Voices from the Gods

Speaking with Tongues

David Christie-Murray

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367074173
• eBook ISBN: 9780429665363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Glossolalia (paranormal speaking in tongues) and zenolalia (paranormal speaking in allegedly foreign languages) are features of many sub-cultures and religions. The most obvious example is Pentecostalism, where every believer in many denominations is expected to speak in tongues at least once – the gift in other cultures being limited to individuals, shamans and mediums. This book, first published in 1978, surveys the practice of 'speaking in tongues' in anthropology, Christianity and spiritualism, and provides an analysis of the psychological, theological and linguistic considerations of the phenomenon.

1

Tongues in Non-Christian Cultures

Glossolalia in the Bible is a specifically Christian phenomenon and mentioned only in the New Testament. It is true that there was substantially no fundamental difference between the Hebrew doctrine of possession by spirits, especially the Spirit of God, and the Christian; any supernormal ability or faculty among his followers came to be attributed to the Spirit of Jahweh, and the activity of false spirits in deceiving and misleading men was equally recognized. It is also true that some Biblical scholars see glossolalia under every Old Testament prophet’s tongue; but all passages thought to refer possibly to tongues may be interpreted, usually with more justification, in other ways. Isaiah’s ‘ghosts and familiar spirits who squeak and gibber’ (Isaiah 8:19) may simply have been producing artistic preliminaries to intelligible utterances. The same prophet’s words, ‘So it will be with barbarous speech and strange tongue that this people will hear God speaking’ (28:11), though quoted by St Paul in I Corinthians 14:21 in his discourse about tongues, in context plainly means, ‘If God’s people will not learn from his prophet, then they will have to learn from foreign invaders talking a strange language.’ There is a continuity of thought between the Old Testament and the New. The earliest Christians were, after all, Jews, at first perfectly orthodox in every way except that they were convinced that Jesus, rejected by their Establishment, was the Messiah. There were charismata in both Testaments - ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost … who spake by the prophets’ is no mere Christian hindsight. But there is also an awareness of something entirely new. The gifts of the Spirit in Jerusalem at the first Whitsun and as manifested by the church at Corinth were unlike anything to be found in the old dispensation.

Greek culture probably had more influence on the Christian churches of Asia Minor than Hebrew. ‘The Greek belief in mantic ecstasy and the Greek affection for the mysterious and eloquent explain the predominance of [tongues] in the [Corinthian] community.’¹ A language of ghosts is said to have been spoken in an old Corinthian religion. In the cult of Thracian Dionysus the god-possessed devotee spoke glottys Baccheia,² with the tongue (personality or language?) of Bacchus. The Homeric ‘Hymn to Apollo’, lines 162-4, suggests that ‘the Delian singers reproduced the speech and the musical accompaniment of the various pilgrims: but there is no other reference to this curious mimicry of (apparently) different dialects’,³ a passage which will be seen to be relevant to the disciples’ experience at the first Whitsun. Sophocles in his Ajax writes:

Then two white-footed rams he found:

Of one, beheaded first, the tongue

He snipped, then far the carcase flung.

The other, to a pillar lashed

Erect, with double rein, he threshed,

And as he plied the whistling thong

He uttered imprecations strong

Dread words a god, no man, had taught.⁴

Herodotus (c.480-425 BC) gives the one allegedly historical account of xenolalia in classical times when he describes how the diviner in the temple of Ptoan Apollo talked Carian to Mys of Europa who had come to consult him.⁵ But Herodotus is not trustworthy in recounting events he did not personally witness, and the incident could have been stage-managed.

There are many references in classical literature to spirit-or god-inspired ecstasy - but few, if any, that mention tongues. Clement of Alexandria is quoted as saying, ‘Plato attributes a peculiar dialect to the gods, inferring this from dreams and oracles, and especially from demoniacs who do not speak their own language or dialect, but that of the daemons who are entered into them’,⁶ but Clement may have read more into the philosopher’s words than he intended.

Yet what Plato calls ‘theomania’ was to be widely found in the Greek world and it would have been strange if Greek converts to Christianity had not brought it with them. And there are strains in the Stoic concept of a divine world-spirit manifesting itself through human personalities which are not far from Pauline thought.

Quintilian (AD 40-c. 100) in post-Christian times mentions the ‘more unusual voices of the more secret language which the Greeks call “glossai”’,⁷ while Dio Chrysostom (AD c.40-120) in his ‘Tenth Discourse on Servants’ speaks of the language of the gods and hints at sham glossolalia in referring to ‘persons who know two or three Persian, Median or Assyrian words and thus fool the ignorant’.⁸ Lucian (AD c. 120-90) mentions an Alexander of Abonutichius who utters ‘unintelligible vocables which sound like Hebrew or Phoenician’.⁹

Besides the writings ascribed to individuals there are formulae and unintelligible lists of names and letters used in magical papyri for the invoking of gods and spirits and thought by some to derive from glossolalia. In these there are echoes of oriental languages mingled with gibberish, thought to have originated in allegedly supra-terrestrial tongues used by gods and spirits, each class being allocated its peculiar language or dialect. The ecstasies of oriental cults, common in the Roman Empire, are described by Lucretius, Catullus and Apuleius, and that associated with Hermes is known to have practised glossolalia. That something akin to tongues was known among pagans in the second century is shown in the reports of the Christian writer, Irenaeus,¹⁰ about the Gnostic magician Marcus and his prophetesses, who indulged in unintelligible ecstatic speeches.

