The Shaping of a World Religion: From Jesuits, Freemasons & Anthropologists to MK Ultra & the Counter-Culture Movement PART II

CYNTHIA CHUNG

SEP 7, 2023

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By Cynthia Chung

“By increasing or prolonging stresses in various ways, or inducing physical debilitation, a more thorough alteration of the person’s thinking processes may be achieved. The immediate effect of such treatment is, usually, to impair judgment and increase suggestibility; and though when the tension is removed the suggestibility likewise diminishes, yet ideas implanted while it lasted may remain. If the stress or the physical debilitation, or both, are carried one stage further, it may happen that patterns of thought and behaviour, especially those of recent acquisition, become disrupted. New patterns can then be substituted, or suppressed patterns allowed to re-assert themselves; or the subject may begin to think and act in ways that precisely contradict his former ones.

… With these facts in mind, one can hope to understand more clearly the physiological mechanisms at work in some types of sudden religious conversion…Methods of religious conversion have hitherto been considered more from psychological and metaphysical angles than from physiological and mechanistic ones; but techniques employed often approximate so closely to modem political techniques of brain-washing and thought control that each throws light on the mechanics of the other… The main difference lies in the explanations given for the same impressive results…almost identical physiological and psychological phenomena may result from religious healing methods and conversion techniques, equally in the most primitive and the more highly civilized cultures. They may be adduced as convincing proofs of the truth of whatever religious or philosophic beliefs are invoked.”

-          William Sargant, Battle for the Mind, A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing (1957), pioneer of Tavistock & MK Ultra mind control techniques.

-> This paper will resume where we left off in Part I which can be found here.

The Messiah of the Ghost Dance Religion

“The Indian messiah religion is the inspiration of a dream. Its ritual is the dance, the ecstasy, and the trance. Its priests are hypnotics and cataleptics. All these have formed a part of every great religious development of which we have knowledge from the beginning of history.”

-          James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (1896), Bureau of Ethnology (liaison to the Smithsonian Institute).

The year of 1890 would mark an eerie scene. It was the year of the Sioux Outbreak and the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee, what has been widely considered the last major engagement of the American-Indian Wars.[1] The number of Indians massacred that day are estimated to be close to 400 men, women and children, if not more.[2] Many of the bodies of the women and children who had fled the scene were found up to two miles away from where the mayhem had began, shot in their backs by the American soldiers as they attempted to flee from the bloody carnage. As James Mooney would remark, it was as if the American soldiers had completely lost their minds.

It was in the month of December, and a snowstorm had taken three days to pass. The bodies of the Sioux people had been left in the snowy tundra. When the Americans returned, they had found that some of the Sioux people thought dead had in fact been alive, including two babies still in their mother’s arms. Only one of the infants ultimately survived along with very few of the initial ‘survivors’ who had been seriously wounded by the frost bite, the necrotic tissue had spread too far and most died days later.

One of the Sioux woman survivors found alive stricken by a bullet was told as she lay in the church for medical treatment that she must let them remove her ghost shirt in order to get at her wound, she replied: “Yes; take it off. They told me a bullet would not go through. Now I don't want it anymore.”[3] The ghost shirt, which had been promoted by adherents of the Ghost Dance religion, was believed to be impenetrable to bullets or weapons of any sort. Every Sioux who had been killed that day at Wounded Knee had been wearing such a shirt.

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

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James Mooney, under the auspices of the Bureau of Ethnology began research that fall of 1890 on the Cherokee in correlation to gaining a better understanding of this new religion that had spread to almost all of the Indian tribes called the Ghost dance. His investigations were permitted to expand to the “wilder” tribes: the Cheyenne and Arapaho, the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Caddo and Wichita, who were all living near together in the western part of what was then Indian Territory (see map below). These tribes were all more or less under the influence of the new religion. The massacre at Wounded Knee would occur just a few months after Mooney began his study, and what had intended to be only a few weeks extended to a period of more than three years of research on the Ghost dance phenomenon.

The Ghost Dance originated amongst the Paiute (primarily located in Nevada and Oregon), with the first large Ghost Dance gathering of several tribes said to occur in 1889 at Walker Lake, Nevada, it was quickly thereafter adopted by the Ute, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Apache, Kiowa, Caddo, Wichita and beyond.

