Severi Capturing Imagination PDF
Severi Capturing Imagination PDF
Severi Capturing Imagination PDF
From a logical point of view, a theory can be either powerful (accounting for
a limited number of features valid for a great number of cases) or expressive
(accounting for a great number of features belonging to a limited number of
cases). In other words, theories can be extensionally or intensionally orientated.Any case-centred inquiry (for instance, a clinical study) is in some measure
intensional, while any comparative or statistical analysis tends to be extensional.
With few exceptions, attempts to produce generalizing theories of human cognition have thus far been carried out primarily in extensional terms. Researchers
have been looking for ever more ethnographic cases which may confirm the
assumptions of the theory, and make it more powerful. It is generally admitted, in this perspective, that, in order to use an ethnographic case in this framework, a reduction of the ethnographic complexity is necessary.
The objection of many anthropologists to this approach is that complexity
is precisely what characterizes ethnography. Those holding this view regard
any attempt to reduce this complexity as something that must fundamentally
alter the object of the analysis, creating such a reductionist outcome as to rule
out the possibility of either confirmation or negation of the point at issue. In
this article, I wish to show that a different cognitive perspective, developed in
intensional terms, can enrich our ways of dealing with ethnographic complexity and help us to rethink a number of traditional anthropological concepts. In order to do so, I will discuss the example of a messianistic religious
movement that came into being among the Western Apache of San Carlos
and White Mountain Reservations around the year 1916.
Before I move on to the analysis of this case, let me state briefly the general
hypotheses I have been developing in my recent work (Boyer & Severi 19979; Severi 2002) on the role of memory and pragmatics in cultural transmission.
Royal Anthropological Institute 2004.
J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 10, 815-838
816
CARLO SEVERI
CARLO SEVERI
817
tions are propagated. This conclusion suggests that cultures make some representations more memorable than others by inserting them in counterintuitive
contexts of propagation. In many important situations and religion is one
of them a culturally successful representation is a counterintuitive representation formulated within counterintuitive conditions of communication
(Severi in Boyer & Severi 1997-9).
From this hypothesis, it follows that, in order to achieve a better understanding of such cases, one needs to build a more expressive theory of cultural propagation. One needs to understand this process in positive terms, and
in specific situations. Such an attempt is certainly at the heart of the theory
of modes of religiosity, as proposed by Harvey Whitehouse in several books
and articles (e.g. Whitehouse 1992; 2000).1 His distinction between doctrinal
and imagistic religious modes, which is obviously based on the distinction
between semantic and episodic memory, has proven to be very useful in a
number of cases. Like all useful distinctions, however, it invites one to think
further, and it raises many questions. Since the efforts of generalizing the
theory of religious modes have been as in the case of other cognitive-based
approaches conducted only in extensional terms, one of these questions concerns the degree of complexity that can be accounted for by the theory that
is based on this distinction. Consider, for instance, a situation characterized by
the simultaneous presence of different modes of religiosity. On a number of
occasions, Whitehouse has recognized that, in many cultural situations, we can
see the two modes, imagistic and doctrinal, acting together or even merging
in a single religion. However, what about the possible conflict between the
two modes within a single tradition? Does the theory account for a contradictory situation where some aspects of the culture are laid down in an imagistic mode, and others in a doctrinal mode? How could one interpret such a
situation using the modes of religiosity approach?
Before engaging in any empirical analysis, let us take a step further and ask
whether (and how) this modes of religiosity theory might be able to account
for the relationship between different cultures, or between different religious
traditions. Clearly, a specific form of complexity may result from the contact
between different cultures where either of the two typical modes of religiosity is to be found. Can the theory help us in understanding the struggle
between competing religions in a single society, or in a specific historical
period? This case is obviously very frequent. Ethnography very often shows
that no simple traditions exist, and that some kind of contact between competing religious approaches is the rule rather than the exception in many
human societies. What happens then when we try to analyse in these terms
not a single religion, but as for instance in messianistic movements the
interaction between two different religious traditions?
I think that, even in this context, the distinction between imagistic and
doctrinal modes of religiosity can be helpful. However, in order to understand
cultural complexity, one has to take two further steps. First of all, one has to
use the distinction within the context of a single culture in order to assess,
and not to reduce, its specific complexity. Secondly, one has to take into
account not only the kind of memory which is implied in the propagation
of cultural representations, but also the pragmatics of cultural communication.
An obvious case, in this perspective, is ritual communication, which is performed through both action and speech. In a book devoted to the study of
818
CARLO SEVERI
ritual action, Michael Houseman and I have claimed that one of the essential clues for understanding the context of ritual communication is the way
in which, through the establishment of a particular form of interaction, a
special identity of the participants is constructed (Houseman & Severi 1998).
