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ABSTRACT: In recent years, much has been spoken and written about Joseph Smith and shamanism. But many people would be surprised to learn of the shamanic elements in the life of Emma Smith. While much has been published about male shamanic traditions, this session will explore the lesser-known forms and traditions of female shamanism and the evidence for their existence in the life and work of Emma Smith. It will also look at parallels between Mormonism and other shamanic religious and cultural traditions, ancient and contemporary.
Emma Smith as Shaman
Elizabeth Quick
M.A. Thesis, Sofia University, Palo Alto, CA
A previous version of this paper was delivered at the Sunstone Theological Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah
August 8, 2008
word count: 7292
ABSTRACT: In recent years, much has been spoken and written about Joseph Smith and shamanism. But many people would be surprised to learn of the shamanic elements in the life of Emma Smith. While much has been published about male shamanic traditions, this session will explore the lesser-known forms and traditions of female shamanism and the evidence for their existence in the life and work of Emma Smith. It will also look at parallels between Mormonism and other shamanic religious and cultural traditions, ancient and contemporary.
EMMA SMITH AS SHAMAN
In recent years, much has been spoken and written about Joseph Smith and shamanism. But many people would be surprised to learn of the shamanic elements in the life of his wife Emma Smith. I believe looking at these shamanic elements establishes her as the co-founder of Mormonism, the tradition’s most well-known and largest surviving branch being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Latter-day Saints or L.D.S.). But that is not the topic of this article. While much has been published about male shamanic traditions, this paper will explore the lesser-known forms and traditions of female shamanism and the evidence for their existence in the life and work of Emma Smith. I will do this exploration in part by looking at parallels between Mormonism and other shamanic religious and cultural traditions, ancient and contemporary.
These shamanic parallels with other cultures include a quest for gnosis, or spiritual knowledge; an animistic world-view; the practice of sealing family lineages together; and the belief in a Heavenly Mother. I will examine how shamanism is often spiritually transmitted to a couple to be practiced jointly by a couple. I will argue that this is the case with Joseph and Emma. Then I will look at further shamanic practices in Emma’s life such as the laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, her involvement with music, midwifery and herbalism.
Emma Hale Smith within Mormon History
Emma Hale, “was born July 10, 1804, in the Susquehanna Valley in harmony township (now Oakland), Pennsylvania, to Isaac and Elizabeth Lewis Hale, the first permanent settlers in the valley.”[1] She met Joseph Smith when Joseph and his father went to Pennsylvania to work for a man acquainted with the Hale family, named Josiah Stowell. When Emma was 22 she married Joseph, on January 18, 1827, in South Bainbridge, New York. Since she did not have her father’s permission they eloped to Manchester, New York to make their home with Joseph’s parents.
Emma was with Joseph when he first obtained, “the golden plates” which later became known as The Book of Mormon. She was never allowed to see the plates but through a protective cover she handled them on numerous occasions and even hid them from violent mobs seeking to take them from the Smiths. When it came time to translate the book the Smiths sought refuge in Pennsylvania. Joseph became an occasional farmer and Emma became the first scribe to ever work on translation of the book.
In 1828 they gave birth to their first child, who died soon after. When the local residents became threatening regarding their translation of the controversial new religious book they moved to Fayette, New York and completed the translation in June of 1829. The book was first published March of 1830 in Palmyra, New York.
Emma was baptized into the Church of Christ[2] in Colesville, New York, on June 28, 1830, after the church was first organized in April. The next day Joseph was arrested for the first time, “for being a disorderly person and setting the country in an uproar by preaching the Book of Mormon,” a pattern that continued for the rest of his life. He was released without conviction.[3]
After the Smiths returned to Pennsylvania in July of 1830, Joseph received a revelation regarding Emma which came to be known as Doctrine and Covenants, section 25. This revelation called Emma an “‘Elect Lady’” which Joseph said meant that she was to be in a position to “‘preside.’” She was also called to act as a scribe to Joseph, “‘to expound scriptures and to exhort the church,’” and to “‘prepare a hymnal for the Church,’” which was published five years later. Emma received her long-awaited confirmation in August 1830, almost two months after her baptism.[4]
In August of 1830, the Smiths moved back to New York, and shortly after the New Year moved to the Mormon settlement of Kirtland, Ohio in 1831. In the spring Emma gave birth to twins who only lived a few hours. After the mother of another recently-born set of twins died, Emma adopted them, naming them Joseph and Julia.
The Smiths lived in Kirtland for 8 years. Soon after the original settlers became disgruntled after the Mormon community continued to grow, accusing the community of inflating land values. Shortages of goods became a problem for new residents. Hostilities culminated when Joseph was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night on March 24, 1832 and tarred and feathered by an angry mob. Five days later the Smiths’ adopted son Joseph died after he had been exposed to the elements outdoors that fateful night.
Because her husband was frequently gone on church business, Emma was forced to take in boarders in already cramped quarters in order to support her family; that continued for the rest of her life. Around this time the Mormon settlement in Missouri began to experience similar problems to those in Kirtland, Ohio. Emma helped gather supplies to send to the troubled Mormons there. During the same time she housed the temple builders of Kirtland, and shared everything she had with the new converts who continued to inundate the area.
Just before the Kirtland temple was built in 1836 she completed the charge she was given in the Doctrine and Covenants to create a hymnal for the church. And in1832 and 1836 she gave birth to two sons, Joseph III, and Frederick Granger Williams, respectively, both of whom lived to adulthood.
By 1838, the relationship between Mormon and non-Mormon residents of Kirtland, Ohio neighbors began to worsen and the Church was experiencing internal challenges as well. Emma, Joseph and other church members moved to Far West, Missouri to combine the Church into one location. There Emma gave birth to a son, Alexander Hale, on June 2, 1838. The citizens of Missouri continued to grow more threatened by the Mormons’ increasing political power. Violence erupted and an order was issued by the governor to expel or exterminate the Mormons. They headed east to Illinois, while Joseph stayed behind in a prison called Liberty Jail. In the winter of 1838-1839, Emma walked across the state of Missouri and the frozen Mississippi river carrying two of her babies, her other two children walking by her side, to Quincy, Illinois, carrying Joseph’s translation of the Bible hidden in her pockets. There she wrote to Joseph of her trials, “but vowed that she was ‘yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind heaven.’”[5]
The Mormons then went on to found the city of Nauvoo, Illinois where Joseph and Emma built a home, later known as the Mansion House, which doubled as an inn for travelers. Over the next five years, Emma had three more children, all boys. One died at birth and another died at eighteen months from a fever.
A female “Relief Society” was created and Emma was elected president. The organization started with twenty women and grew to 1100 by the end of the year. “Emma pressed for vigilance in watching over the morals of the community and diligence in succoring the poor.”
In 1843, Emma became the first female to receive the Temple Endowment, which would later be administered to all worthy church members when the temple was finished. Unfortunately, Joseph was killed before the temple was complete. Five months later on November 17, 1844, Emma’s last child, David Hyrum was born.
Both before and after the succession crises that followed Joseph’s death, Emma had major differences with Brigham Young and the other Mormons who left for the Rocky Mountains in 1846; she stayed behind in Nauvoo. On December 23, 1847, she married a non-Mormon named Lewis Bidamon who helped her raise her children; they stayed together for the rest of her life.
In 1860 her oldest son, Joseph Smith III, became the leader of a church organization formed by Mormons who had stayed in the Nauvoo area rather than going west. Until that point Emma had refused to join any of the Mormon splinter groups that formed but finally became a member of this new, “Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” This newly organized group rejected Brigham Young’s polygamy, “and Emma denied that her husband had participated in the practice.”