At the time of Mooney’s publishing of the authoritative account on this history The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, published in 1896, the Ghost dance was still in practice and was developing new features at every performance. This went on for many years if not decades later, despite the tragedy that occurred at Wounded Knee due to its false prophecies.

Mooney would make a second field trip this time focusing on the Ghost dance amongst the Sioux people, where it had attracted the most attention, and among the Paiute, where it originated. Mooney’s field investigation occupied twenty-two months, involving nearly 32,000 miles of travel and more or less time spent with about twenty tribes.

Recall in Part I of this series that we had already begun the telling of the origins of the Ghost dance religion which would take its shape from the Master of Life religion. The Master of Life religion began with Pontiac’s prophecy in 1763 which was most certainly influenced by a Jesuitical presence.[4] The prophecy speaks of a messiah who will bring about paradise to the Indian people and destroy the white conquerors if they wash themselves of their sins and return to their “original state”. This included being forbidden from using gunpowder and firearms as well as flint and steel to make fire. Later the prophecy would include

1. that the prophet of this divine mission would also receive the power to cure all diseases and to arrest the hand of death in sickness or on the battlefield,

2. that their dead would rise again and

3. that their old would become young again and the young would never become sick.[5]

 It also forbade many of the old ways, including their sacred medicine bags and the medicine song and claimed that the medicine men who were promoting these old ways were in communion with evil spirits. The prophecy also proclaimed that the French were the Indians’ brother, the King of France the Indians’ father and that all other whites, namely the British (primarily the American colonialists at the time), were their enemies and the enemies of their French brothers’. (Recall that the Jesuitical Order was founded in Paris, France in 1534 and dominated the Catholic presence in the Americas.[6])

Pontiac would ascend to the highest position among the leaders of the Algonquians. After Pontiac’s vision he announces the policy of confederation of all tribes at the great council near Detroit in April 1763 as was revealed to him as the will of the Master of Life. At this great council, Pontiac was listened to as if he himself were an oracle, and he declared to all the chieftains present that he had only to declare the will of the Master of Life to be obeyed. Pontiac would fail in his mission after three years of battles ultimately exiled from his people, however, the Pontiac prophecy would continue to be believed in and this initiative to form a confederation of all tribes would be carried forward almost to successful completion by the great Tecumseh.

However, this was not to be, and Tecumseh’s downfall would also be attached to his ultimate obedience to the Master of Life religion through his younger brother the failed Shawnee Prophet. It was the Shawnee prophet, who only gained popular acceptance by his prediction of an eclipse[7], who would first make the revelation that the Indian warriors were impenetrable to the bullets of the white man. This false prophecy which was first declared the night before their biggest and first battle against Governor William Harrison’s forces ruined any hope Tecumseh had of uniting the Indian tribes in a just cause, what had been initially a peaceful cause. For his younger brother, having been exposed as a radical false prophet, had also ruined trust in Tecumseh’s ability to lead his people. It should also be recalled that at this point the prophecy had declared that all whites were in fact friends of the Indians, including the British and the Spanish, except the Americans[8] and Tecumseh would die fighting alongside the British in the War of 1812 against Harrison’s forces in a war that was of no benefit to his people.

After the false prophecy by Tecumseh’s brother, the Shawnee prophet that would lead to the downfall of Tecumseh, things were quiet for a little while and no new prophet of significance was heard of for a number of decades. The next one would arise over 50 years later in 1870 among the Paiute in Nevada. As the story goes, this prophet was said to have been the father of the “messiah” who would found the Ghost dance religion.

This father of the “messiah” was Tä’vibo, which interestingly means “White man” who was known to have visions and was invulnerable. The name Tävibo refers to the east (tävänagwat) or place where the sun (täbi) rises. By the cognate Shoshoni and Comanche the whites are called Taivo.[9]

It was this white man of the east, Tävibo, who would shape a young boy named Wovoka into the messiah of the Ghost dance religion.

