Whisperers
Page 5
One of the founding fathers of modern psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, somewhere mentions the numinous quality of archetypes, a natural tendency to generate feelings of awe in those who encounter them. The same numinosity clings to spirits, as I witnessed some years ago when a medium agreed for the first time to publicly channel a spirit she introduced as an ancient Egyptian god. Her forty-strong audience consisted largely of professional people and included a judge, a medical doctor, a physicist, several academics, and an engineer. The medium fell into trance and the spirit entity spoke through her to deliver a brief address followed by a request for questions. None were forthcoming, but several members of the audience stood up to pledge themselves to the service of the god, despite the fact that, in our rational age, no one had asked for proofs or bona fides. Most people have a tendency to make unquestioned assumptions about the powers and authority of spirits, even when the communicating entities made no such claims for themselves. When a spirit requires something to be done, one feels an urge to carry out its wishes; and while it is perfectly possible to disobey, it feels uncomfortable to do so. If these observations represent the atrophied remnants of ancestral responses, it is easy to imagine the impact of a spirit command in the cultural context of a listener in, say, 4000 BCE, but only if the command was delivered directly.
The deserted city of Palenque, in South America, was just one of those abandoned, for no apparent reason, at the height of their power.
Writing seems to have been developed in early societies as a means of keeping track of trade negotiations and possessions, but its scope was quickly extended to record city ordinances and countrywide legislation, both of which had, of course, come from the mouths of the gods. But if a law laid down face-to-face by a deity was virtually impossible to disobey, the same numinousness did not attach to the same law in written form. Writing was a convenience and, like most conveniences, spread very quickly through any culture that developed it. Soon it became the prime carrier of the wishes of the gods and, in so doing, weakened them.
The historical context of the final breakdown, which Jaynes eventually pinpointed to the second millennium BCE, was spectacular:
[The era] was heavy laden with profound and irreversible changes. Vast geological catastrophes occurred. Civilizations perished. Half the world’s population became refugees. And wars, previously sporadic, came with hastening and ferocious frequency as this important millennium hunched itself sickly into its dark and bloody close.13
The volcanic eruption at Thera, now firmly placed midway through this millennium, is one of the more striking examples of what Jaynes is talking about here. The Aegean island, some sixty-eight miles north of Crete, exploded with such violence that an estimated twenty-four cubic miles of material was thrown up into the atmosphere, darkening the sky for days and influencing the climate of the whole Northern Hemisphere for years. Nor were the consequences purely local. Climatic effects included crop failures in China. The immediate shock waves were equivalent to the simultaneous detonation of more than thirty H-bombs.14 After the explosion, the population of Thera itself was obliterated and only a fraction of the island remained above water. A 490-foot-high tsunami devastated the northern coast of Crete, smashing two miles inland at 350 miles an hour to destroy the infrastructure of kingdom after kingdom.14
The disaster triggered a series of mass migrations and invasions that brought down both Hittite and Mycenaean empires. As the remnants of the old societies, with their different languages and customs, were forced to intermingle, what guidance could the spirits offer in the face of such overwhelming chaos? Their voices failed and, without divine guidance, humanity promptly made matters worse by embarking on wars of previously unimaginable brutality. The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I staked whole populations alive from groin to shoulder and established a rule of law that amounted to what scholars of a later age would refer to as a “policy of frightfulness.”15 The chaos spread throughout the Mediterranean and the known world. Conflict and brutality took hold on a scale unknown throughout the preceding eight millennia. But these miserable developments were not the only change afoot.
Sometime around 1230 BCE, the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I commissioned a stone altar that bore his own likeness … twice. The first image is of a standing figure. In the second, the tyrant is on his knees before the throne of his god. This is an extraordinary representation, quite unlike earlier versions of the same scene. In these, invariably, the king would stand tall, locked eye to eye with the deity as he listened to its words. At no time, in the millennia-long history of spirit communication, did he kneel. More astonishing still, the throne before which Tukulti-Ninurta prostrates himself is empty. The god has gone.
In modern times we have become so accustomed to the idea of an invisible god that it is difficult to comprehend how shocking this representation really was. In tablet after tablet, altar stone after altar stone, cylinder after cylinder, the god was always depicted as an heroic humanoid figure, standing or sitting. Why then in Tukulti’s reign is the god missing from this and other altars? Why, suddenly, was he represented by an abstract symbol on the cylinder seals? For Julian Jaynes there was no mystery at all. These scenes depicted reality as our Assyrian ancestors of the time experienced it. And the reality was that their god no longer appeared to them; their god no longer spoke.
Here at last was the turning point Jaynes had been looking for. In ancient Mesopotamia the spirits became silent at some point between the time of Hammurabi (died 1750 BCE), who was frequently depicted communing with his god, and that of Tukulti (1243–1207 BCE), whose deity seemed to have deserted him. Jaynes cast about for confirmation and discovered there were three clay tablets from the time of Tukulti that completely endorsed his conclusions. They were inscribed by a feudal lord named Shubshi-Meshre-Shakkan who began a sorry tale of woe with the words:
My god has forsaken me and disappeared
My goddess has failed me and keeps at a distance
The good angel who walked beside me has departed.16
The disappearance of this lord’s guardian spirits was only the beginning of his misfortunes. Without their guidance, he quarreled with Tukulti and consequently lost his position as ruler of a city. He fell prey to sickness and other misfortunes. He tried prayer, prostrations, and sacrifices, he consulted priests, but nothing brought the spirits back. (Interestingly, however, they did appear eventually in his dreams to assure him he had been forgiven his offenses and would henceforth prosper—the significance of which will become apparent later in this book.)