Emma, who had always been “devoted” to her mother-in-law, Lucy Mack Smith, took care of her until she died in 1856. Joseph's mother had always adored Emma as well. Lucy said, “‘I have never seen a woman in my life, who would endure every species of fatigue and hardship, from month to month, and from year to year,’ she wrote, ‘with that unflinching courage, zeal, and patience, which she has ever done.’”[6]
One of Emma’s biographers concludes:
Emma Smith Bidamon's final years in Nauvoo were family-focused and private. She shared the Nauvoo House, her final home, with relatives and friends and basked in the love and care of her children and grandchildren. She continued to live her life with genteel qualities, meeting adversity and difficulty with grace and equanimity. She was polite to the “Utah Mormons” who occasionally visited, but was firm in her decision to remain apart from them.[7]
Emma passed away in 1879.
History of Shamanism
In recent decades there has been an “extensive conceptual and analytical debate about [the definition and nature of] shamanism.”[8] Despite the fact that “there is no agreement among scholars as to the main features of shamanism among different peoples of the world,”[9] anthropologists have come to use the term ‘shaman’ to describe magico-religious practitioners in cultures worldwide.[10]
In its strictest sense, the word is “a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia;”[11] the word comes to us from the Evenki, a Tungusic language spoken in Siberia and Northern China, and means, “the one who knows.”[12]
A shaman is someone who walks between worlds with one foot in each. Religious historian, Mircea Eliade, calls shamanism in its most basic definition a “technique of ecstasy,”[13] or in other words an altered state of consciousness. Despite cultural differences, essentially a shaman is a “spiritual person with the ability to enter deep states of awareness,”[14] which enables the practitioner to act as an intermediary between the mundane world and other dimensions of consciousness in order to “access healing power.”[15]
Anthropologist and initiated shaman Barbara Tedlock says, “It is best to think of shamanic activities and perspectives rather than about ‘shamanism’ as an ideology or institution.”[16] Some of the shamanic characteristics and practices may include one or more of the following: exorcism;[17] mediumship; seership, and prophecy; divination; psychotherapy; poetry and music; healing[18] communion with ancestors or deities;[19] psychic abilities such as extrasensory perception and psychokinesis;[20] out of body experiences, ascent to the heavens, descent to the underworld, mastery of fire, and influencing the weather;[21] “control over breathing and other bodily functions,” and seemingly magical powers such as invisibility and levitation.[22] Shamans may be called by inspiration, while others are hereditary.[23] According to Tedlock, “Shamanism consists of both a healing practice and a religious sensibility.”[24]
A shaman may conduct or participate in rituals, ceremonies, or prayers, by dancing, drumming, chanting, singing, or storytelling[25]; the shaman may or may not hold a clerical role as priest or priestess, although the further back in time one looks, the more the two overlap.[26] One scholar notes that “most cultures have elements corresponding to both the shamanic and the clerical; each of these modes predominates in association with certain forms of social organization. Where a society is decentralized, the “shamanic” mode typically prevails. Where the dominant social form is a centralized, bureaucratic state, with power concentrated in the hands of trained elites tending to reside in population centers, the clerical mode tends to prevail.”[27]
Shamanism is sometimes equated with mental illness by some scholars, but not all scholars hold “negative views.”[28] It is important to note that new “investigations and the reevaluation of earlier data,” indicate “that most shamans emerge from among the healthiest members of the community.”[29]
Shamanistic beliefs and practices are found on every continent on the globe, including ancient and contemporary Judeo-Christian cultures and traditions.[30] Shamanism is the oldest spiritual tradition in the world, going back to Paleolithic times, and scientific evidence suggests that it was invented by women.[31]
Contrary to popular belief, the word shaman is unrelated to the English word “man.” Interestingly, University of California-Berkeley archaeologist, Jeannine Davis-Kimball states, “The Russian ethnographers, who were among the first to study the Siberian peoples, maintain that the first shamans were women.”[32] In fact, “the earliest known skeletal remains of a shaman belong to a woman. She lived over 20,000 years ago in what is now the Czech Republic, and was the first ceramic artist of record.[33] British scholar Geoffrey Ashe writes that, “originally shamans were women, the most ancient form of the word itself meaning ‘female shaman’...he says that ancient shamanism was not an individual phenomena but something that was practiced by the female group.”[34]
Many traditional cultures maintain that shamanism originated within early women’s culture, and there are scholars who agree that menstruation gives women special abilities as shamans.[35] If this is true, then why have female shamans come to be “ignored, denigrated, and even erased from the [historical] record”[36] over time? One reason is that “common assumptions about the roles of women,” combined with “the linguistics of translation,” “have obscured the history of female shamans.” Often “ethnographers have rendered the word for shaman differently, depending on the gender of the person described,” so rather than listing a woman as a shaman, she might be labeled as an herbalist or a midwife instead.[37]
Barbara Tedlock illustrates how the latest scientific technology is beginning to set the record straight:
In its strictest sense, the word is “a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia;”[11] the word comes to us from the Evenki, a Tungusic language spoken in Siberia and Northern China, and means, “the one who knows.”[12]
A shaman is someone who walks between worlds with one foot in each. Religious historian, Mircea Eliade, calls shamanism in its most basic definition a “technique of ecstasy,”[13] or in other words an altered state of consciousness. Despite cultural differences, essentially a shaman is a “spiritual person with the ability to enter deep states of awareness,”[14] which enables the practitioner to act as an intermediary between the mundane world and other dimensions of consciousness in order to “access healing power.”[15]
Anthropologist and initiated shaman Barbara Tedlock says, “It is best to think of shamanic activities and perspectives rather than about ‘shamanism’ as an ideology or institution.”[16] Some of the shamanic characteristics and practices may include one or more of the following: exorcism;[17] mediumship; seership, and prophecy; divination; psychotherapy; poetry and music; healing[18] communion with ancestors or deities;[19] psychic abilities such as extrasensory perception and psychokinesis;[20] out of body experiences, ascent to the heavens, descent to the underworld, mastery of fire, and influencing the weather;[21] “control over breathing and other bodily functions,” and seemingly magical powers such as invisibility and levitation.[22] Shamans may be called by inspiration, while others are hereditary.[23] According to Tedlock, “Shamanism consists of both a healing practice and a religious sensibility.”[24]
A shaman may conduct or participate in rituals, ceremonies, or prayers, by dancing, drumming, chanting, singing, or storytelling[25]; the shaman may or may not hold a clerical role as priest or priestess, although the further back in time one looks, the more the two overlap.[26] One scholar notes that “most cultures have elements corresponding to both the shamanic and the clerical; each of these modes predominates in association with certain forms of social organization. Where a society is decentralized, the “shamanic” mode typically prevails. Where the dominant social form is a centralized, bureaucratic state, with power concentrated in the hands of trained elites tending to reside in population centers, the clerical mode tends to prevail.”[27]
Shamanism is sometimes equated with mental illness by some scholars, but not all scholars hold “negative views.”[28] It is important to note that new “investigations and the reevaluation of earlier data,” indicate “that most shamans emerge from among the healthiest members of the community.”[29]
Shamanistic beliefs and practices are found on every continent on the globe, including ancient and contemporary Judeo-Christian cultures and traditions.[30] Shamanism is the oldest spiritual tradition in the world, going back to Paleolithic times, and scientific evidence suggests that it was invented by women.[31]
Contrary to popular belief, the word shaman is unrelated to the English word “man.” Interestingly, University of California-Berkeley archaeologist, Jeannine Davis-Kimball states, “The Russian ethnographers, who were among the first to study the Siberian peoples, maintain that the first shamans were women.”[32] In fact, “the earliest known skeletal remains of a shaman belong to a woman. She lived over 20,000 years ago in what is now the Czech Republic, and was the first ceramic artist of record.[33] British scholar Geoffrey Ashe writes that, “originally shamans were women, the most ancient form of the word itself meaning ‘female shaman’...he says that ancient shamanism was not an individual phenomena but something that was practiced by the female group.”[34]
