Whisperers

by J H Brennan

  Underlying these insights is the little-known but time-honored Chinese Yarrow Stalk Ritual, which in its original form went well beyond the simple counting of stalks as practiced in the West—and indeed much of China—today. Portions of the ritual, pieced together from various sources, suggest it involved an altar spread with a cloth of the elemental color associated with the question asked.14 A copy of the I Ching was placed in the southern quadrant of the altar, its cover facing south. A second, smaller and lower, altar was placed to the south of the main altar. On this was set an incense burner and a pouch containing the yarrow stalks. The questioner would move to the southern quarter of the room, then kneel to perform three kowtows northward toward the altars. The incense was then lit and the first yarrow stalk selected.15

  Analysis of this ritual produces an important insight. The book is placed on the southern quarter of the altar because individuals of authority in ancient China traditionally faced south when granting an audience. The book itself, placed in this quarter, is seen as no more than the physical embodiment of a spiritual presence. When the questioner kowtows, facing north, it is the most profound indication of respect he could bestow on such a presence. And for the questioner, the presence is undoubtedly there, visible or invisible, ready and willing to answer the queries presented. The manipulation of the yarrow stalks represents no more than the establishment of a line of communication, as one might manipulate the buttons on a mobile phone in order to dial the number of a friend. In other words, the Yarrow Stalk Ritual is an act of spirit evocation.

  The influence of a spirit oracle on ancient Chinese thought comes as little surprise in face of the fact that shamanism was Asia’s oldest religion. Its reach extended beyond China itself to encompass Mongolia, Siberia, Russia, India, Tibet, Nepal, and even Persia. Japan’s aboriginal practice of Shinto, now largely a faith-based religion focused on spirit and ancestor worship, betrays its own shamanic origins. Folk Shinto, one of Shinto’s five modern manifestations, includes divinatory practice, spirit healing, and spirit possession.

  Across this broad cultural spread, the influence of spirits on human beliefs and behavior has been pervasive, but nowhere so direct as in the institution of the Tibetan State Oracle. The term oracle, in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, has a much more specific meaning than its Western usage. It refers to a spirit capable of entering into and communicating with our mundane world through the medium of kuten, men or women capable of becoming—at least temporarily—the spirit’s physical basis.

  According to local legend, Buddhism arrived in Tibet from heaven in a miraculous casket sometime prior to 650 CE. It was established—without mythic overtones—as the country’s official religion more than a hundred years later during the rule of King Trisong Detsen (755–797 CE). Prior to then, Tibet’s principal spiritual practice had been the shamanic techniques of Bön. Animistic Bön, the earliest and most basic expression of this ancient religion, was deeply concerned with spirit contact. The techniques in use were very similar to those found in Siberia. Bonpo shamans banded together in a clan-guild that passed on and protected their sacred knowledge, which was largely centered on possession by gods, elementals, demons, and the spirits of shamanic ancestors. Initiatory practices for shamans-in-training were closely similar to those in Siberia. Initial attention from—and often possession by—the spirits would typically result in a sort of divine madness, which could only be cured by the candidate’s retreat into a wilderness where, alone with his visions, he would bear witness to his own death and dismemberment by the spirits. If he survived the ordeal with his sanity intact, he would return to his clan-guild where senior practitioners would teach him how to control his spirit visitations. One way of doing so was to become an oracular kuten and act as a physical vehicle for intelligences from the Beyond.

  Academic consensus accepts that in these early days there were hundreds of such mediums throughout Tibet, offering spirit advice to those who sought it and, collectively, exerting a profound influence on the entire culture. The arrival of Buddhism from India made little difference to this practice, and indeed led quickly to its becoming institutionalized. This arose from the newly imported belief in five emanations of the Wisdom Buddha, related to corresponding principles of Body, Mind, Speech, Qualities, and Activities. Each emanation was personified and chief among them was Pehar, king of the principal of Activity. Guru Padmasambhava, the Indian Master who helped establish Buddhism in Tibet, appointed Pehar as protector both of the new religion and Tibet itself. At once the Tibetans cast about for a kuten who could contact Pehar and his fellow kings. They eventually established communication with an emissary, Dorje Drak-den, and established a succession of monks to act as mediums for the entity. By the sixteenth century, the lineage, based in Nechung Monastery, was officially sanctioned and the current medium, a monk named Drag Trang-Go-Wa Lobsang Palden, appointed the country’s first State Oracle.