The change that was taking place was gradual, extending over some hundreds of years and moving at its own pace in different locations. Jaynes charts its progress as he analyzed it out from scores of ancient texts, scrolls, carvings, and tablets. The ancient hierarchical structure that flourished throughout the third millennium BCE permitted your personal god (with whom you communicated daily) to intercede with your city’s god and even, in times of great emergency or need, with the kingdom’s chief god, who generally communicated only with the king. Such intercessions were depicted in carving after carving showing the humble petitioner being presented to the great god by a lesser (personal) deity. But by the middle of the second millennium BCE the scenes change. As typified on Tukulti’s altar stone, the major gods begin to disappear. Personal gods are seen presenting supplicants not to the ruling deity but only to his symbol. Then, by about the end of the second millennium BCE, there are changes in the representation of the personal god. He, or she, was no longer the purely humanoid deity he used to be but had in many cases metamorphosed into a bizarre half-human, half-avian creature.
Sometimes this new entity appeared as a winged man, reminiscent, in all but artistic style, of later depictions of angels. Sometimes it might appear as a bird-headed human, like the ibis-headed figure of Thoth in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Sometimes it was a winged bull or lion. In the early stages of the change, such entities appear in presentation scenes, introducing the i
ndividual to the symbol of a major god. Later, however, such scenes disappear from the record altogether and the hybrid entities usually appear only as guardians, sometimes of places, sometimes of people, sometimes of kings. Each representation appears to have one thing in common: in no case do the entities speak. The spirits may still appear, but they remain strictly silent. Texts from the period show the reaction of whole populations to the change. There is general consternation and bewilderment. Why have our gods abandoned us? What have we done wrong?
Jaynes is quick to note that in these two archetypal questions lie the roots of the great themes found in every major religion of our modern world. Christ’s last cry on the cross—My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?17—is answered not by God but by the great accusation of the Christian church, Because humanity has sinned! Nor, it transpired, could any penance or sacrifice atone for the mysterious transgression. When the father of history, the Greek author Herodotus, climbed the steps of the Etemenanki ziggurat in Babylon almost a thousand pleading, prayerful years after the time of Tukulti, he hoped to find a statue at the top, but there was only an empty throne.
As a psychologist, Professor Jaynes had his own theories about spirit contact that shall be examined in a later section of this book. But for the moment, his work is important in that it permits us to build up an intriguing, if somewhat puzzling, historical picture. If Jaynes’s deductions are correct, that picture, in summary, is this:
At some point in deep prehistory, more (and possibly much more) than thirty thousand years ago, while humanity led a primitive, difficult, hunter-gather existence, certain individuals of the tribes became aware of spirit contacts and eventually developed techniques, some involving plant narcotics, that allowed them access to the spirit worlds. These individuals, whom we now refer to as shamans, believed they could rely on spirit advice in matters of healing and the location of game, both life-and-death essentials in the rigors of an Ice Age. Their consequent practice as doctors and prophets brought them prestige and a position within their tribe rivaling that of the chief himself. They formed primitive “guilds” to protect the secrets of their craft and adopted initiatory tests and rituals in their selection of candidates who wished to become shamans in their turn. Their work was of such importance to the tribe that (so many modern anthropologists believe) it was commemorated in cave art.
Throughout this whole period, the relationship between shaman and spirit might be characterized as one of cautious respect. Shamans found spirits often helpful, often reliable, but sometimes dangerous and occasionally untruthful. Although spirits could and would sometimes compel action, particularly in the matter of a tribesperson becoming a shaman in the first place, they were never, in any real sense, the masters. But nor were the shamans, whose title “master of the spirits” denoted no more than a skill at making contact and extracting direct assistance or useful information. Nobody actually commanded anybody. Instead, there was, generally speaking, a partnership based on mutual respect.
This situation remained essentially unchanged for tens of thousands of years and appears to have been beneficial to hunter-gatherer communities. But, if Julian Jaynes’s patient detective work is correct, something happened approximately ten thousand years ago that marked a transformation—the gradual shift from hunter-gathering to farming, the move away from nomadic to urban lifestyle and larger communities. Whether this shift was prompted by spirit advice or simply a natural, evolutionary development, we have no means of knowing. But the shift itself certainly coincided—if we accept a literal interpretation of the archaeological evidence—with a new form of spirit communication. No longer was the shaman required. No longer were individuals forced to face life-threatening trials to contact spirit worlds. For reasons not yet clearly understood, the spirits stepped forward from their ancient domains and became accessible to entire human populations.