Mooney, who was alive during this period that overlapped with the Ghost dance religion, interviewed many who personally knew both the proclaimed messiah and his prophet father Tävibo. Mooney writes:[10]

“From concurrent testimony of Indians and white men, however, there seems to be no doubt that he [Tävibo] did preach and prophesy and introduce a new religious dance among his people, and that the doctrine which he promulgated and the hopes which he held out twenty years ago were the foundation on which his son has built the structure of the present messiah religion. He was visited by Indians from Oregon and Idaho, and his teachings made their influence felt among the Bannock and Shoshoni, as well as among all the scattered bands of the Paiute, to whom he continued to preach until his death…” [emphasis added]

Amongst Tävibo’s revelations included the vision that a great disaster would come to all, both Indians and whites, that would swallow up everyone, but at the end of three days the Indians would be resurrected and would live forever to enjoy the earth, while their enemies the whites, would be destroyed forever. Tävibo’s prophecy foretold that there would be an eternal separation between the Indians and the whites, however, many Indians continued not to believe and thus they too were condemned to share the fate of the whites and would stay in the ground, not to be resurrected and left forever damned after the great disaster. This was the millennial new dawn- the central tenet to the Ghost dance religion.

In the spring of 1875, as recounted by Professor A.H. Thompson, of the United States Geological Survey, a great excitement was being roused among the Indian people by what was reported to be two mysterious beings with white skins who had appeared among the Paiute far to the west and who announced “a speedy resurrection of all the dead Indians, the restoration of the game, and the return of the old-time primitive life. Under the new order of things, moreover, both races alike were to be white. A number of Indians from Utah went over into Nevada, where they met others who claimed to have seen these mysterious visitors farther in the west. On their return to Utah they brought back with them the ceremonial of the new belief, the chief part of the ritual being a dance performed at night in a circle, with no fire in the center, very much as in the modern Ghost dance.”[11]

[It should be noted that Tävibo lived with his son, Wovoka the messiah, in Mason Valley, about 60 miles south of Virginia City not far from the Walker River reservation.]

Note the location of Walker Lake and Walker River, the latter which is where Tävibo’s prophecy is first heard and the former where the first large performance of the Ghost Dance, a gathering of several tribes and hundreds of Indians, occurs in 1889.

In fact, Tävibo’s preachings and prophecy were greatly along the lines of the religious beliefs shared by the Mormons, and in the early spring of 1875, the Mormons had sent emissaries to nearby tribes urging them to go to Salt Lake City to be baptized into the Mormon religion. Salt Lake City, Utah is where the headquarters of the Mormon Church was established in the 1840s and remains to this day. A large number accepted the invitation and returned to work as missionaries of the new faith among their tribes.[12]

As an additional inducement, free rations (during a time of a serious food shortage) would be provided “to all who would come and be baptized, and ‘they were told that by being baptized and going to church the old men would all become young, the young men would never be sick, that the Lord had a work for them to do, and that they were the chosen people of God to establish his kingdom upon the earth.’ etc. It is also asserted that they were encouraged to resist the authority of the [American] government. (Comr.,2.)”[13]

Mooney remarks “However much of truth there may be in these reports, and we must make considerable allowance for local prejudice, it is sufficiently evident that the Mormons took an active interest in the religious ferment then existing among the neighboring tribes and helped to give shape to the doctrine which crystallized some years later in the Ghost dance.”[14]

In other words, approximately five years after Tävibo’s prophecy in Nevada among the Paiute, the origination of the Ghost Dance religion, (which was further enforced by two white men possibly one of them being Tävibo himself in 1875 again among the Paiute), a number of Indians from the Utah region visited Nevada to learn about this new religion amongst the Paiute, and upon their return to Utah “they brought back with them the ceremonial of the new belief, the chief part of the ritual being a dance performed at night in a circle, with no fire in the center, very much as in the modern Ghost dance.”

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The Mormons then proceeded to actively recruit neighbouring Indians, such as within the Shoshoni and Bannock, and sent them back to their tribes as missionaries allowing for the spread of the doctrine of the Ghost dance religion, a religion as we will see that has a great deal of overlap with Mormon religious beliefs. These individuals would largely make up the emissaries of the Ghost Dance who would travel great distances spreading its teachings from tribe to tribe, likely using the resources of the Mormon Church.