In the example we have analysed, the Naven (a transvestite ritual of the Iatmul
of Sepik, Papua New Guinea), the study of a first interaction between a
mothers brother acting as a mother (and a wife), on the one hand, and a
sisters son acting as a son (and a husband), on the other, has led to the analysis of a series of rites involving larger social groups, where competition
between men from Egos maternal side and mothers from Egos paternal side
plays a critical role. One of our conclusions has been that the identity of each
participant is built up, within the ritual context, from a series of contradictory connotations (being, for instance, at once a mother and a child, a sisters
son and a wife, etc.).This process, of symbolic transformation realized through
action, which we have called ritual condensation, gives to the ritual context
of communication a particular form that distinguishes it from ordinary life
interactions. In this article, I wish to extend this approach to the case of the
paradoxical construction of the enunciator, which characterizes many syncretistic (or nativistic) movements. In my brief analysis of the example of West
Apache messianism I will therefore try to keep an eye not only on the salience
of religious notions (or symbols, or ideas, etc.), but also on the contexts in
which these symbols are communicated. I will claim, in short, that in addition to the element of semantic counterintuitiveness which is present in these
situations, there is also a pragmatic counterintuitiveness, and that this is something which must be taken into account in the analysis of complex religious
traditions like messianism.
CARLO SEVERI
819
820
CARLO SEVERI
taught that the day was at hand when the dead of all the Amerindian nations
would live again on earth in the full flower of their youth. Their resurrection
would be accompanied by the return of all the great game animals which had
been wiped out since the advent of the whites, and he also pledged that a
great cataclysm would obliterate the white invaders (Mooney 1896; Overholt
1974: 42). An important part of Wovokas message concerned the nature of
the Prophet himself. The document known as the Messiah letter explicitly
indicated that Wovoka and Jesus were to be regarded as the same person: Do
not tell the white people Wovoka is reported to say But Jesus is now
upon the earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are all alive again . . .
(Mooney 1896: 773). As Overholt has demonstrated, the subsequent denials
offered by Wovoka to James Mooney (1896: 773) were only attempts to hide
his new identity. Many of his Indian disciples continually referred to him as
the Christ, and several of them mentioned having seen the marks of the crucifixion on Wovokas hands and feet (Overholt 1974: 44). In a document
reported by Mooney the new Christ is explicitly identified with the old one:
In the beginning, after God made the earth, they sent me to teach the people, and when
I came back on earth the people were afraid of me and treated me badly. I found my
children were bad, so I went back to heaven and left them. I told them that in many
hundred years I would come back to see my children My father commanded me to
visit the Indians on a purpose. I have come to the white people first, but they are not
good. They killed me, and you can see the marks of my wounds on my feet, my hands,
and my back (Mooney 1896: 796-7).
Assuming that Mooney has reported accurately on this, then Wovoka the messianic prophet is being treated as the Christ. Consequently, to become a
believer in the new religious message is not, for instance from the point of
view of someone recently converted to Christianity, a way to cease to be a
good Christian. On the contrary, it is to become a real (and often the only
real) Christian. We shall see that this was the view of the many converted
Indians who joined the nativistic movements at the end of the nineteenth
century. However, it was then clear to everyone, as it is now, that in the context
of the Ghost Dance a statement like I am a real Christian (or even I am
Jesus) does not mean I belong in whatever position I find myself to the
religion preached by the Whites. The meaning of such a statement is rather
that it is because I claim that I am a real Christian that I am, more than ever,
a member (or even a founder) of an anti-Western religion. To be similar
implies here, very specifically to be different, and even very different, from the
traditional Christian religion. In other words this is a paradoxical situation
where To be similar to you is to be me as opposed to you, and vice versa.
The transition from the traditional religion to the messianistic one actually
entails a move from a situation in which the local non-Western medicine man
opposes the shamanistic tradition to Christianity because he claims it to be
different, to a situation in which he or she opposes the shamanistic tradition
to Christianity because he or she claims it to be similar. The transformation
that seems to be operated here, often loosely called by anthropologists a contradiction, or a symbolic inversion, may be more precisely described as a
paradox. In fact, a contradiction is found in a statement where two contrary
predicates are affirmed. A paradox emerges only when a logical link is established between two contradicting predicates. If the statement this box is black
CARLO SEVERI
821
By 1920, it was apparent to him that his acceptance as religious prophet was
assured, and he then selected twelve assistants to circulate among the Apache
people, pray for them, and encourage them to congregate (Basso & Anderson
1975: 29). At the final stage of his predication, following what I have called
a process of paradoxical self-definition, Silas John told his Mescalero Apache
disciples, who still called him Yusen (the Creator in the Apache mythology,
or Life Giver): You have to accept Jesus. Call me Jesus, not Yusen (MacDonald
Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 294-5).