With this change came another: the traditional relationship between human and spirit quickly broke down. No longer was there an equality based on mutual respect. The spirits became masters and something in the new relationship persuaded us to accept the change with the submissiveness of sheep. When a spirit issued orders, some deep-seated instinct compelled people to obey like automata. But the dictatorship proved benevolent. Spirit decrees enabled happy, fulfilled lives, free from any serious degree of conflict. Under spirit leadership, towns became cities, trade developed with other spirit-guided cultures, bellies and purses were full. In gratitude, humans transformed the spirit contacts into gods and offered them worship as well as obedience. It was, in many respects, a golden age and is recalled as such in world mythologies.
The situation remained essentially static for millennia before a further change occurred. A gradual population increase reached critical mass and the hierarchical structure established by the gods could no longer support it. Spirit communications became confused, then counterproductive. Spirit advice could no longer be counted on to produce benevolent results. Society gradually descended into chaos and the day eventually arrived when the spirits themselves began to withdraw. This process too was gradual. Like the shamans of old, there were still some people who could see and hear the spirits, but for the majority, the gods first fell silent, then changed into lesser creatures, and eventually disappeared altogether.
For thousands of years every god had a specific terrestrial location as a statue in a temple or an idol in the home. Now the statues were silent and the idols lifeless lumps of wood or stone. Where had the spirits gone? Humanity supplied its own answer by deciding their deities had retreated into the sky, an identification with heaven (the ultimate home of the gods) that holds good to the present day. A new relationship began, based on unanswered prayers, individual isolation, and distant memories of a time when the gods had real immediacy and power.
But inevitably, there was a gradual adjustment to the new status quo. The priesthood became guardian of social custom, cultural tradition, and religious ritual. Each priest was looked on as a medium channeling cosmic forces, another way of saying that the powers of the gods flowed through him, but the majority asked for their powers to be accepted on faith. Their congregations believed them because belief was more comfortable than complete abandonment.
On a different level, the massive body of Mesopotamian magical texts, much of it concerned with divining the will of the gods or directly seeking their advice, suggests a widespread wish to communicate in the old style that was certainly not confined to the priesthood. Superstition and theological theory rushed in to fill the emotional vacuum. Sumerians came to believe in a gloomy afterlife inhabited by the souls of the dead and were not averse to attempting postmortem contact with their ancestors if they thought it might be beneficial. Enlil, one of whose titles was “Lord of the Land of Ghosts,” was said to have gifted humanity with spells and incantations to compel the obedience of spirits, good and evil; and there were those who sought to use the gift to practical effect. Even more common were texts devoted to celestial observation and astrological lore, which attempted to discern the influences emanating from the highest spirit realms on human affairs.18 But much of this is speculation. For more detailed information on how early civilization adjusted to the change—and established a new and different form of contact with its gods—we need to move away from Mesopotamia to examine another ancient culture whose copious, well-examined records will give us a clearer picture.
The jackal-headed god Anubis (left) was believed to communicate with the citizens of ancient Egypt.
3. THE EGYPTIAN EXPERIENCE
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM CURRENTLY DATES THE FOUNDATION OF EGYPT to the emergence of the first pharaonic dynasty ca. 2925 BCE,1 a time when, according to Jaynes, widespread spirit communication was still commonplace. The broad sweep of Egyptology readily recognizes the astonishing engineering feats, cosmological preoccupations, and ubiquitous artworks that characterized it. Oxford philosopher Jeremy Naydler adds another dimension:
The religious life of the ancient
Egyptians was never really separate from the rest of their lives. The whole culture was infused with religious awareness, with an awareness that the spirit world interpenetrated all spheres of existence. Ancient Egypt was a sacred culture … When we “go back” … we are also “going down” to a deeper, more archaic level of human experience that is closer to the gods, closer to a half-forgotten awareness of transpersonal beings and primal encounters with archetypal realities.2
By “transpersonal beings,” “primal encounters,” and “archetypal realities,” Naydler means spirits; and there can be little doubt that the ancient Egyptians, obsessed as they were with magic, carried that obsession into the realms of spirit contact long after their personal gods withdrew. The Leiden Papyrus, a New Kingdom copy of a manuscript tentatively dated 1850–1600 BCE, contains a spell to establish communication with the god Anubis. The spell, coming after the time the gods had begun to withdraw, may have been an act of desperation, but may possibly have been effective in that it created an experience of spirit communication. Certainly the structure of the rite set a pattern for similar “magical” spirit evocations in the centuries to come. According to the detailed instructions, one first engraves a bronze bowl with the figure of Anubis, then fills it with water and floats oil on the surface. The bowl is then placed on three new bricks, with four other bricks spread out beside it. Before beginning the rite, a child lies on his stomach on the surrounding bricks, with his chin on the brick on which the bowl is resting. His head is then covered with a cloth and a lighted lamp set on his right and a censer with fire on his left. Incense made up of frankincense, wax, styrax, turpentine, datestone, and wine is in the censer and a leaf of the Anubis plant3 is placed on the lamp. One would then repeat the words “open my eyes” four times, “open my eyes, open thy eyes” three times, “open Tat, open Nap” three times, and “open unto me” also three times.