Map of the Northern and Southern Paiute tribe, approximately what it looked like during the 1870s. As can be observed from the map, the Paiute were located across what is now western Nevada, eastern Oregon and southeastern Utah. The Mormon Church’s center during this time was in Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Mormon Church, located by the red dot.

It should be noted that although the prophecy of the new religion sometimes states that all whites are to be destroyed in the great disaster never to return and in other versions it states that either the whites and Indians will be resurrected as equals or the races will be one. It must be understood that whenever whites are mentioned as an enemy of the Indians, it is not a reference to all whites, as should be clearly recognised by just the fact alone that its very own prophet was a “white man,” Tävibo (not to mention the fact that there were and would be many other prophets who were white or had been influenced by white men who would shape Indian prophecies[15]). As we will see, this prophecy of the Ghost Dance of a millennial new dawn fits into the Mormon prophecy exactly.

It should be recalled from Part I that the Mormon religion was founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s and is inextricably interwoven with his simultaneous founding of several Masonic lodges, the Nauvoo Lodge being the largest. And that by the time of the 19^th century, all freemasonic activity within the United States was run by the Scottish Rite. The profound relevance of this will be discussed in Part 3 of this series.

Wovoka, the messiah of the Ghost Dance religion, like those from the same doctrine before him; Pontiac, the Shawnee prophet, Smohalla the Dreamer prophet and the Christian John Slocum the high priest of the Shakers of Puget Sound,[16] have all claimed to have died and travelled to the world of the dead before returning to earth with their revelations of this new religion, the Master of Life religion which would later form into the Ghost Dance religion. The prophets of this new religion from the 1870s onward, namely Smohalla, Slocum and Wovoka begin to practice trances and hypnosis, something that Mooney remarks appears to have no Indian origination as they were practiced and ritualised by these men.[17]

Recall from Part I the overview of the Jesuit Order. It is no secret that amongst almost all, if not all, pagan religions as well as Judeo-Christian and Muslim religions, there is an acceptance of prophecy, often through the mystical occurrence of “visions” of the yet-to-be-seen or yet-to-manifest. All religions share this belief, no matter how these visions were conjured, for example by an outer body experience, second-sight, trance, dream or astral plaining.  Thus, it is no small matter that there is no religious order that holds a higher authority over a promise to reveal the mysteries, to know a deeper truth through the conjuring of religious or outer body experiences than the Jesuit Order. And though they are not the first to have made such insights, they are by far the most excelled, disciplined and structured in this practice, including trance and hypnosis, a practice that has been formed into a science that can generate results that are predictable and easily reproduced. Thus, you can be assured that the Jesuitical Order has very much dominated in its teachings wherever it has decided to influence those who are unaware that not all visions come from a divine source.

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Wovoka was about 14 years of age when Tävibo passed away. Wovoka himself says that his father did not preach but was a “dreamer” with supernatural powers and was invulnerable.[18] According to Wovoka, after his father died he was taken into the family of a white farmer, David Wilson, who had given him the name of Jack Wilson, by which he was commonly known among the whites. Though he was raised primarily by the whites, Wovoka knew only the Paiute language and very little English, or at least this is what he claimed to James Mooney during his interview.

The past of Wovoka is shrouded in mystery, little is known about his religious experiences except that Tävibo is said to be his father, and most information about his beliefs and teachings as the messiah have been recorded based on the sayings of those who were briefly acquainted with him as the messiah, including other Indians; with the recordings and observations by the Indian Office, War Department and Bureau of Ethnology only beginning in an official capacity in 1890.

According to Wovoka his first revelation occurred when “the sun died” (was eclipsed) and he fell asleep in the daytime and was taken up to the other world. “Here he saw God, with all the people who had died long ago engaged in their oldtime sports and occupations, all happy and forever young. It was a pleasant land and full of game. After showing him all, God told him he must go back and tell his people…that if they faithfully obeyed his instructions they would at last be reunited with their friends in this other world, where there would be no more death or sickness or old age. He was then given the dance which he was commanded to bring back to his people. By performing this dance at intervals, for five consecutive days each time, they would secure this happiness to themselves and hasten the event [the end of days that would cause the world to be reborn]…He then returned to earth and  began to preach as he was directed, convincing the people by exercising the wonderful powers that had been given to him.”[19] Since this first revelation, on one or two other occasions God came and took him to heaven again. Wovoka confirmed that he did see himself as a prophet who had received divine revelation in his interview with Mooney, but denied he had ever called himself “the Christ”.[20]