In these years, Silas Johns movement proved extremely successful among
the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache. After 1920, it spread to the
Mescalero Apache of New Mexico, and led to the establishment of a new
ritual, called Holy Ground prayer, which was rapidly adopted by members
of the community, and became the signal of a general revolt against
Christianity among the Western Apache. It was clear to everybody
including the military authorities of the reservation that to produce such a
822
CARLO SEVERI
CARLO SEVERI
823
Do not the bodies of our ancestors lie beneath the earth that belongs to us?
Why then do the Whites come hither? Why do they kill our game?
There was only one brave among the Apache who could keep the whites back,
Diablo, and the chief.
His spirit hovers amid the rustling pine; the fluttering leaves indicates his presence.
The wail of the mountain-lion and the roar of the bear tell you that he is near. He
will come again, not in spirit, but in the flesh, to deliver us from the hated whites.
Diablo guards our interests, Diablo seeks a remedy, and Diablo will live again. In the
dance we seek an inspiration.
With rhythmical movements, we commune with the spirits. The dance inspires passion,
faith, fury, bravery and strength.
Is it not I, who revives the message at the resting place of the bones of Diablo?
Noch-ay-del-klinnes message had caused great excitement in the reservation, and the intense fervour that these ceremonies reportedly evoked among
the Apache soon alarmed the local authorities. In fact, the new dance taught
by Noch-ay-del-klinne was spreading very rapidly from one village to another,
and it had the effect of establishing a new solidarity between the rival bands
of Apache who were confined together within the same reservation. The
local cavalry commanders recognized immediately that the new ritual was a
824
CARLO SEVERI
potential political threat. It was particularly worrying both to the civil and the
military authorities that Apache who had been recruited as army scouts and
Indian Agency policemen had allegedly been caught up in the movement
and were reported to have become uncooperative and sometimes belligerent,
openly grumbling against white mastery of their homeland (Haley 1981:
337).
We cannot follow the story of this first Apache movement in detail. It will
suffice to say that the movement started by Noch-ay-del-klinne was seen as
a serious threat, and was violently suppressed by the US Army, who killed
Noch-ay-del-klinne and many of his followers.This is how John Bourke, who
was at the same time an officer of the Army and an ethnographer working
for the Department of Anthropology of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, describes
the end of Noch-ay-del-klinne:
This Apache medicine man exercised great influence over his people at Camp Apache,
in 1881. He boasted of his power to raise the dead, and predicted that the whites should
soon be driven from the land. He also drilled the savages in a peculiar dance This
prophet or doctor was killed in the engagement in the Cibecue canyon, August 30, 1881
(Bourke 1993 [1892]: 55).
It is clear that this first religious movement is still very chronologically close
to the war between the Whites and the Apache, which had ended only a few
years before, a cruel conflict that was far from being forgotten. The political
content of the return of the dead announced by Noch-ay-del-klinne was
transparent to all the actors. To capture the imagination of his followers (to
use Goodwin and Kauts [1954] expression), the first of the Apache prophets
had only some vague references to the story of the Resurrection. He himself
never imitated any Christian practices, and he operated as a medicine man.
He possessed, in particular, the snake-lightning power (Goodwin 1969 [1938]:
35; Kessel 1976: 59), and the dance he taught was an unmistakable variant
of a traditional Apache ritual. Noch-ay-del-klinnes movement, then, still
expresses an unambiguous opposition to Christianity. When Noch-ay-delklinne narrates his dreams or invites people to join in his new dance, he speaks
in the name of the Apache shamanistic tradition.
Syncretism is virtually absent from his doctrine. After Noch-ay-del-klinnes
death, a number of Apache medicine men among them Big John (Ferg
1987; Goodwin & Kaut 1954) tried to continue his movement and to follow
his main teachings: the performance of a new circular dance spread from
village to village between 1903 and 1907. The search for a contact with the
realm of the dead, under the form of the Sky and the People of the Lightning, was at the centre of this new ritual, called Dahgodia (they will be raised
up). In the words of Big John to his followers: You will be raised up from
the earth in a cloud, and while you are gone the earth will be changed. Then
you will be lowered on to it again, and it will be all ready for you
(Goodwin & Kaut 1954: 393).
