic we find two main kinds, one by which one communicates with evil spirits, the other which gives intelligence about the most secret things of nature. It is true that one is more vicious than the other, but both are full of curiosity … Such curiosities indicate an imperfect judgment, ignorance, and a lack of faith and good religion … I cannot cease
to wonder how it is that in a land of law and police, one allows to proliferate like filth a bunch of old witches who put herbs on their arms, hang written words around their necks, and many mysteries, in ceremonies to cure fevers and other things, which are only true idolatry, and worthy of great punishment.4

  Thévet’s attitude was typical of his day, nor was it confined to church professionals. The Spanish navigator Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a layman through and through, encountered old men who communicated with spirits on the island of Hispaniola and subsequently commented on their activities in terms that would do justice to the most rabid prelate:

  They worship the Devil in diverse forms and images … they paint, engrave or carve a demon they call cemí in many objects and places … as ugly and frightful as the Catholics represent him at the feet of Saint Michael … not bound in chains, but revered … they prayed to him and had recourse to him in all their needs … And inside [the house] there was an old Indian … whose evil image was standing there; and it is to be thought that the Devil entered into him and spoke through him as through his minister; and … he told them the day on which it would rain and other messages from Nature … and they did not undertake or carry out anything that might be of importance without considering the Devil’s opinion in this way.5

  The old men, so anxious to carry out the Devil’s work, did so by means of tobacco smoke that they inhaled through hollow canes until they fell down drunk or unconscious. They were then carried to their hammocks by their wives (noted by de Oviedo as “numerous”) and subsequently awoke to prophecy future events and advise on proper courses of action, as dictated to them by the spirits.