Perhaps not surprisingly, Wovoka appears not to have been entirely honest with Mooney during their discussion in 1892. This is in reference to many testimonials amongst the Indians were became followers of the Ghost Dance religion, including the lead representative of the Ghost Dance doctrine to the Cheyenne (among the prairie tribes), named Porcupine, who had visited Wovoka in 1889 and attended the dance near Walker Lake, Nevada. In Porcupine’s report of his experience, which we will review in detail shorty, he stated that Wovoka claimed to be Christ himself, who had come back again, many centuries after his first rejection, in pity to teach his children.[21]

Wovoka, the messiah of the Ghost Dance religion.

A Millennial New Dawn and the Mormons

As already mentioned the Mormons would play an essential and quite possibly central role in the development and propagation of the Ghost Dance religion.

The Mormon Church was founded as the Church of Christ in western New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith during the Second Great Awakening. Under Smith’s leadership, the church’s headquarters travelled from Kirtland, Ohio, Missouri, to Nauvoo, Illinois. Nauvoo was the center of early Mormon activity from its inception in 1839 until the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844. During this five year period, three Masonic lodges were founded in Nauvoo. The lodges members were all LDS [Latter Day Saints] members, drawn from the Mormon community. The largest of these lodges, with a membership exceeding 1,500, was called Nauvoo Lodge.[22] After Smith’s death in 1844 and a resultant succession crisis, the majority of his followers sided with Brigham Young, who led the church to its current headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Joseph Smith had intended to establish the New Jerusalem in North America, called Zion.[23] According to Smith, on September 1^st, 1823, when he was seventeen years of age, an angel of God named Moroni, appeared to him and told him of ancient texts that were buried in a nearby hill in Wayne County, New York. These texts were engraved onto golden plates by ancients prophets and written in unknown characters referred to by the LDS as “reformed Egyptian.”[24] Smith was apparently the only one who could read this unknown language and translate it into English. The writings were said to describe a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the western hemisphere 600 years before the birth of Jesus.[25] According to the LDS, the angel Moroni is said to have been the last prophet amongst his people (the Nephi) who completed and buried the ancient record.

This record is said to include the “origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments…righteousness and iniquity” of the “aboriginal inhabitants of the country” in reference to the Nephites and Lamanites.[26] The books from the First Nephi, the first book of the Book of Mormon, begins with what is supposed to be a historical account in ancient Jerusalem around 600 BC. It tells the story of a man named Lehi and his family and several others who are led by God from Jerusalem shortly before its fall to the Babylonians. They journey across the Arabian peninsula and then by ship to a “promised land” an unspecified location in the Americas. The community grows and splits into Nephites and Lamanites over a period of about 450 years, these two tribes are frequently at war with each other.

During the period of Jesus Christ the Nephites and Lamanites unite in a harmonious society but after several generations break again into warring factions resulting in the Nephites being destroyed and the Lamanites emerging victorious. Thus, Moroni is the last of the Nephites and recorder of this history.

The Book of Mormon includes prophecies describing how although the Gentiles (generally interpreted as being whites of European descent) would conquer the indigenous residents of the Americas (imagined as the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon) this conquest would only precede the Native American’s revival and resurgence as a God-empowered people. The Book of Mormon’s prophecies envision a Christian eschaton in which indigenous people are destined to rise up as the true leaders of the continent, manifesting in a new utopia to be called “Zion.”[27] White Gentiles would have an opportunity to repent of their sins and join themselves to the indigenous remnant, but if white Gentile society fails to do so, the Book of Mormon’s content foretells a future “apocalyptic reversal” in which Native Americans will destroy white American society and replace it with a godly, Zionic society.[28] This prophecy commanding whites to repent and become supporters of American Indians even bears "special authority as an utterance of Jesus" Christ himself during a messianic appearance at the book's climax.[29] The moral of the story is that the white Nephites failed to recognize and repent of their own sinful and hubristic prejudices against the dark-skinned Lamanites. In their pride, the Nephites continuously backslide into oppressive social orders. The Book of Mormon ends with destruction of all the white Nephites and the just victory of the Lamanites until the return of the white Europeans to the Americas in 1492, who are destined to be wiped off the face of the earth (or at least the Americas) once again in this millennial cycle if they (the white Nephites) do not repent their sins.