The implication was, obviously, that the Whites would soon disappear from
earth. The end of the Noch-ay-del-klinne movement, and of his attempt to
resurrect the old chiefs of the Apache war, had been tragic, but the death of
the Prophet himself had been full of dignity. This time, the result of the
attempt to make the Whites ritually disappear was to be crueller. Daslahdn,
CARLO SEVERI
825
With Big John, some new customs are established. Some of them are characteristically paradoxical: the believers in the new dance have to wear white
garments, in a strictly traditional Apache manner. Among these dresses, a new
symbol appears, which combines the cross with a form similar to a crescent.
As Big John, like all his predecessors, possessed the snake-lightning power, it
is highly probable that this form can be associated with one of the most
important powers of the Apache, the snake. Big John performed lightning
song, which he taught to other medicine men (Goodwin & Kaut 1954: 399),
and his dance was perceived as a snake-dance (Goodwin & Kaut 1954: 400).
In Apache symbolism, the power of the snake is obviously closely linked with
the People of the Lightning, which is one of the ways to designate the realm
of the Dead. It is not impossible that this association was already established
at the time of Noch-ay-del-klinne. As early as 1884, Bourke himself had seen
crosses associated with snakes:
The sign of the cross appears in many places in Apache symbolism. This sign is related
to the cardinal points and the four winds, and is painted by warriors In October 1884,
I saw a procession of Apache men and women, led by the medicine-men bearing two
crosses They were decorated with blue dots upon the unpainted surface, and a blue
snake meandered down the longer arm (Bourke 1933 [1892]: 29).
In these two new versions of the return of the dead movement started by
Noch-ay-del-klinne, some of the symbols have changed, but the identity of
the prophets has not. Big John, like Daslahdn and all the other prophets, is a
traditional medicine man. After the failed resurrection of Daslahdn, he retires
to a remote village. Simply acknowledging the failure of his power, he surrenders his ambition to attain the Sky and lead the Apache there.
When Silas John appears, and announces his new prophetic message holding
up a cross and snake, he is certainly referring to this recently established
tradition of the Apache prophetic movements. His gesture refers, in particular, to the snake-dances performed by Big John. Silas is also a medicine man,
and he too possesses the snake-lightning. In his teachings, he uses a range
of features typical of the forty-year-old messianistic tradition started by
Noch-ay-del-klinne: the snake, the cross, the return from the dead, the travel
to the clouds, the white robes, and songs. For instance, the story of one of
his miracles, involving the magical transformation of a drum into a living
826
CARLO SEVERI
However, this time, things have changed radically. Far from trying to defend
the old tradition against the teaching of the missionaries, Silas John has begun
to act as a typical paradoxical I. At the beginning of his career as a messiah,
he strictly follows the pattern of a shamanistic Apache initiation: he wanders
in the forest, eating no food, and looking for the vision of a gan, a traditional
Apache animal spirit. From 1904 until 1916, Silas learned all he could about
the snake-lightning power. His first vision involves the encounter with one
of these Spirits of the Mountain, the gans. And it is precisely a lightning that
teaches him his personal songs:
Silas John was carried to a place where the earth was made, and where time began.
It was a white mountain with a black cloud over it. From the cloud a supernatural being
came to Silas John and informed him that he would become a prophet This being
also taught him his prayers (Kessel 1976: 163).
The supernatural lightning is obviously related to the snake. Silas sees snakes
in his vision, and establishes himself as a shaman possessing the snake power:
Silas John told me that a snake visited his house in 1913. It wouldnt go away. So Silas
decided to put some beads on its neck. He did that, and the fourth time he did that,
the snake left for good When Silas was in heaven, the Spirit said: You had a visitor.
I am going to show you this visitor. They went to a green spot where there were sixtyfour snakes. They all stood up. Pick out the one you put the beads on said the Spirit
(MacDonald Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 153-4).
CARLO SEVERI
827
power of snakes and lightning, he prohibits precisely the ritual devoted to the
gans, and replaces it by his own prayer. Old Man Arnold, one of his first
Mescalero disciples, reported one of these prayers, where it was not the gans
but Jesus himself who was remembered as one of the cosmological founders
of the universe:
When the earth was made, when the sky was made
In the very beginning, they walk around with Jesus
(MacDonald Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 149).
According to Old Man Arnold, this new way to describe the origin of the
world caused perplexity among Silass followers:
It troubles me that Silas doesnt like the Crown [= gan] Dancers. He said their dances
belong to the devil and do harm. That is hard to understand for me because I know
their blessing have helped our people. But I guess we should follow the prophet
(MacDonald Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 149).