It is possible that one factor which later caused Christian leaders to look with disfavour on charismatic expression was the similarity of its ecstasies to those of contemporary heathen cults. Another is that in the general evolutionary pattern of religions certain stages and phenomena are usual and that advanced religions develop beyond these. There are, however, few advanced religions in the world and a great many primitive ones. To the ordinary Bible reader to whom the story of Pentecost appears as an experience never before undergone by any mortal, it comes as a shock to discover that glossolalia is a commonplace in human cultures from Asia to America and Siberia to Africa. The reasons for this are that animism is an early stage in the evolution of religions; that primitive peoples imbued with animistic beliefs commonly accept that human beings may be possessed by spirits and speak their languages when under possession; and that a very large number of religions, because of a lack of writing essential for progress, have not advanced beyond the animistic stage and may have remained in it for centuries.

Scientific anthropology is little more than a century old. Early reports of savage cultures came from men untrained and often incompetent to judge accurately. ‘Command performances’ may have drawn from natives what they thought was expected of them rather than their normal practices. Yet even with these caveats there is sufficient evidence from the past supported by scientific observation in recent times to sustain the surmise that glossolia may have existed throughout the world for hundreds of years.

For the most part, references in anthropological literature to the ecstatic vocalization arising from shamanistic ceremonies are brief, vague and mentioned in passing without definition. But L. Carlyle May has collected and collated reports from a number of authorities and classified the types of primitive glossolalia.¹¹ There are four: (I) languages of spirits; (2) sacerdotal languages; (3) languages of animals; (4) xenolalia. There are also phonations frustes (inarticulate sounds which sometimes precede glossolalia and are, as it were, its raw material) and ermeneglossia (interpretation of tongues). Under (I) he lists the speaking of languages of supernatural beings which occurs frequently in divinatory and cursing ceremonies while the speakers are entranced or religiously exalted. The Hudson Bay Eskimos spoke to the spirits in their own language amid sounds of trickling water, rushing wind, snuffling of walrus and growling of bear. There are spirit tongues among the shamanistic complexes of the Chukchee; the north-west and south-east Koryak (Asiatic Eskimos); the Lapps, Yakuts and Tungus; and the Samoyeds. Among the peoples of Siberia, ‘he who is to become a shaman begins to rage like a raving madman. He suddenly utters incoherent words, falls unconscious’, etc. Many spirit language words of the Asiatic Eskimos are analogous to the spirit languages of the Eskimos in the Alaska and Atlantic areas. A Tungus shaman is supposed to learn the entire language of nature in his trance. In the Ainu religion, the self-hypnotized shaman becomes the mouthpiece of gods who speak through him. He neither knows nor remembers what he says. The Hala (shaman) of the Semang pigmies speak to celestial spirits in their language and, among the Papar, Putatam and Tuaran groups of North Borneo cult, priestesses offer incantations to a gusi (sacred jar) in a language known only to the spirits and themselves. In the Mortlock Islands of Micronesia, spirits act upon the priest, causing him to twitch, nod and speak in a language very different from his ordinary speech. In the Solomon Islands, the medium talks with the voice of a ghost. Trhi-speaking priests of the Gold Coast (Ghana) mutter words or sentences in croaking, guttural voices, both vocabulary and voices being those of gods.

To May’s collection may be added examples of god, spirit or demon tongues culled from other authorities. Davenport writes that in primitive China, when a supposed spirit entered a man, his ‘eyes close tightly, his whole body trembles, his hands and feet continually move, his hair loosens from the braid - then he begins to speak, and is able to talk not only in his own dialect, but in others as well.’¹² This spirit-inspired human language is almost comparable with the Christian gift of ‘prophecy’ mentioned in Corinthians. Oesterreich mentions the possession of a young man under the auspices of the priesthood of the Wu, in his day ‘still … the repository of possession’.

[He] begins to moan; some incoherent talk follows, mingled with cries; but all this is oracular language which reveals unknown things…. An association of men … is now quickly formed…. Henceforth they are frequently seen in this temple to conjure the spirit into him and interpret the strange sounds he utters; and in the end it is they alone who, by dint of experience and exercise, can understand those inspired sounds and translate them into human language…. The symptoms of the descent of the spirit into the medium shortly appear…. This is the proper moment for the consultant or the interpreter to put his questions. Incoherent shrill sounds are the answer; but the interpreter translates this divine language with the greatest fluency into the intelligible human tongue, while another brother writes these revelations down on paper.¹³

Van der Goltz records that members of the religious sect of the Shang-ti-hui in a state of ecstasy utter exhortations, reproaches and predictions in often unintelligible but generally rhythmical phrases. He also mentions ‘spirit-hopping’, when someone is ill. An old witch is summoned who, doing a hopping dance on one leg, ‘mutters without intermission unintelligible words which seem to be now song and now rhythm. The words are not consecutive, but are subject to a certain rhythm.’¹⁴

A collection of essays, Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa,¹⁵ contains several allusions to spirit language. In Kalahari religion an Oru’ (spirit) manifests its presence not by frenetic behaviour but by the speaking of an alien tongue. Samples of the ‘fairly standard water-people’s language’ spoken by such spirits suggest that many words are formed by substitution of syllables in ordinary Kalahari words, lengthened forms from the drum-language, or a stuttering form of ordinary Kalahari. Some spirits speak in the tongues of neighbouring tribes, professedly not understood by those possessed, and require an interpreter.