In 1831, after a revelation, Joseph Smith attempted to establish a LDS temple in Jackson County, Missouri where he planned to move the church headquarters, however, in 1833 Missouri settlers violently expelled them. The Latter-Day Saints (LDS) Church (aka the Mormon Church) attempted to recover the land through a paramilitary expedition but did not succeed.[30] However, they were successful in establishing the Kirtland Temple, in Ohio which existed until 1838, until a financial scandal erupted and caused widespread defections from the church. Smith attempted to regroup in Daviess County, Missouri, and attempted to build a temple but their efforts were halted by the Missouri settlers and Governor Boggs of Missouri, believing the church to be an insurrection, issued Missouri Executive Order 44 and ordered the LDS members to be “exterminated or driven from the State.” The Mormons militarily resisted and this became known as the Missouri Mormon War of 1838.

Smith’s first charge of treason was in Missouri as a consequence of the Missouri Mormon War, this included an indictment on the charge of conspiring to assassinate Governor Boggs of Missouri.  After the surrender of Mormon forces on November 2, 1838, Smith was imprisoned in the jail at Liberty, Missouri. On November 12, 1838, Judge King found "probable cause to believe that Joseph Smith, Jr, Lyman Wight, Hiram Smith [Joseph’s brother], Alexander McRay & Caleb Baldwin are guilty of Overt acts of Treason in Daviess County". Smith and other Mormons continued to be held at Liberty jail. After a hearing conducted April 9–11, 1839, Smith was indicted by a grand jury on the charge of treason, however, was “permitted to escape custody” and fled to Illinois.[31]

In 1839, the LDS converted a swampland on the banks of the Mississippi River into Nauvoo, Illinois, which became the church's new headquarters.

It was at Nauvoo that Smith would introduce polygamy and freemasonry to the LDS membership. He also established ceremonies and became a master of ceremony, which he stated the Lord had revealed to him, to allow righteous people to become gods in the afterlife, and a secular institution to govern the Millennial kingdom.[32] It was also at Nauvoo that Smith would share his First Vision, where he had received instruction from God the Father and Jesus Christ at the age of fourteen in a wooded area called the Sacred Grove in Manchester, New York. One of the beings told Smith not to join any of the existing churches because they all taught incorrect doctrines. This vision would come to be regarded by the LDS Church as the most important event in human history since the resurrection of Jesus.[33]

Smith had been charged with approximately thirty criminal actions during his life and at least that many financial civil suits.[34] Among these charges included in Ohio were assault, illegal banking, conspiracy to murder and banking fraud; in Missouri he was charged with threats to Judge Adam Black and treason; in Illinois he was charged with arrest for fleeing Missouri and conspiracy to murder Governor Boggs, perjury, fornication and polygamy, inciting a riot destroying the Nauvoo Expositor and another count of treason.[35]

On June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, while being held on charges of treason against the state.[36] In 1844, he was charged with inciting a riot in the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper. Smith had declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo Legion to enforce it—leading to charges of treason against Illinois.

The Nauvoo Expositor was a newspaper that had only managed to publish one issue on June 7, 1844. All of the printed copies of this first and last issue were destroyed along with its printing press. The Expositor was founded by several seceders from the Church of LDS and some non-Mormons in the Nauvoo area. The single edition of the newspaper was critical of Smith and other church leaders.

With the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith the leadership of the LDS Church was held by Brigham Young and the church headquarters were established in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1840s.

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A curious pamphlet was published anonymously at Salt Lake City in connection with a proposed series of lectures in 1892. The pamphlet was titled “The Mormons have stepped down and out of Celestial Government – the American Indians have stepped up and into Celestial Government.” It begins by stating that the Messiah came to His people at the time appointed of the Father. It goes on to say:[37]

“ ‘1891 has passed, and no pruning of the vineyard.’ The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. – Isa. 5:7. In the part of the vineyard the American Indians, descendants of the righteous branch of Joseph, who were led to the Western Continent or hemisphere – Zion – we find the vine, the stone-power of the Latter Days. Ps. 80.