Many traditional cultures maintain that shamanism originated within early women’s culture, and there are scholars who agree that menstruation gives women special abilities as shamans.[35] If this is true, then why have female shamans come to be “ignored, denigrated, and even erased from the [historical] record”[36] over time? One reason is that “common assumptions about the roles of women,” combined with “the linguistics of translation,” “have obscured the history of female shamans.” Often “ethnographers have rendered the word for shaman differently, depending on the gender of the person described,” so rather than listing a woman as a shaman, she might be labeled as an herbalist or a midwife instead.[37]
Barbara Tedlock illustrates how the latest scientific technology is beginning to set the record straight:
These discoveries of female skeletons buried together with shamanic artifacts continue to surprise many Western scholars as well as the general public because it has been assumed for so long that shamanism was primarily a masculine vocation. In the past most of the scientists sexing skeletal materials were male, and as a result evolutionary theories about the origins of human culture had a tendency to emphasize males. But thanks to the emergence of new technologies such as chemical analysis of the mitochondrial DNA that comes through the female line (mtDNA), and an increase in the number of women scientists, especially paleoanthropologists, progress in the proper sexing of bones has begun to occur. Today many of our new fossil heroes are turning out to be female.[38]
Western researchers and writers who popularized shamanism in the 20th century, often arbitrarily divided shamanic abilities by gender, popularizing the masculine traditions and sometimes denigrating the feminine ones. One such example is when psychoanalyst / anthropologist Geza Roheim labeled two Hungarian female shamans as “‘witches,’ who were just pretending to be healers.” Influenced by Roheim, religious historian Mircea Eliade, “limited shamanism to ‘soul flight’ – which he regarded as not only transcendent but also phallic. And he separated it from ‘possession’ which he considered immanent and assigned to women, whom he felt were not really shamans.”[39]
In her book, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine, Tedlock points out the serious limitations to Eliade’s primary work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, which was published in France in 1951 at the feminine-negating height of the psychoanalytic movement of the 1950’s. She notes that this standard reference was not even critiqued for 40 years, which is important because, as[40] Tedlock points out, most of our contemporary ideas about shamanism have come from Eliade. Unfortunately Eliade’s ideas about shamanism are based almost entirely on masculine but not the older feminine shamanic traditions and sadly, many scholars have ridden his coat-tails and followed suit - blindly parroting Eliade ever since.
In her book, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine, Tedlock points out the serious limitations to Eliade’s primary work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, which was published in France in 1951 at the feminine-negating height of the psychoanalytic movement of the 1950’s. She notes that this standard reference was not even critiqued for 40 years, which is important because, as[40] Tedlock points out, most of our contemporary ideas about shamanism have come from Eliade. Unfortunately Eliade’s ideas about shamanism are based almost entirely on masculine but not the older feminine shamanic traditions and sadly, many scholars have ridden his coat-tails and followed suit - blindly parroting Eliade ever since.
But the popular stereotype of Eliade’s masculine path of “dismemberment, evisceration, and symbolic death leading to rebirth - as necessary to shamanic initiation,” has endured for over half a century.[41] This stereotypical dichotomy, between male and female shamanism however, is false. There are cultures where “out of body soul flight is considered a feminine action, while possession is considered masculine.”[42] The actual sex or gender of the person practicing female shamanic paths is not a prerequisite. Women and men practicing so-called feminine paths are said to be “born into” the calling.[43] Byambadorj Dondog is a highly respected man practicing “in the female line” of traditional Mongolian shamanism[44] which includes a midwifery practice. He says, “If it wasn’t for my midwifery, I wouldn’t have the power to do what I do,” acknowledging the female roots of shamanism. There are also women who practice traditionally male forms of shamanism,[45] but Tedlock emphasizes that shamanism honors as important “both masculine and feminine energies and traditions.
She explains:
She explains:
The most powerful shamans, of either sex, work with both masculine and feminine forms of energy. So while women shamans are usually nurturing, they can also be brave and powerful – when they help with a difficult birth, for instance, or take on the warrior’s role in healing.[46] Shamans are taught not to negate or destroy either their masculine or their feminine side. Instead by shifting genders and embodying characteristics of each gender, they manipulate the male female polarity itself. Shamans are able to hold incompatible things together, because each of the apparent opposites is necessary and in some sense ‘true’...[47] As a general rule, women shamans, and men trained within a feminine tradition, have an interpersonal orientation; they coax their clients to become active participants in their own healing.[48]
Shamanic Elements in Mormon and Tibetan Cultures
I will now take a look at some intriguing parallels between Mormon traditions and shamanic cultures worldwide, and then explore some compelling parallels and connections between Mormon traditions and the shamanic traditions of the Himalayas, particularly the Tibetan.
The first parallel that I would like to note is Tedlock’s description of one of the “fundamental features” of the shamanic worldview, which is “the conviction that all entities – animate or otherwise – are imbued with a holistic life force, vital energy, consciousness, soul, spirit, or some other ethereal or immaterial substance that transcends the laws of classical physics. Each member of this wondrous cosmos is a participant in the life energy that holds the world together. The Polynesian mana, Lakota wakanda, and Chinese Taoist ch’i are conceived of as powerful forces that permeate everything.”[49] The Sanskrit word kundalini also refers to a form of this spiritual energy found in the human body which we will discuss later. I find the concept similar to L.D.S. scriptures and ideas such as Doctrine & Covenants, which says that the light of Christ is in all things, gives life to all things, is through all things, and is the law by which all things are governed.[50] It also brings to mind Joseph Smith’s comment “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.”[51] The last quote dovetails nicely with Tedlock, who says, “For a shaman, energy is an expression of spirit transforming into matter.”[52]
The second shamanic element in Mormonism is what Tedlock describes as “the heart of shamanic practice,” and that is “the active pursuit of knowledge” which she says takes many forms, among those:
I will now take a look at some intriguing parallels between Mormon traditions and shamanic cultures worldwide, and then explore some compelling parallels and connections between Mormon traditions and the shamanic traditions of the Himalayas, particularly the Tibetan.
The first parallel that I would like to note is Tedlock’s description of one of the “fundamental features” of the shamanic worldview, which is “the conviction that all entities – animate or otherwise – are imbued with a holistic life force, vital energy, consciousness, soul, spirit, or some other ethereal or immaterial substance that transcends the laws of classical physics. Each member of this wondrous cosmos is a participant in the life energy that holds the world together. The Polynesian mana, Lakota wakanda, and Chinese Taoist ch’i are conceived of as powerful forces that permeate everything.”[49] The Sanskrit word kundalini also refers to a form of this spiritual energy found in the human body which we will discuss later. I find the concept similar to L.D.S. scriptures and ideas such as Doctrine & Covenants, which says that the light of Christ is in all things, gives life to all things, is through all things, and is the law by which all things are governed.[50] It also brings to mind Joseph Smith’s comment “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.”[51] The last quote dovetails nicely with Tedlock, who says, “For a shaman, energy is an expression of spirit transforming into matter.”[52]
The second shamanic element in Mormonism is what Tedlock describes as “the heart of shamanic practice,” and that is “the active pursuit of knowledge” which she says takes many forms, among those:
the understanding of animal and human behavior; the identification of medicinal plants and their uses; the hands on healing knowledge of bone setting, massage and midwifery; and the empathic knowledge of the human psyche. Through calendrical study, divination, and prophecy shamans seek knowledge of the future and through recitation of myths, epics, charms, spells, songs, and the genealogies of previous shamans they pass along knowledge of the past and of the spirit world. And since shamans everywhere wish to know more than they have experienced in their everyday waking lives, they may extend their wisdom through dream journeys or psychedelic trips that provide [in the words of one shaman] ‘a thousand years of human living rolled into one day.’