828
CARLO SEVERI
mother is a tree.
baby is a fruit.
body of the mother is bleeding.
tree is bleeding.
fruit of the tree is bleeding.
fruit is a ritual bead.
bead is bleeding.
By the progressive extension of this means of transferring analogical connotations to other objects and other beings, an entire transformation of the
world, formulated in ritual terms, is symbolically achieved in this Kuna
shamanistic tradition. Here, as elsewhere, the linguistic instrument of these
metamorphoses is parallelism. This technique of threading verbal images
together (Townsley 1993: 457) is an all-pervasive feature of Amerindian
shamanism, and Kuna shamans are particularly adept in its deployment. It must
be stressed, however, that parallelism is not only a linguistic technique. When
ritually applied to the description of the experience of an ill person, it
becomes a way to construct a supernatural dimension which is thought of as
a possible world, possessing an existence parallel to that of the ordinary world.
In this context, for the shamanistic chant to refer to a bleeding fruit is to
CARLO SEVERI
829
refer to the real experience of the woman giving birth to a child, and, simultaneously, to a mythical Tree-Mother bearing fruits.
In my earlier work (Severi 2002), I sought to show that the same instrument, parallelism, can also be used in a reflexive way to define not only the
world described by the ritual language, but also the identity of the person
enunciating it. It is in this way that Amerindian shamans establish the special
context which characterizes ritual communication.
Let us return to our example of shamanistic chant, the Kuna Mu Igala. Like
many other chants of the Kuna healing tradition, this begins with a sort of
introductory section which contains an extensive and painstaking evocation
of the ritual gestures and procedures necessary for enunciating the chant. In
this introduction we see how the shaman moves around the hut, asks his wife
to prepare a meal of boiled plantains, goes and washes in the river, returns to
the hut, sits next to the ceremonial brazier, starts in total silence to burn cocoa
beans in the brazier, gathers the statuettes that will assist him in the rite, sits
down again, and begins to sing. In the Mu Igala, this preliminary part takes
up a considerable share of the transcription of the chant (Holmr & Wassn
1953) and periodically alternates with an account, of a type that will be comparatively familiar to anyone studying shamanism, of the ups and downs of
the soul snatched away by the spirits, whose absence has triggered the illness.
In order to understand the paradox implied by a description of this type, we
must remember that what the shaman is describing in this passage (the dialogue with the midwife, the encounter with his wife, the recognition of the
illness, the meeting with the sick woman, the preparation fundamental for
the rite of the brazier) is always something that has already occurred by the
time he starts chanting. In other words, if we go from a simple reading of the
text to a description of the conditions of the rite, what we see is that on each
occasion the chanter refers to himself in the third person. The result is a kind
of regressus ad infinitum: a shaman, sitting next to his brazier, at the foot of the
hammock where the woman about to go into childbirth is lying, is talking
about a shaman who is sitting next to his brazier, at the foot of the hammock
where the woman about to go into childbirth is lying, talking about a shaman
and so on. Before starting to sing the chant, the chanter describes himself.
For a long time I saw this as a relatively simple mnemonic device: as an
example of a special genre of the Kuna ritual ways of speaking (Sherzer
1983), the Mu Igala possesses its own conditions of enunciation. It seems
natural that tradition would need to preserve not only the text, but also its
instructions for use. And the more natural way to do so is, understandably
enough, to verbalize them, and just store them in the chant, before it starts
(Severi 1993b). However, I have now come to see that this interpretation only
accounts for a superficial aspect of the shamanistic ritual enunciation.We have
already seen that the move consisting in describing someone speaking about
someone preparing to speak has a first consequence: it short-cuts time. If we
keep in mind that, with a few trivial exceptions, only the present tense is used
in this part of the chant, this becomes very clear. We have seen that the enunciator says he is approaching the ritual seat, the hammock, the door, and so
on, when he has already performed such things, and is seated, as is required,
toward the East, and facing the sea. The immediate consequence is that what
is formulated in the present tense refers here to the past.This has many effects,
830
CARLO SEVERI
CARLO SEVERI
831
to define the ritual identity of the speaker. Finally, let me underline that this
definition is a parallelistic one: the enunciator becomes defined in the same
terms as the supernatural beings are defined in the chants, that is, as being
composed of canonical pairs (Fox 1988) of opposed connotations.