The celestial prophet, seer, and revelator, Joseph Smith, jr., prophesied on the 2^nd of April, 1843, that the Messiah would reveal himself to man in mortality in 1890. Doctrine and Covenants, 130, 15, 17, which reads: ‘I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man, when I heard a voice speak the following: “Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man”.’

…the sign that was to usher in the work of the Father was given to the American Indians, while March, 1890, witnesses the organization of a church under the restored order, where twelve disciples were chosen and ordained, whose first allegiance is given irrevocably to the Lord God, whereas that of the Celestial Church is given to the government fostering it.[38]

…The following seven signs were to precede the fullness of the Gentiles upon the land of America; Zion…[the first, second and third ‘signs’ are omitted here.]

4. When the Bible and Book of Mormon become one in the hands of the Messiah. Ezk. 37:19; III Nephi, 21: 1-7. In 1887, sixty years after the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, jr., the Book of Mormon in Spanish was delivered to the American Indians, with the promise to those who are identified with the Gentiles that if they will not harden their hearts, but will repent and know the true points of my doctrine they shall be number with my covenant people, the Branch of Joseph. Doctrine and Covenant, 19:59-62; 20:8-17; III Nephi, 21: 1-7.

5. The coming of the Messiah. Three years later, March 1890, the people of God, who were notified by the three Nephites, met at Walkers lake, Esmeralda county, Nevada, where a dispensation of the Celestial kingdom of God – the gospel in the covenant of consecration, a perfect oneness in all things, temporal and spiritual – was given unto them. Twelve disciples were ordained, not by angels or men, but by the Messiah, in the presence of hundreds, representing scores of tribes or nations, who saw his face, heard and understood his voice as on the day of pentecost. Acts 2, also fulfilling sec. 90:9, 10, 11 of Doctrine and Covenant. Ezk. 20: 33-37.

6. The Fulness of the Gentiles. In 1492, the Lord God let His vineyard to the nations of the Gentiles, to punish His people the Branch of Joseph for 400 years (Gen. 15:13), bringing the fulness of the Gentiles the end of their rule over the American Indians. October, 1892, Rom. II: 25-26; Gen. 50:25; New Trans. Matt. 21:33-41.[39]

7. The Pruning of the Vineyard. The husbandmen upon this land began the last pruning of the vineyard in 1891. Prominent among which stands our government in fulfilling Matt. 21: 33-41, saying, let us kill the heirs and hold the inheritance, as shown in the massacre of Wounded Knee; the butchery of Sitting Bull; the imprisonment of Short Bull and others; the breaking up of reservations, and the attempts to destroy the treaty stipulations above mentioned by forcing the mark of the Beast, citizenship and statehood, upon the American Indians, which will ultimately terminate in a war of extermination. Isa. 10: 24-27; Dan. 2:34; Isa. 14:21.

According to the astronomical, prophetic, and historical evidence found in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine of Covenants for the redemption of Zion and the restoration of Israel, there are seven celestial keys of powers to be used which can not be handled by apostles, prophets, or angels. They can only be handled by the Messiah and the Father.

…2. The key of power that restores the heirs, the American Indians, to their own lands consecrating to them the wealth of the Gentiles.

3. The key of power that turns away ungodliness from Jacob (the American Indians) enabling them to build the temple on the spot pointed out by the finger of God (Independence, Jackson County, Missouri), on which the true sign of Israel is to rest, the glory of the living God of the Hebrews, the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night by the close of this generation, 1896.” [emphasis added]

The line to “build the temple on the spot pointed out by the finger of God (Independence, Jackson County, Missouri)” is in reference to what was behind the LDS paramilitary expedition in 1833 in their first attempt to build a temple. In the early 1830s, Joseph Smith had received a revelation that the Second Coming of Christ was near and that the City of Zion would be near the town of Independence in Jackson County, Missouri and that his followers were destined to inherit the land held by the current settlers. This, rather understandably, resulted in their violent expulsion from this land by the Missouri settlers.