The latter sounds rather like Joseph Smith when he said, “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.”[53]
The shamanic methods for obtaining spiritual knowledge include the use of divination, ingestion of entheogens, and the use of seer stones, all of which are found in Mormonism. The early Mormon use of seer stones is brilliantly chronicled in D. Michael Quinn’s, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, and last year, Dr. Robert Beckstead made an extremely compelling case for the early Mormon use of entheogens.[54] The word entheogen is a neologism from the ancient Greek ‘entheos’ meaning “god within,” and describes the religious and cultural use of psychoactive plants in a sacramental manner.[55]
Mormon parallels with other Shamanic Cultures
Mormon traditions parallel other cultures’ traditions in several ways, as mentioned earlier: in the quest for knowledge and the recognition that all living things possess consciousness; in the concept of sealing family lineages together; and in the belief in a celestial goddess.
The Mormon quest for gnosis is epitomized by two things:
First, the idea (in 19th century Mormon parlance) that everything is composed of some degree of “intelligence,”[56] or what we might now call consciousness, which is said to be “eternally progressing,”[57] or in contemporary terms, evolving; secondly, the principle of personal revelation and the Mormon sensibility of seeking and receiving truth “let it come from whence it may.”[58]
Another astonishing parallel between the L.D.S. culture and shamanic cultures is the concept of adoption and sealing family lineages together. In Barbara Tedlock’s book, she reports that upon shamanic initiation both she and her shamanic partner and husband, Dennis Tedlock, and all of their family members (both living and dead) were adopted into the patrilineage of one of their teachers, Don Andrés, a Mayan shaman from Guatemala.[59]
Finally, a parallel in cosmology with certain shamanic cultures that piqued my interest is the belief amongst some Asian cultures in a Celestial goddess. Tedlock says:
First, the idea (in 19th century Mormon parlance) that everything is composed of some degree of “intelligence,”[56] or what we might now call consciousness, which is said to be “eternally progressing,”[57] or in contemporary terms, evolving; secondly, the principle of personal revelation and the Mormon sensibility of seeking and receiving truth “let it come from whence it may.”[58]
Another astonishing parallel between the L.D.S. culture and shamanic cultures is the concept of adoption and sealing family lineages together. In Barbara Tedlock’s book, she reports that upon shamanic initiation both she and her shamanic partner and husband, Dennis Tedlock, and all of their family members (both living and dead) were adopted into the patrilineage of one of their teachers, Don Andrés, a Mayan shaman from Guatemala.[59]
Finally, a parallel in cosmology with certain shamanic cultures that piqued my interest is the belief amongst some Asian cultures in a Celestial goddess. Tedlock says:
Studies of shamanism that focus on the sky have ignored have ignored the existence of...celestial goddesses and the practices associated with them. Mircea Eliade, in discussing the shamanic symbolism of ascent to the sky, asserted that ‘the supreme gods of archaic peoples are called ‘He on High,’ ‘He of the Sky’… The truth is that North Asian celestial cults focused on bringing babies into the world and nurturing them.
This certainly brings to mind the L.D.S. concept of Heavenly Mother and her L.D.S. daughters here on earth who as a spiritual practice emulate their Mother in Heaven, by giving birth to mortal bodies to house the spirit bodies birthed by their Celestial Mother.
Tibet’s shamanistic cultures also have many remarkable parallels to Mormon traditions. Most people are somewhat familiar with the existence of Buddhism as the primary religious tradition in Tibetan culture since it was
brought to Tibet from India in the 8th century, but Tibet’s more ancient shamanic roots are less well known.
Etymology on the word ‘shaman’ suggests the Tungus term shaman is related to the Chinese term ‘sha man’ meaning “Buddhist monk,” as well as a Sanskrit word meaning “Buddhist ascetic;”[60] and interestingly, Eliade noted that there is a resemblance “between yogic techniques such as those represented in Buddhist meditation ‘and the techniques of shamanism’.”[61] This is interesting because British anthropologist and museologist Richard Rudgley asserts that, “it is possible that the martial arts that we tend to associate with Taoist and Buddhist traditions have their prototypes in prehistoric shamanistic practices.”[62] Even more interestingly, shamanic practitioner, activist scholar and professor Vicki Noble, believes that very ancient women’s practices were codified into what we now know as yoga.[63]
She says:
Etymology on the word ‘shaman’ suggests the Tungus term shaman is related to the Chinese term ‘sha man’ meaning “Buddhist monk,” as well as a Sanskrit word meaning “Buddhist ascetic;”[60] and interestingly, Eliade noted that there is a resemblance “between yogic techniques such as those represented in Buddhist meditation ‘and the techniques of shamanism’.”[61] This is interesting because British anthropologist and museologist Richard Rudgley asserts that, “it is possible that the martial arts that we tend to associate with Taoist and Buddhist traditions have their prototypes in prehistoric shamanistic practices.”[62] Even more interestingly, shamanic practitioner, activist scholar and professor Vicki Noble, believes that very ancient women’s practices were codified into what we now know as yoga.[63]
She says:
Just as women today in dorms or other communal living situations will synchronize their menstrual cycles and end up getting their periods at the same time, so the kundalini [or shamanistic] energy is also contagious in circles of women. Ancient communities apparently took advantage of this fact and sanctified it, making women's blood cycles the center of their social organization. The origins of Yoga lie in this ancient social organization that allowed and encouraged the free, spontaneous flow of kundalini energy through the female group, and by extension, throughout the entire community…Truly, those were the days of ‘living yoga.’