  The lineage endures to the present day, with ritual consultations virtually unchanged from those of centuries past. Prior to the Chinese invasion of 1950, the oracle was formally consulted each New Year and at other times depending on political circumstances. Access to the oracle was exclusive to the ruling Dalai Lama, high lamas of the major monasteries, and ministers of state. What happened during a consultation has been vividly described by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,16 who continues to seek the oracle’s advice in exile:

  Having prepared himself for the work through a lifetime of meditation and special rituals, the kuten dons an elaborate costume of several layers culminating in an ornate robe of golden silk brocade, embroidered in traditional designs in bright reds, blues, greens and yellows. A scrying mirror of polished steel surrounded by turquoise and amethyst clusters hangs on his chest and over it all he wears a heavy harness supporting four flags and three victory banners. The combined weight of the garments and accoutrements is more than seventy pounds, to which is added during the ceremony an enormous ornamental helmet weighing a further thirty. As a result, the oracle is scarcely able to walk unaided and is often helped to his place by fellow monks.

  But the difficulty in movement is mysteriously overcome during the ritual itself. The ceremony begins with a generalized chanting of invocations and prayers, accompanied by cymbals, horns, and drums. In a short time, the oracle begins to show signs of trance and his assistants help him onto a small stool set before his questioner—generally the Dalai Lama himself. The first prayer cycle ends and a new one begins. The trance state deepens. It is at this point that the decorative helmet is placed on the kuten’s head. A wildness enters his expression and his face begins to swell, his eyes to bulge. Steady breathing changes to short, sharp pants and he begins to hiss violently. Abruptly his breathing stops altogether. His assistants take this as a sign and tie the helmet in place with a tight knot. Moments later, his entire body begins to expand visibly.

  Although the kuten is wearing a costume weighing in excess of one hundred pounds and could previously only move with the help of his assistants, he now leaps to his feet unaided, grabs a sword from an assistant, and begins to dance. The scene is distinctly threatening, but the oracle merely approaches his questioner and bows from the waist so that his helmet actually touches the ground. It seems as if his spine must snap, but instead he leaps up with “volcanic energy” and moves about the room “as if his body were made of rubber and driven by a coiled spring of enormous power.”17

  Dorje Drak-den is now in full possession of the medium who manifests a persona that combines the dignity of a wise elder with the wrathful appearance of an ancient lord. He makes ritual offerings to the Dalai Lama, then awaits his questions and those of the ministers of state. Before replying, he throws himself into another violent dance, waving his sword above his head like some fierce warrior chieftain, then frames his answers in poetic verse and symbolic gestures. Once Dorje Drak-den has finished speaking, his physical vehicle makes one final offering, then collapses inert as the entity withdraws. The kuten’s assistants rush to rem
ove the ornamental helmet, which might result in strangulation if left in place, then carry him off to recover—a process that may take a week or more.

  The present Dalai Lama has maintained18 that while he consulted—and at time of writing still consults—the oracle regularly, he does not always take the spirit’s advice. Rather, he gives weight to its opinions in the same way he might give weight to the opinions of his ministers or his own judgment. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that important political decisions—including the Dalai Lama’s own flight from Tibet a decade after the Chinese invasion—have been based directly on oracular predictions, just as they were in the West during the period of the classical civilizations. And just as we have seen how spirit influence in the Orient has permeated through to the present day, so it is possible to trace the pathways of spirit influence in the Western world following the fall of the classical civilizations.

  6. DARK AGE CONJURATIONS

  FOR ANCIENT ROME, THE LAST OF THE GREAT EARLY WESTERN CIVILIZAtions, the problem had always been Germany. The barbarian hordes beyond the Rhine had sometimes been subdued, sometimes temporarily pacified, but never fully conquered. In the later years of the empire, the Romans began to realize they had disturbed a hornet’s nest. The Germanic tribes were no longer content to defend their own territory but set their sights increasingly on lands ruled by Rome. For years, the seasoned Roman army held them off. Then in the third century CE Roman soldiers pulled back from the Rhine-Danube frontier to fight a civil war in Italy, leaving the borderlands largely undefended. Gradually the northern tribes began to overrun the former Roman territories in Greece and Gaul. Eventually the invaders penetrated Italy and a ragtag army was soon camped outside the gates of Rome itself. In 476 CE that army moved and the German general Odovacar overthrew the last of the Roman emperors, Augustulus Romulus.

  Germanic rule proved less than effective. The great engineering works of ancient Rome were left to fall into disrepair. Without the disciplined legions for protection, travel became unsafe. A cultural malaise set in so that farmers no longer tilled their fields. Without goods from the farms, trade and business began to disappear. The once mighty Roman Empire was visibly crumbling. In an almost unimaginably brief period of time, it disappeared altogether. The Dark Ages had begun.

  But while hardly evident in conventional histories, widespread spirit influence survived the fall of classical civilization. The prologue to a first-century CE treatise on astrological botany, attributed to the Greek physician Thessalos of Tralles, gives an account of evocation indicating that the use of professional intermediaries was still the norm.