This kind of formal analysis of the construction of the ritual enunciator,
discussed thus far in relation to the Kuna example, may also prove useful in
explaining important aspects of the Apache shamanistic tradition. For the
Apache medicine man too, to sing a chant is a crucial way to display the
power of an animal spirit through a special use of language. As Keith Basso
has observed, the
power of a spirit, in a sense, is its song. Chants are said to belong to a power; they are
also described as being part of it. In fact, the relationship between the two is so close
that the term diyi may be used either in reference to a power itself, or to its associated
chants This is especially true of medicine men, whose effectiveness in ceremonials rests
squarely on their ability to sing (1970: 42).
Let us now pass to the impersonators of the gan spirits. Among the Apache,
it is a duty of the masked dancer to respect his ritual role. He must totally
identify with the gan he represents. No one may address or call the name of
the impersonator whom he recognizes (Opler 1941: 112). Women were not
832
CARLO SEVERI
supposed to know that the impersonators of gans in the gan dances were mere
men (Goodwin 1969 [1938]: 535). The dancer must be a good receptacle for
an image, which is utterly independent of his personal identity. If we take
now the splendid description that Opler has given of a gan dance performed
in the context of the female initiation ritual, we see that the entire ritual
action is here founded on a connection between the movement of the dancers
and the chant sung by the shaman who accompanies their movements. The
shamans song dictates the rhythm itself of the dance:
The songs [sung during the therapeutic ritual] are classified in three groups, each related
to one of three types of dance: the free step, the short step and the high step. The
dancers, and especially their leader, must be able to recognize a song at once, and enter
upon the proper step (Opler 1941: 114).
But the relationship between singer and dancer goes beyond this. In this
context, the dancer is the image of the spirit, and the singing shaman is the
voice of the dancer. Through the ritual action, identification is realized
between the dancer and the spirit, and then between the singer and the
dancer. When the shaman chants, for instance (Opler 1941: 108):
In the middle of the Holy Mountain,
In the middle of its body, stands a hut,
Brush-built for the Black Mountain Spirit.
White lightning flashes in these moccasins,
White lightning streaks in angular path,
I am the lightning flashing and streaking.
CARLO SEVERI
833
a complex identity is established both through the voice of the singer and the
image of the dancer. A statement like I am the lightning flashing and streaking supposes, in this context, a chain of identifications of the type presented
in the following sequence:
I
I
I
I
I
am
am
am
am
am
the
the
the
the
the
lightning.
gan.
snake.
man possessing the snake power.
shaman.
Here too, the definition of the shaman is generated by what we have called
a reflexive application of parallelism. An analysis of the process of ritual enunciation shows that the Apache and the Kuna shamanistic recitations are comparable. Among the Kuna, the complex identity of the enunciator is generated
by a cumulative inclusion that is expressed only through words. In the Apache
case, the complex identity of the ritual enunciator is constructed through the
reference to the complex image of the gan dancer, which simultaneously refers
to a sequence of related supernatural beings.
The Silas cult: the Four Crosses and the Holy Ground
Let us now come back to Silas John, and look closer at the new cult that he
established: that of the Holy Ground prayer. We know that the doctrine
preached by Silas John was very similar to Christianity. The memoirs published by a number of his followers provide valuable insights into the nature
of this new prayer. First of all, a particular space, called the Four Crosses
Holy Ground, was to be marked. Within it, the four cardinal points were
to be precisely fixed: The church consisted of a rectangle about six feet by
four feet. Its sides faced the four sacred directions: the long sides were north
and south, the short sides, east and west. A five-foot Cross stood at each corner
(MacDonald Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 150 [my emphasis]). There is an
obvious analogy here between these crosses covered with black, white, yellow
and blue symbols (1992: 150), and the special hoops painted with the corresponding colours mentioned by Opler (1941: 107) in his description of the
gan dances. But there is more: according to the followers of Silas Johns cult,
the cross itself acted like gans: they talked to them in dreams (MacDonald
Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 150).
Once the orientated space was established, the prayer was to be enunciated during the performance of a dance. Silas John himself was always the first
to perform the ritual.The believer was to follow exactly what John did, slowly
crossing the Holy Ground.Very precise instructions were given regarding the
gestures to be performed while saying the prayer, the steps to be stamped on
the floor while chanting, the part of the space to be reached, and finally the
sequence of the cardinal points to be touched (or honoured) during the
recitation. Four Crosses marked these points, following the instructions of
Silas. The description of the slow dance performed during the recitation of
the prayer and the blessing made with pollen on the Four Crosses Holy
Ground at the Mescalero reservation relates a sequence of prescribed gestures,
834
CARLO SEVERI
where the traditional gestures of the Apache tradition are systematically connected with Christian liturgy: When the leader of the service approached the
Holy Ground, he removed his hat, placing it to the east side of the plot. Then
he walked to the west side of the rectangle and knelt, facing east (MacDonald
Boyer & Duffy Gayton 1992: 150 [my emphasis]), just like the gan dancer
described by Opler (1941). After this, Silas performed a sort of synthesis
between the sign of the cross and the traditional manipulation of the pollen.