Noble, who has spent time in Tibet, as well as researching sites along the Silk Road, also situates this yogic tradition in a larger geographical region beyond Asia, and going back to at least Neolithic times.[64] She calls it, “a coherent lineage of shamanistic practices and ecstatic rituals that cuts across the boundaries and nationalism that take up so much space in our history books.”[65] Noble demonstrates that the shamanic roots of Buddhist and yogic traditions extend far beyond where we find them today:
Recent evidence strongly suggests that there is a direct line of connection (perhaps even descent) from the Mediterranean Bronze Age yoginis and those historical yoginis recorded two thousand years later in India and Tibet. Eurasian mummies unearthed from burials in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia and the Tien Shan Mountains of China have changed our ideas regarding Bronze and Iron Age peoples, showing that they traveled thousands of miles in their migrations and shared cultural contacts that connected them all the way from Turkey and Greece to Tibet, India, and the western edges of China.[66]
In 2007, Philip G. McLemore published an article in Sunstone magazine which he also delivered at Sunstone’s annual symposium that year titled The Yoga of Christ, further establishing shamanistic and yogic elements in Biblical traditions.[67] Yogic elements can also be found in the life and work of Joseph and Emma Smith. In many cultures shamanism is transmitted to a couple, and according to Tedlock, “erotic energy is an essential component of many shamanic traditions.”[68] She says that, “Abstinence is [also] used in many traditions as a way of manipulating sexual energy.”[69]
Tedlock explains that, “Sexually ecstatic states are celebrated literally as well as symbolically in tantric and kundalini yoga, both of which evolved out of North Asian shamanic practices. The Sanskrit word tantra comes from the root tan, meaning ‘to stretch’ or ‘to weave.’ Tantra is the art of weaving together the spiritual and the material worlds. It is a way of realizing the divine essence through bodily experience, especially the creative force of sexuality. The Sanskrit term Kundalini, meaning “serpent power,” designates divine sexual energy...[70] During orgasm lovers often appear as if possessed by spirits, shuddering and quivering, groaning and crying out, momentarily blind and deaf to all that surrounds them. Scientists point to a strong neurological connection between sexuality, particularly female sexuality, and going into a trance.”[71] Tedlock points out that “the blending of sacred eroticism with ecstatic visionary experience,” is not limited to Asia and she points to its once “important role in Christianity,” quoting St. Theresa and the “deeply ecstatic language of [other] Christian mystics.”[72]
Over the last few years scholars have begun to note parallels between Joseph Smith and the Tibetan tradition of terma and terton, or hidden treasure texts and the shamanic seers who find them. At a conference at the Library of Congress, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Smith, historian Grant Underwood, discussed historian Richard Bushman’s invitation:
Tedlock explains that, “Sexually ecstatic states are celebrated literally as well as symbolically in tantric and kundalini yoga, both of which evolved out of North Asian shamanic practices. The Sanskrit word tantra comes from the root tan, meaning ‘to stretch’ or ‘to weave.’ Tantra is the art of weaving together the spiritual and the material worlds. It is a way of realizing the divine essence through bodily experience, especially the creative force of sexuality. The Sanskrit term Kundalini, meaning “serpent power,” designates divine sexual energy...[70] During orgasm lovers often appear as if possessed by spirits, shuddering and quivering, groaning and crying out, momentarily blind and deaf to all that surrounds them. Scientists point to a strong neurological connection between sexuality, particularly female sexuality, and going into a trance.”[71] Tedlock points out that “the blending of sacred eroticism with ecstatic visionary experience,” is not limited to Asia and she points to its once “important role in Christianity,” quoting St. Theresa and the “deeply ecstatic language of [other] Christian mystics.”[72]
Over the last few years scholars have begun to note parallels between Joseph Smith and the Tibetan tradition of terma and terton, or hidden treasure texts and the shamanic seers who find them. At a conference at the Library of Congress, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Smith, historian Grant Underwood, discussed historian Richard Bushman’s invitation:
To situate Joseph in broader transnational histories, beyond the borders of the United States and even beyond a Judeo-Christian heritage, [which] enables us to discover some interesting parallels. In the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, a fundamental source of religious teaching is the termas (treasures). Termas include sacred texts composed anciently, primarily by the great Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) and hidden by him in various secret locations to be discovered at a later date. Termas can only be discovered by a special class of spiritually enlightened adepts (bodhisattvas) known as tertons (treasure finders). Only tertons can reveal these texts because they are written in the cryptic language of the dakini (supernatural beings).
I agree with Underwood that when both traditions are compared that, “Smith looks like an American terton-seer translating ancient texts written in cryptic Reformed Egyptian by the great prophets of the past, Mormon and Moroni.”[73]
Exploring the Eastern treasure text tradition, Noble says, “It is believed that students of Padmasambhava reborn in later centuries would remember their earlier incarnations through the vehicle of revealed treasures which they spontaneously express through unique ways in their lifetimes. The terma treasures are sometimes physical (texts, amulets, relics), but frequently they are treasures of the mind. In a broad understanding of the concept, one might say that the excavation of European mummies in China and Mongolia counts as terma, along with more technical artifacts unearthed in Tibet over the centuries.”[74]
Noble discusses the work of Tibetan teacher, Namkhai Norbu, and describes the process, “as one of direct transmission from teacher to student through the use of symbols and [describes] the ‘language of the dakini’ as a form in which the ancient, secret teachings are encoded until the time a certain predestined people around the world will discover portions of them, which it is their task to translate into the cultural language of their time and place. To be a part of this lineage does not require that the person be participating in a particular spiritual form, such as Buddhism, although the teacher doing the transmitting may well be Buddhist.”[75]
Noble discusses the work of Tibetan teacher, Namkhai Norbu, and describes the process, “as one of direct transmission from teacher to student through the use of symbols and [describes] the ‘language of the dakini’ as a form in which the ancient, secret teachings are encoded until the time a certain predestined people around the world will discover portions of them, which it is their task to translate into the cultural language of their time and place. To be a part of this lineage does not require that the person be participating in a particular spiritual form, such as Buddhism, although the teacher doing the transmitting may well be Buddhist.”[75]
Underwood points out that Joseph Smith’s purpose for writing, was the same as it was for Guru Rinpoche: to keep “the faith on track by making clear the fundamental ‘plain and precious’ principles of the tradition.”[76] Underwood adds that, “it is interesting to note that some of the Tibetan termas are called ‘mind treasures’ because they are ‘not physically discovered but are revealed through the mind of the terton.’ This phraseology recalls the prophecies of Enoch or the parchment of John revealed by Joseph Smith.”[77]
Parallels to both Tibetan and Mormon traditions can also be found in the Near East. Is it possible that there could be a universal spiritual lineage that connects the Tibetan and Mormon traditions? (Since the publication of this paper I have discovered that there are TWO perennial traditions, not one).
Parallels to both Tibetan and Mormon traditions can also be found in the Near East. Is it possible that there could be a universal spiritual lineage that connects the Tibetan and Mormon traditions? (Since the publication of this paper I have discovered that there are TWO perennial traditions, not one).
John Tvedtnes, at Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute, wrote a book titled: The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books, detailing “numerous ancient traditions of angels as writers and guardians of written records,”[78] and “hidden to come forth to later generations.”[79] The book demonstrates “that various elements of the Book of Mormon story have antecedents in the ancient world that were not known to Joseph Smith and his contemporaries[80] and that while various parts of the world share [similar] tradition[s], it is most prominent in the ancient Near East, the land from which the Book of Mormon people emigrated to the new world.”[81]
And this passage from the Book of Mormon - 2 Nephi, chapter 29 – contains a non-sectarian message from the Spirit realm which states that the Divine deals with ALL of the earth’s peoples and inspires cultures around the globe:
And this passage from the Book of Mormon - 2 Nephi, chapter 29 – contains a non-sectarian message from the Spirit realm which states that the Divine deals with ALL of the earth’s peoples and inspires cultures around the globe:
…Know ye not that there are more nations than one?... I bring forth my word unto…all the nations of the earth?…Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word...that I remember one nation like unto another?...Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written…For I command all…both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them… I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.”[82]
Emma Smith as Shaman
Vicki Noble and Tibetan Tulku, Thondup Rinpoche state:
Treasure-finders known as Tertons (sometimes female terma-finders are referred to as Kandroma, which basically means ‘dakini’) receive their termas in the language of the dakini, which is a secret script that has to be decoded. Terma-finders must have a consort with whom to practice their mystical yoga. ‘The support of the consort has two purposes…to produce and maintain the wisdom of the union of the great bliss and emptiness (freedom), by which the adept attains the ultimate state…(and) the consort causes him or her to awaken the realization as well as to discover the Termas.’ The ‘special consort who has made the appropriate aspirations in the past” is “the key to accomplishment,’ which is ‘one of the reasons why all Tertons happen to have consorts.’[83]
“Dakini is a Tibetan word meaning skydancer,[84] skygoer, or sky-walking female,” and describes a female shamanic practitioner equivalent to an Indian yogini, “the embodiment of cosmic feminine energy and wisdom,”[85] a “practitioner of supernatural yogic powers.”[86] Vicki Noble says that, “The narratives of the great Tibetan and Indian ‘masters’ generally contain a segment in which the yogi is awakened or initiated by a yogini or female guru, often disguised as an ‘ordinary’ woman. The dakini’s identity is ‘ambiguous’ and she is often not recognized for who she is, even by advanced yogis.”[87]
Noble says that Dakinis have to integrate the time and the place that they live in [88]and that “Tertons and Kandromas...express their discoveries through the particular vernacular of their time and for the direct benefit of their special constituency of their students.” Barbara Tedlock adds that shamanic practitioners, “ritually enact their local system of myths and symbols and interpret the patient’s condition within that system.”[89]
Was Emma Joseph’s tantric consort, the energizer and necessary ingredient for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon? A visitor to the home of Emma’s youth once described her as, “‘fine looking, smart...a good singer...and she often got the power.’” Emma’s biographers say, “What the ‘power’ was the visitor did not elaborate upon, but Emma did have a deep faith and knew the Bible well. When Joseph told her of his vision in the woods she believed him.”[90]
Joseph was prepared by supernatural visitations for years before he could go to the Hill Cumorah, in upstate New York, to retrieve the buried treasure known as the Golden Plates. Reading the earliest accounts of this romantic adventure-quest Emma looks a lot like a classical yogini.