  In the final years of his medical studies in Alexandria, Thessalos stumbled on a treatise attributed to an obscure Egyptian pharaoh, Nechepso, that detailed twenty-four cures for various diseases based on the signs of the zodiac. Impressed by the antiquity of the work, Thessalos boasted about his amazing discovery to friends, family, and colleagues in Alexandria, only to discover that the cures did not actually work. The discovery almost drove him to suicide. In desperation, he decided to look for divine revelation.1 To this end, he traveled to Thebes where he found a priest willing to summon up Asclepios, the god of medicine.

  The priest led him into a darkened room and chanted an incantation that caused the god to appear as a vision in a bowl of water. Thessalos was able to converse with the apparition, which explained in detail why King Nechepso’s approach had failed, then dictated the genuine secret to Thessalos on the condition that he would never reveal it to the profane.2 Ian Moyer comments that the description penned by Thessalos “reveals an awareness of similar narratives current in literature of the period.”3 Most of these typically involved the input of a professional who stood between the spirit and his client, acting to pass on messages and interpret their content. The intermediary was a priest in the case of Thessalos, among the last few of his profession to act openly as an intercessor with the spirit world. But by the time Thessalos discovered his mysterious book, Saint Paul was busily preaching to the Athenians and sending open letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians in an ultimately successful attempt to convert the pagan Greeks. Only a century or so later, Coptic Christianity had become the majority religion in Egypt. Soon the creed of the crucified god spread out of the Mediterranean and North Africa to conquer Europe. The Church of Rome was swiftly established as a major player—then the major player—in the politics and cultural life of the Continent. And the Church of Rome did not approve of spirit communications.

  There were several biblical authorities for this stance, beginning with Saint John’s comparatively mild admonition, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”4 John suggested a simple test. If the spirit professed belief in Jesus it was good; if not, it was a minion of the Antichrist. The Church paid scant attention to such a gentle approach, but concentrated instead on harsher passages:

  Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.5

  And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.6

  And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.7

  Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law.8

  And pounding like a leaden drumbeat across the Middle Ages:

  Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.9

  A witch, as was made clear in the Old Testament story of the Witch of Endor,10 was someone with the ability to contact spirits.

  Christianity was never very happy about spirits, despite the Annunciation, the voice at Jesus’s baptism, and Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. Christ, his immediate disciples, and many early saints encountered them, but the entities are almost invariably described as “unclean” or “evil.” When the Lord granted his disciples the power to command spirits, the gift came with a warning: “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”11 As it grew in strength, the Church moved away from its initial position of caution to a decision that anyone who dealt with spirits was guilty of heresy. Since there was no apparent distinction between good and evil spirits, cynical historians might be tempted to see the move as an attempt to defend ecclesiastical power from possible competition. Certainly the heresy was vigorously pursued. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX set up the Papal Inquisition. His initial targets were the Waldensians and Cathars, two sects that shamed the Church by leading lives of Christlike simplicity, but eventually the Inquisition’s remit was extended to take in a long list of heresies, including sodomy, polygamy, blasphemy, and usury.

  While later institutionalized, the Inquisition was at first little more than a legal method. The old ecclesiastical court system was replaced by single officials (Inquisitors) with the authority to demand information from anyone they believed to possess it and, if necessary, take action on any heresy revealed. The Inquisitor’s work was governed by strict, complex guidelines that limited the maximum punishment he could impose; in these early years, a simple penance was often the most that was imposed. But Gregory IX died in 1241 and just twenty-one years after the establishment of the Inquisition, a new pope, Innocent IV, authorized the use of torture.

  Within 150 years, there were Inquisitors assigned throughout Europe, with brutally extended powers. Now they could impose prison sentences, up to and including life. Some enthusiastic Canon lawyer had even discovered a loophole to get around the ban on the Church taking life. Those condemned to death by an Inquisi
tor—the apostate who retracted his confession, the stubborn heretic who refused to confess at all—were simply handed over to the civil authorities who happily carried out the sentence. A favorite form of execution was burning alive. It reminded heretics of their fate in the afterlife and encouraged last-minute repentance. It was, in short, an act of mercy.

  On August 22, 1320, a papal bull was issued specifically authorizing a French Inquisitor to investigate all those who used images or sacred objects to make magic and those who worshipped or made pacts with demons. Since by this time the Church tended to define all spirit communications as demonic, every mediumistic intermediary with the spirit realms was immediately at risk. Nor was the risk merely hypothetical. The first sorcery trial was held in Carcassonne just a decade after the bull. Five years later, Inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis condemned eight defendants to the stake, one on the basis of her confession that she had learned the secrets of evil from a goat. By 1350, the Inquisition had tried over one thousand French citizens for sorcery and burned more than half of them. For some, this hideous form of death may have been a blessed relief.