Tonga mediums claim a knowledge of all languages, and spirit-possessed ‘foreign dancers speak in the language of their spirit’s homeland’.

The Zulu Amandiki and Amandawu cults possess their own languages, usually a distorted form of Zulu. Amandawe doctors cure their patients by inducing one of their ancestral spirits to enter an initiate; following days of exhausting dancing, the spirit expresses itself in a so-called foreign tongue, Indian or Thongan. The languages may be only a series of meaningless sounds. Sometimes as many as seven ancestral spirits can enter the possessed person, speaking different languages, and modern tongues such as ‘English’ tend to supplant the more traditional. Another Zulu treatment of some psychological illnesses is the smoking of a certain mixture which induces possession and results in the patient’s speaking in a ‘foreign’ language appropriate to the medicine administered.

Like the Zulus, the Segeju of Tanzania use dancing (which lasts for a week) in the Shetani cult for the healing of spirit-possessed women. One of the symptoms of possession is speaking in tongues. During the dance the medicine man Omganga) and drummers sometimes chant ‘in an esoteric tongue not understood by ordinary people’. The climax comes when the shetani is to reveal its name. The patient is enclosed in a ‘tent’ of cloths held round her by women dancers, from which comes the squeaky voice of the shetani. The mganga feeds a mixture of sacrificial goat’s blood and honey to the women, several of whom behave wildly and speak with tongues.

When Bunzoro doctor diviners persuade a ‘destructible’ ghost to leave its victim, it often uses the patient as a medium, protesting energetically in a falsetto voice and in a special ‘ghost’ vocabulary; and Bunzoro mediums have to acquire an unfamiliar vocabulary said to be used by ghosts and spirits.

Among the Alur, Jok Riba, a nature deity, speaks dhuthugi- ‘the language of their own country’, that is, that of Jok- which sounds like meaningless groans.

Alur séances are lacking in formal elaboration and especially in the ritually induced terror which is used to ensure secrecy in the nyoro and sumbwa rites. All employ garbled speech but in alur again, it is not formalized into a secret ‘language’ as in the other two areas.

In the practice of Sukuma, a magician, curing a patient,

hiccoughs a little and mutters to himself in a rising crescendo, often accompanied by piercing whistling resembling the Masai cattle-calls. The muttering then becomes clearer and resolves itself into a jumble of words and sounds uttered in falsetto voice…. Informants state that the language of this delirium is kinaturu, which is regarded as the tongue of the ancestors of all magicians, since they are all thought to have descended from the Naturu tribe. This, however, is unlikely, as the sounds seem to be merely a repetitious jumble of monosyllables, used because of their phonetic simplicity rather than because they might make connected phrases, and indeed no one was able to interpret any of the words or phrases used. The connection with Naturu, a small hunting tribe to the south-east, seems to be mythical; there is certainly no present connection between mediums and this tribe.

There does not seem to be a distinct vocabulary as with the Buchwezi cult in Usukuma, possibly because mediumship no longer involves any group activities or initiation in which such a vocabulary could have been learnt and passed on.

In Ankole glossolalia entered through western Pentecostalist missions. ‘An independent group, known as Lisanga, is remembered as “making horrible noises to show their closeness to God’ V ‘In Nkore there is a secret language used only within the society; and [African] Israel [a title used to mean ‘set apart as the people of God’] uses theological terminology which makes no sense outside the context of Christian Spirit-possession.’ Every king of Uganda had a mandwa (medium) to represent him after his death. Once, when Canon Roscoe was hearing the history ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Tongues in Non-Christian Cultures
• 2 The First Whitsun
• 3 From Jerusalem to Corinth
• 4 Tongues before the Reformation
• 5 From the Reformation to 1800
• 6 The Nineteenth Century
• 7 Nineteenth-century Spiritualism
• 8 The Twentieth Century: Christian Tongues
• 9 Tongues in Twentieth-century Spiritualism
• 10 The Charismatic Movement
• 11 Psychological and Medical Glossolalia
• 12 Debate and Discussion: Christian Tongues I
• 13 Debate and Discussion: Christian Tongues II
• 14 Debate and Discussion: The Psychology and Effects of Tongues
• 15 Debate and Discussion: Spiritualist Tongues
• 16 Summary and Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Cases with Unusual Features
• Appendix 2 Development of a Tradition
• Appendix 3 A Television Experience
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index