Henry Harris had heard about the Golden Plates directly from Joseph Smith and recollected Smith's interaction with an angel and his use of a seer stone:
I had a conversation with him, and asked him where he found them and how he come [sic] to know where they were. He said he had a revelation from God that told him they were hid in a certain hill and he looked in his stone and saw them in the place of deposit; that an angel appeared, and told him he could not get the plates until he was married, and that when he saw the woman that was to be his wife, he should know her, and she would know him.[91]
Joseph Smith’s close friend, Joseph Knight, reported that, “when Joseph went that fall to the hill named Cumorah, the ‘personage’ told him he could have the record the following September ‘if he brot with him the right person’ and indicated that Joseph would know who that was.” Knight said that Joseph, “looked into his glass and found it was Emma Hale Daughter of old Mr. Hale of Pensulvany.”[92]
One of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, Martin Harris,[93] recollected being told by the Smith family how Joseph obtained the golden plates and added an interesting visual detail to Emma’s role that mystical equinox evening[94] “After this, on the 22nd of September, 1827, before day, Joseph took the horse and wagon of old Mr. Stowel, and taking his wife, he went to the place where the plates were concealed, and while he was obtaining them, she kneeled down and prayed.”[95] This particular account shows Emma playing an active spiritual role in and being present for the obtaining of the plates.
“Emma acted as scribe for Joseph for a short time before Martin Harris became scribe and also immediately after Harris was rejected by Smith for losing the pages.”[96] Like a veritable dakini, Emma, wrote in 1829: “In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.” Emma played an active physical and spiritual role in the founding of Mormonism, from her sexual relationship with Joseph, to her prayers at the Hill Cumorah the night the Book of Mormon was unearthed, as well as her role as the first scribe while Joseph decoded a mysterious script. Joseph could not have completed his task without her and just as the terton cannot obtain the treasure texts without his (or her) dakini,[97] Joseph was told that he could not obtain the golden plates without Emma, which I believe establishes Emma as the co-founder of the Mormon tradition.
Additional shamanic elements in the life of Emma Smith
In the final section of this paper I would like to present five additional shamanic elements in the life and work of Emma Smith:
Number one is “the laying on of hands:” Thanks to much scholarly work in recent years we know that as a priestess[98] and the head of the Relief Society, Emma administered blessings of health, which is a healing rite customarily administered by the laying on of hands. In Women as Healers in the Modern Church, Betina Lindsey states, “In Nauvoo, Illinois, the women of the Relief Society frequently pronounced blessings upon each other. Sister Durfee and Abigail Leonard tell of receiving blessings of health from Emma Smith and her counselors.” Lindsey notes that, “The laying on of hands is the oldest form of ritual healing known to virtually every religion. Early rock carvings in Egypt and Chaldea and cave paintings in the Pyrenees that are 15,000 years old, portray [the] laying on of hands.”[99]
Number two is “speaking in tongues:” Although Emma’s biographers, Newell and Avery, report that “There does not seem to be any indication that Emma Smith spoke in tongues,”[100] they do mention that, “the practice became a part of the saint’s worship – particularly among women – into the [20th] century.”[101] Dr. Mihaly Hoppal includes speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, in his definition of shamanic characteristics because, he says, “glossolalia can be seen as the audible (phonetic) expression of the neuron-psychological trance process.”[102]
The next category in the shaman’s repertoire where we find Emma is said, by Dr. Hoppal, to often be overlooked - the shaman as poet or singer: Hoppal notes that “oral ecstatic performance and collective singing” is a feature in some shamanistic societies, as is “shamanic [musical] performance, and the ritualized narration of myth...by singers of traditional oral narratives.” He quotes
In the final section of this paper I would like to present five additional shamanic elements in the life and work of Emma Smith:
Number one is “the laying on of hands:” Thanks to much scholarly work in recent years we know that as a priestess[98] and the head of the Relief Society, Emma administered blessings of health, which is a healing rite customarily administered by the laying on of hands. In Women as Healers in the Modern Church, Betina Lindsey states, “In Nauvoo, Illinois, the women of the Relief Society frequently pronounced blessings upon each other. Sister Durfee and Abigail Leonard tell of receiving blessings of health from Emma Smith and her counselors.” Lindsey notes that, “The laying on of hands is the oldest form of ritual healing known to virtually every religion. Early rock carvings in Egypt and Chaldea and cave paintings in the Pyrenees that are 15,000 years old, portray [the] laying on of hands.”[99]
Number two is “speaking in tongues:” Although Emma’s biographers, Newell and Avery, report that “There does not seem to be any indication that Emma Smith spoke in tongues,”[100] they do mention that, “the practice became a part of the saint’s worship – particularly among women – into the [20th] century.”[101] Dr. Mihaly Hoppal includes speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, in his definition of shamanic characteristics because, he says, “glossolalia can be seen as the audible (phonetic) expression of the neuron-psychological trance process.”[102]
The next category in the shaman’s repertoire where we find Emma is said, by Dr. Hoppal, to often be overlooked - the shaman as poet or singer: Hoppal notes that “oral ecstatic performance and collective singing” is a feature in some shamanistic societies, as is “shamanic [musical] performance, and the ritualized narration of myth...by singers of traditional oral narratives.” He quotes
R. Mastromattei who said that a text, “recited in an ecstatic context,” “becomes shamanic.”[103] The “Elect Lady revelation” that was given to Emma commissioned her to “make a selection of sacred hymns,” and another early Mormon revelation equates “the song of righteousness” with prayer,[104] which is sometimes linked to meditative or altered states of consciousness;[105] What’s more, Newell and Avery speculate that Emma could have been, “a contributor herself,” as several hymns are of unknown authorship.[106]
The remaining two categories where I have located Emma came from a book that contained information about her that I have never encountered anywhere else. Buddy Youngreen’s book, Reflections of Emma, reveals that after Joseph’s death, after Brigham Young had taken most of the Mormons West with him, leaving Emma in Nauvoo, Emma Smith became a prolific midwife and an herbalist.[107]
“Midwifery has rarely been acknowledged as a shamans art,”[108] yet spanning multiple cultures and continents, Barbara Tedlock has begun to locate “extensive archaeological and ethnographic evidence for midwifery as a branch of shamanism,”[109] She points out that, “in many cultures midwives may enlist spiritual aid before, during, and after birth. Thus they are shamanic healers in their own right.”[110] She elaborates, “Women on feminine [shamanic] paths focus their attention around birth. They receive their shamanic calling during menarche or pregnancy and are symbolically born into the profession,”[111] and adds that, “Women shamans are nearly always midwives. The act of helping souls to transform themselves in order to cross from the other world into this world turns out to be at the heart of feminine shamanic traditions worldwide. While the masculine traditions focus on a shaman’s symbolically dying into shamanhood, the feminine traditions focus on the shaman’s being born into it.”[112]