According to MacDonald Boyer and Duffy Gayton, he
took a pinch of pollen in his right hand, holding it to the east while his left hand,
palm in, lay across his breast. He touched his right shoulder, the top of his head and his
breast with the yellow powder, finishing by making two clockwise circles over his head
(1992: 151).
Then he blessed each Cross with pollen (1992: 151). This sequence of gestures was so important in the ritual that every attendant to the service had
to repeat, in the same order and with the same gestures, the example of the
Prophet. Like the leader, he or she had to start from the east, turn in the same
manner, take a pinch of pollen, kneel to the Cross, turn clockwise etc. (1992:
151).
Many commentators (e.g. Goodwin & Kaut 1954; Kessel 1976) have attributed the scandal raised by the dances that Silas performed to the use that he
made of live snakes. That was also, for them, the main means used by Silas to
capture the imagination of his followers, and thereby gain authority over
them. However, it is easy to show that this was by no means a novelty in
Apache tradition: all his predecessors were medicine men specially trained in
the powers and songs related to the snakes. The father of Silas had himself
been a specialist, and he had taught his son how to capture and use the rattlesnakes. Regan (1930) among many others has mentioned the traditional
use of snakes in Apache shamanistic practices. Appearances not withstanding,
the real explanation for the success attributed to Silas and his rituals is to be
found elsewhere. A comparison of the ritual recitation and dance taught by
the Prophet with traditional Apache rituals shows that while reciting the glory
of the new Christ, the faithful follower of Silas Johns cult was actually simultaneously performing something very similar to a gan dance precisely the
dance that Silas had prohibited. When the believer, imitating the behaviour of
the Prophet, utters his prayer, he is behaving like a good Christian. But when
he uses the Apache sacred pollen, kneels to a painted cross representing the
East, or turns clockwise to step outside the church, he performs the same
gestures made by a gan impersonator before his dance.
We have seen that the traditional dance involved a progressive identification of the shaman singer with his animal spirit: the gan. Then the singer, as
gan, was identified with the dancer. During the recitation of the Four Crosses
prayer, a similar process occurs: the participant who prays like a Christian
becomes identified, by his dancing, with Silas John, the Prophet, and then
with the Apache Spirit of the Mountain, the gan.What the performer is doing
while performing the dance contradicts what he or she says while reciting
the prayer. In the space of the Holy Ground, the person praying becomes
simultaneously a person who dances to the gans.
CARLO SEVERI
835
The analysis of the ritual action, based on the identification of the pragmatic context of the enunciation of Silas Johns prayer, shows that the transformation that gives birth to the messianistic religion here lies in an imagistic
(iconical) use of a doctrinal (discursive) mode. The ritual actions taught by
Silas contradict his teachings. The new religion is, in fact the old one: the
prayer is also the dance he has prohibited. However, if we use Whitehouses
distinction between the two modes, the imagistic mode for the action and
the images, and the doctrinal mode for the prayers, we see that the Holy
Ground prayer is neither absurd nor contradictory. Rather, if we use the distinction in an intensional way, to understand its contradictory aspects, it
appears as a way to generate complexity through paradox. In fact, the most
important consequence of the simultaneous use of these two different modes
of communication (imagistic for the sequence of actions, doctrinal for the
text) is the construction of a particular kind of ritual identity. Silas John speaks
as a Christian and acts as a traditional shaman: once placed in the ritual
context, he is both the one and the other.
We can conclude, then, that the analysis of the counterintuitive conditions
of communication taught by Silas John to his followers to establish his new
prayer shows that the solution of the problem posed by the apparently absurd
statement I am Jesus because I am a shaman is to be looked for not in the
contradiction between the two opposed predicates, but in the complexity, ritually realized, of the enunciating subject.