Historically, midwives are usually also herbalists,[113] and Emma was no exception. Tedlock says that part of “the active [shamanic] pursuit of knowledge,” is “the identification of medicinal plants and their uses”[114] and that herbalism is shamanic because in the “identification, collection, preparation, and use,” of plants, “herbalists go beyond the rational intelligence that is based on every day experience and teaching. They also rely on inspirational knowledge...for indigenous peoples it is wisdom rather than knowledge per se that is the goal. Knowledge consists of empirical information passed on from teacher to pupil. Wisdom adds to that an intuitive grasp of the complex connections and forms of consciousness in the natural world. Herbalists insist that in order to choose the proper medicine for any situation, a healer ‘must come to know plants’ as living beings. It is not the plant alone that cures; the healing comes from the greater power that exists within the spirits of the plant, the healer, the patient, and the culture...while there are herbalists in many societies who are not trained as shamans – they do not enter a trance or experience ecstasy – all shamans know the plant realm well. And in most cultures herbal healing, like midwifery, is a strongly feminine specialty.”[115] For more information on the “botanical arts” of early Mormonism, medical anthropologist John Heinerman, has done an excellent job of extensively documenting the ethnobotany of early Mormonism, in Joseph Smith and Herbal Medicine.[116]
The remaining two categories where I have located Emma came from a book that contained information about her that I have never encountered anywhere else. Buddy Youngreen’s book, Reflections of Emma, reveals that after Joseph’s death, after Brigham Young had taken most of the Mormons West with him, leaving Emma in Nauvoo, Emma Smith became a prolific midwife and an herbalist.[107]
“Midwifery has rarely been acknowledged as a shamans art,”[108] yet spanning multiple cultures and continents, Barbara Tedlock has begun to locate “extensive archaeological and ethnographic evidence for midwifery as a branch of shamanism,”[109] She points out that, “in many cultures midwives may enlist spiritual aid before, during, and after birth. Thus they are shamanic healers in their own right.”[110] She elaborates, “Women on feminine [shamanic] paths focus their attention around birth. They receive their shamanic calling during menarche or pregnancy and are symbolically born into the profession,”[111] and adds that, “Women shamans are nearly always midwives. The act of helping souls to transform themselves in order to cross from the other world into this world turns out to be at the heart of feminine shamanic traditions worldwide. While the masculine traditions focus on a shaman’s symbolically dying into shamanhood, the feminine traditions focus on the shaman’s being born into it.”[112]
Historically, midwives are usually also herbalists,[113] and Emma was no exception. Tedlock says that part of “the active [shamanic] pursuit of knowledge,” is “the identification of medicinal plants and their uses”[114] and that herbalism is shamanic because in the “identification, collection, preparation, and use,” of plants, “herbalists go beyond the rational intelligence that is based on every day experience and teaching. They also rely on inspirational knowledge...for indigenous peoples it is wisdom rather than knowledge per se that is the goal. Knowledge consists of empirical information passed on from teacher to pupil. Wisdom adds to that an intuitive grasp of the complex connections and forms of consciousness in the natural world. Herbalists insist that in order to choose the proper medicine for any situation, a healer ‘must come to know plants’ as living beings. It is not the plant alone that cures; the healing comes from the greater power that exists within the spirits of the plant, the healer, the patient, and the culture...while there are herbalists in many societies who are not trained as shamans – they do not enter a trance or experience ecstasy – all shamans know the plant realm well. And in most cultures herbal healing, like midwifery, is a strongly feminine specialty.”[115] For more information on the “botanical arts” of early Mormonism, medical anthropologist John Heinerman, has done an excellent job of extensively documenting the ethnobotany of early Mormonism, in Joseph Smith and Herbal Medicine.[116]
In Conclusion
As noted earlier, Mormonism shares much in common with shamanic tribal peoples and traditional societies worldwide, including the belief in a holistic life-force energy that animates all things, sometimes referred to as animism or pantheism. Other similarities are the obtaining of spiritual knowledge (sometimes referred to as gnosis) through the use of divination, entheogens, and crystal gazing; a belief in a Celestial goddess, who is the mother of our pre-existent spirits prior to our incarnation on earth; the practice of sealing family lineages together; and the importance and necessity of shamanism being transmitted to a couple who have a sexual or tantric relationship.
Emma herself shared much in common with what we know of ancient and contemporary female shamans: she was a healer through the laying on of hands; she was the leader of a group of women who went into trance and spoke in tongues; she was a singer, a midwife and an herbalist.
Looking at Emma through this lens adds a new dimension to her contributions to the founding of Mormonism. I have discovered that she played a more active role as a spiritual leader than is usually portrayed or perceived. This examination has also raised many more questions for future investigations about the elements Mormonism and shamanism share in common.
I want to thank Dr. C. Jess Groesbeck for paving the way for this paper with his 2005 Sunstone presentation, Joseph Smith and the Shaman's Vision: A Forgotten Paradigm for the Life of the Mormon Prophet. I would also like to thank Kenneth Shaw for pointing out to me, over ten years ago, the remarkable parallels between Joseph Smith and Tibetan tertons.
Lastly, I would like to thank Barbara Tedlock, Vicki Noble, and Max Dashu for personally teaching me most of what I know about female shamanism.
Lastly, I would like to thank Barbara Tedlock, Vicki Noble, and Max Dashu for personally teaching me most of what I know about female shamanism.
[1] There is very little published information about Emma Smith outside of the Mormon community, so the following biographical information and quotations on her life have been gleaned from Madsen, Carol. “Smith, Emma Hale.” In the The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, New York, NY:Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992, pp. 1321 – 1326.
[2] The earliest name of the church that Joseph Smith originally formed (prior to 1838) was the Church of Christ.
[3] Madsen, Carol. “Smith, Emma Hale.” Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Joseph Smith Letterbook, Mar. 7, 1839, Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quoted in Madsen, Carol. “Smith, Emma Hale.” Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
[6] Smith, Lucy Mack. History of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, 1958, pp. 190-91, quoted in Madsen, “Smith, Emma Hale.” Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
[7] Madsen, “Smith, Emma Hale.” Encyclopedia of Mormonism.
[8] Mihaly Hoppal, “Shamanism: An Archaic and/or Recent Belief System,” in Shamanism, ed. Shirley Nicholson (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987), 76.
[10] Michael James Winkelman, “Shamans and Other ‘Magico-Religious’ Healers: A Cross-Cultural Study of Their Origins, Nature, and Social Transformations,” Ethos, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Sep., 1990), 308-352. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-2131%28199009%2918%3A3%3C308%3ASAO%22HA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7
[11] Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, (Princeton University Press, 1964), 4.
[12] Barbara Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine, (New York, NY: Bantam Dell, 2005), 24.
[13] Eliade, Shamanism, 4
[14] Max Dashu, “Suppressed Histories Archives: FAQ,” Suppressed Histories Archives, http://www.suppressedhistories.net/faq.html
[15] Dashu, “Suppressed Histories Archives: FAQ.”
[16] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 20.
[17] Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine, s.v. “Shamanism,” Answers.com. The Gale Group, Inc, 2005. http://www.answers.com/topic/shamanism
[18] Hoppal, “Shamanism,” 90.
[19] Dashu, “Suppressed Histories Archives: FAQ.”
[20] Ibid.
[21] Eliade, Shamanism, 5-6, 290.
[22] Vicki Noble, The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power, (Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2003), 94.
[23] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 22.
[24] Ibid., 27.
[25] Alternative Medical Encyclopedia.
[26] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 23; and Max Dashu, “Woman Shaman” lecture, New College of California, San Francisco CA, Dec. 9, 2006.
[27] Reginald A. Ray, “Tibetan Buddhism as Shamanism?” Reviewed Work: Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies by Geoffrey Samuel, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 75, No. 1. (Jan., 1995), 92.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4189%28199501%2975%3A1%3C90%3ATBAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K
[28] Hoppal, “Shamanism.” 83.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 27. See also: Benny Shanon, “Biblical Entheogens: A Speculative Hypothesis,” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology Consciousness and Culture, Vol. 1, no. 1, (March 2008), 51–74. http://shamanism.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/shanon_article_moses.pdf and Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, “Shamanism in the Jewish Tradition,” Shamanism, ed. Shirley Nicholson, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987), 181; and James R. Davila, “The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism, published in The Society of Biblical Literature 1994 Seminar Papers, (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1994) 767-89; http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/hekhalot_shamanism_art.html
and Dan Merkur, The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press), 2001.
and Dan Merkur, The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press), 2001.
[31] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 4, 14; Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams, The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, translated by Sophie Hawkes, (Harry N. Abrams, 1998).
[32] Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Warrior Women: An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines, (New York, NY: Warner Books, 2002), 85.
[33] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 4.
[34] Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World, The New Female Shamanism, (New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco), 13.
[35] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 205; and Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman, 11.
[36] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 61.
[37] Ibid., 70.
[38] Ibid., 30.
[39] Ibid., 72.
[40] Ibid., 64.
[41] Ibid., 202.
[42] Ibid., 73.
[43] Ibid., 202.
[44] Barbara Tedlock, lecture, “Ancient and Contemporary Female Shamanism,” college course, New College of California, Sunday, November 19, 2006.
[45] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 168.
[46] Ibid., 249.
[47] Ibid., 254.
[48] Ibid., 282.
[49] Ibid., 20.
[50] Doctrine & Covenants 88:7, 12-13.
[51] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/josephsmit192875.html
[52] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 83.
[53] Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 324; cf. HC 6:50. Quoted in, Larry C. Porter, “Visions of Joseph Smith,” http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/people/joseph_smith/visions.html
[54] Robert T. Beckstead, "Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom: Did Joseph Smith use Psychedelic Substances to Facilitate Visionary Experiences?," paper presented at the Sunstone Symposium, August 2007. http://www.mormonelixirs.org
[55] Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and Gordon Wasson, “Entheogens,” The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11(1-2) Jan-Jun, 1979 http://www.entheomedia.org/entheogen.htm
[56] Joseph Smith, "The King Follett Discourse," http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/King_Follett_Discourse#The_Power_to_Advance_in_Knowledge
[57] Lisa Ramsey Adams, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Vol. 1, s.v. “Eternal Progression,” (Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992) http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/afterlife/progression_eom.htm
[58] Joseph Smith, Jr. once stated: “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.” See also: Don Bradley, “The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism: Joseph Smith’s Unfinished Reformation,” Sunstone, April 2006, http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/issues/141/141-32-41.pdf
[59] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 22.
[60] Eliade, Shamanism, 4, 495. See also, Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shaman and, Berthold Laufer, “Origin of the Word Shaman,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 19, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1917), 361-371.
http://tiny.cc/tjklw
http://tiny.cc/tjklw
[61] Reginald A. Ray, “Tibetan Buddhism as Shamanism?,” 96.
[62] Richard Rudgley, The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, (New York, NY: Touchstone, 2000), 121.
[63] Vicki Noble, “The Life Cycle and Yogini Roots: Did Women Invent the Ancient Art of Yoga?,” http://www.lotusfertility.com/Yogini_Roots.html
[64] Vicki Noble, The Double Goddess, 91.
[65] Ibid., 10.
[66] Noble, “The Life Cycle and Yogini Roots;” See also, Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Warrior Women, 38, 103, 151; see also Vicki Noble, The Double Goddess, 128-134, 199.
[67] Philip G. McLemore, “The Yoga of Christ,” Sunstone, June 2007.
[68] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 87.
[69] Ibid., 88.
[70] Ibid., 88.
[71] Ibid., 89.
[72] Ibid., 89.
[73] Grant Underwood, “Attempting to Situate Joseph Smith,” in The Worlds of Joseph Smith: a Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress, BYU Studies Monographs, vol. 44: 4, Special Issue, ed. John Woodland Welch (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005) 41 – 52.
[74] Noble, The Double Goddess, 201.
[75] Noble, Shakti Woman, 77.
[76] Underwood, “Attempting to Situate Joseph Smith,” 46.
[77] Ibid, 46.
[78] H. Curtis Wright, from the Introduction, The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books, (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Mormon Studies, 2000), xi.
[79] John A. Tvedtnes, The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books, Acknowledgements.
[80] Ibid., 5.
[81] Ibid., 25.
[82] The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 29: 7, 8, 10, 11, 12.
[83] Noble, The Double Goddess, 201-2.
[84] Touching SA, http://touchingsa.co.za/2007/11/13/tantric-terms
[85] Ibid.
[86] Noble, The Double Goddess, 10.
[87] Ibid., 198.
[88] Vicki Noble, lecture, “Ancient and Contemporary Female Shamanism,” college course, New College of California, Sunday, November 19, 2006.
[89] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 15.
[90] Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 18.
[91] Michael Marquardt, The Rise of Mormonism: 1816-1844, (Xulon Press, 2005), 95.
[92] Newell, Mormon Enigma, 19.
[93] 1783-1875, http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/people/martin_harris.html
[94] Gail L. Porritt and Robert S. Portlock, “Joseph Smith As Latter-day Halcyon:
Spiritual Mythology and Mormon Symbolism,” January 2000 Internet Edition, http://web.archive.org/web/20041217090630/http://www.aros.net/~johor/Halcyon/Latter-day_Halcyon.htm
Spiritual Mythology and Mormon Symbolism,” January 2000 Internet Edition, http://web.archive.org/web/20041217090630/http://www.aros.net/~johor/Halcyon/Latter-day_Halcyon.htm
[95] Marquardt, The Rise of Mormonism, 93.
[96] History of the RLDS Church, http://www.rmwhome.com/Mormons/Documents/translation.htm
[97] In order to avoid privileging the male gender it should be noted that it is also possible for a female to be a terton and to have a consort. Vicki Noble pointed out to me that this is how she and Karen Vogel conceived the Motherpeace Tarot deck together. Personal communication, September 28, 2011.
[98] D. Michael Quinn, “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843,” Women and Authority:
Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, Ed. Maxine Hanks, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1992), http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/women/chapter17.htm#Woman See also, Margaret & Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1990).
Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, Ed. Maxine Hanks, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1992), http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/women/chapter17.htm#Woman See also, Margaret & Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1990).
[99] Betina Lindsey, “Women as Healers in the Modern Church,” Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, ed. Maxine Hanks, (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1992)
http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/women/chapter19.htm#Healers
[100] Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, “Sweet Counsel and Seas of Tribulation: The Religious Life of the Women in Kirtland,” BYU Studies, 20.2, 1980.
http://byustudies.byu.edu/shop/pdfsrc/20.2NewellAvery.pdf
http://byustudies.byu.edu/shop/pdfsrc/20.2NewellAvery.pdf
[101] Newell, Mormon Enigma, 46.
[102] Hoppal, “Shamanism,” 91.
[103] Ibid.
[104] Newell, Mormon Enigma, 34.
[105] Greg Braden, The Isaiah Effect, (NY: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 226; and Eugene G. D'Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), 152.
[106] Newell, Mormon Enigma, 57.
[107] Buddy Youngreen, Reflections of Emma, (Provo, UT: Maasai, Inc., 2001).
[108] Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, 208.
[109] Ibid., 212.
[110] Ibid., 208.
[111] Ibid., 202.
[112] Ibid., 206.
[113] Ibid., 207.
[114] Ibid., 23.
[115] Ibid., 137.
[116] John Heinerman, Joseph Smith and Herbal Medicine: A Brief Study of the Botanical Arts in Mormonism, (Springville, UT: Bonneville Books, 2001). See also, John Heinerman, Joseph Smith and Natural Foods, (Springville, UT: Bonneville Books, 2001).