This conclusion has a general consequence regarding religious syncretism
and cultural contact. Contrary to appearances, the ritual definition of Silas
John as Jesus, the Apache Shaman founder of the Four Crosses Holy Ground
is not the result of a cultural exchange of beliefs; it is just a further application of the parallelistic logic that we have seen in the example of the Kuna
chanter. Indeed, the fact of acquiring a complex identity, constructed by the
accumulation of contradictory connotations, is a typical feature of Amerindian
shamanism not of Christianity. The consequence is that, in his claim
that To become Jesus, not Yesun was a way to oppose, and not to assimilate,
Christianity, Silas John was right. The I who says to his people call me Jesus
is not a product of the mixture of two religious traditions. This I should
instead be seen as a paradoxical, but still parallelistic, enunciator, made, like the
Kuna chanter, of canonical pairs of connotations. The analysis of the pragmatic conditions of the ritual propagation of Silas Johns messianistic message,
effectively supported in this case by the distinction between doctrinal and
imagistic modes of religiosity, shows that there is no syncretism operating here.
Since Christ had become a term of the series of parallelistic pairs that characterize shamans, to call Silas John, among other things, Jesus was not a way
to repudiate the shamanistic tradition, but a new way to be faithful to it.
Let us now try to explain, on this new basis, the intense propagation that
characterizes the messianistic message. Following the Sperber-Boyer approach,
both traditional shamanism and missionary Christianity had equal chances to
prevail in this context: they both contained a significant number of counterintuitive representations. What we see in the history of the Silas John cult,
however, is that the pre-existing religion was seriously weakened by the spread
of the new one. It is the messianistic religion which has prevailed. However,
this success is not due to the invention of new religious representations. From
836
CARLO SEVERI
the point of view of the semantic content, the religious message of Silas John
and his followers conveys nothing that is really new. What is new, as we have
seen, is the particular way in which the pragmatic context of the message is
built. The new prayer taught by Silas John establishes a logical link between
two contradictory definitions of the Prophet. Silas is a powerful Apache
shaman because he shows himself to be an incarnation of Christ, and vice
versa. In this sense, the ritual action introduces paradox in the way the new
religious message is conveyed.The simultaneous use of the two modes of religiosity, imagistic (dance) and discursive (prayer, or chant), constitutes an
effective means to construct a counterintuitive pragmatic context within
which religious representations can be propagated. Messianistic religion prevails because of the paradoxical relationship that it establishes between the two
existing religions. It is not an entirely new counterintuitive representation that
accounts for the propagation of the new religion, but the unexpected relationship generated by Silas Johns message between contradictory religious
messages. The Christian cross exhibiting the Apache snake illustrates this
process in a single, intense image. The conflict between two different cultures
is here successfully interpreted by paradox, since, in the messianistic perspective, both represent God. We can conclude that paradoxical contexts of communication, as well as counterintuitive representations, make for successful
cultural propagation.
NOTES
A previous version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Modes of Religiosity organized by James Laidlaw and Harvey Whitehouse at Kings College, Cambridge, in
December 2001. I wish to thank all the participants for their comments as well as two anonymous JRAI readers; their suggestions were very helpful in clarifying the argument.
1
According to Harvey Whitehouse, religious traditions can establish themselves following two
modes, the doctrinal and the imagistic. Religions based on the doctrinal mode possess a discursive form and a stable body of knowledge. For its transmission, this mode needs frequent
repetition of rituals and relies, from a cognitive point of view, on semantic memory. A typical
example of a doctrinal mode of religiosity is to be found in modern Protestantism. The imagistic mode does not refer to an established body of knowledge. It is, rather, focused on intense
personal experiences, like ecstatic visions, or initiation rituals. These experiences are transmitted as flashbulb memories and subsequently generate spontaneous exegesis. Whitehouse (1992;
2000) has argued that these two modes have a deep influence on the social structure and internal dynamics of religious movements. The doctrinal mode generally implies a stable hierarchy,
the imagistic mode usually generates unstable, tendentially egalitarian social groups.
REFERENCES
Basso, K. 1970. The Cibecue Apache. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.
& N. Anderson 1975. A Western Apache writing system: the symbols of Silas John. In
Linguistics and anthropology in honor of C.F.Voegelin (eds) M.D. Kinkade, K.L. Hale & O.Werner,
27-52. Lisse: Peter de Ridder.
Bourke, E. 1993 [1892]. The medicine men of the Apache. Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau
of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888: 443-603.
Boyer, P. 1994. The naturalness of religious ideas: a cognitive theory of religion. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
CARLO SEVERI
837
838
CARLO SEVERI
Veber, H. 2003. Ashaninka messianism: the production of a black hole in Western Amazonian
ethnography. Current Anthropology 44, 183-211.
Whitehouse, H. 1992. Memorable religions: transmission, codification and change in divergent
Melanesian context. Man (N.S.) 27, 777-97.
2000. Arguments and icons: divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: University Press.
Worsley, P. 1968. The trumpet shall sound: a study of cargo cults in Melanesia. New York: Schocken
Books.