The Missouri Mormon War in 1838 was over land in Daviess County, Missouri and Joseph Smith’s intention to build a LDS temple at this location despite the people of Daviess County also wanting no part in it. This temple was intended to be named Adam-ondi-Ahman, in reference to a belief that Smith revealed in May 19, 1838 that Adam-ondi-Ahman was the place where Adam and Eve went after being exiled from the Garden of Eden.

The startling parallels this Mormon pamphlet shares directly with the Ghost Dance millennial prophecy should not be lost on the reader. The pamphlet even goes so far as to mention the messiah of the Ghost Dance directly, in correlation with the gathering of the Ghost Dance at Walkers Lake and his selection of his apostles as confirmed by Porcupine’s account.

Porcupine’s account of the messiah was made to Major Carroll, in command of the Camp Crook, at Tongue River agency, Montana, June 15, 1890, and transmitted through the War Department to the Indian Office. Porcupine describes how he left his reservation, of the Cheyenne, in November 1889 and travelled to Salt Lake City and later to Nevada, including the Pyramid and Walker lakes to return after the spring of 1890. Porcupine describes dancing a new dance and remarks that the whites would often dance it themselves (note this is in Mormon territory). Porcupine remarks:[40]

“I knew nothing about this dance before going. I happened to run across it, that is all. I will tell you about it. I want you all to listen to this, so that there will be no mistake. There is no harm in what I am to say to anyone. I heard this where I met my friends in Nevada. It is a wonder you people never heard this before. In the dance we had there [Walker Lake] the whites and Indians danced together. I met there a great many kinds of people, but they all seemed to know all about this religion. The people there seemed all to be good. I never saw any drinking or fighting or bad conduct among them. They treated me well on the [train] cars, without pay. They gave me food without charge, and I found that this was a habit among them toward their neighbors. I thought it strange that the people there should have been so good, so different from those here [around Cheyenne territory].

What I am going to say is the truth. The two men sitting near me [Cheyenne who went with him on this trip] were with me, and will bear witness that I speak the truth. I and my people have been living in ignorance until I went and found out the truth. All the whites and Indians are brothers, I was told there. I never knew this before.

The Fish-eaters [the Paiute] near Pyramid Lake told me that Christ had appeared on earth again. They said Christ knew he was coming; that eleven of his children were also coming from a far land. It appeared that Christ had sent for me to go there, and that was why unconsciously I took my journey. It had been foreordained. Christ had summoned myself and others from all heathen tribes, from two to three or four from each of fifteen or sixteen different tribes. There were more different languages than I ever heard before and I did not understand any of them. They told me when I got there that my Great Father [the messiah aka Wovoka] was there also, but did not know who he was. The people assembled called a council, and the chief’s son went to see the Great Father, who sent word to us to remain fourteen days in that camp and that he would come to see us. He sent me a small package of something white to eat that I did not know the name of…Then I went to the agency at Walker lake and they told us Christ would be there in two days. At the end of two days, on the third morning, hundreds of people gathered at this place. They cleared off a place…in the form of a…ring and we all gathered there. This place was perfectly cleared of grass…We waited there till late in the evening anxious to see Christ. Just before sundown I saw a great many people, mostly Indians, coming dressed in white men’s clothes. The Christ was with them. They all formed in this ring around it…They made a big fire to throw light on him. I never looked around, but went forward, and when I saw him I bent my head. I had always thought the Great Father was a white man, but this man looked like an Indian…After awhile he rose and said he was very glad to see his children. ‘I have sent for you and am glad to see you. I am going to talk to you after awhile about your relatives who are dead and gone. My children, I want you to listen to all I have to say to you. I will teach you, too, how to dance a dance, and I want you to dance it. Get ready for your dance and then, when the dance is over, I will talk to you.’ He was dressed in a white coat with stripes.[41] The rest of his dress was a white man’s except that he had on a pair of moccasins. Then he commenced our dance, everybody joining in, the Christ singing while we danced. We danced till late in the night, when he told us we had danced enough.

The next morning, after breakfast was over, we went into the circle and spread canvas over it on the ground, the Christ standing in the midst of us. He told us he was going away that day, but would be back that next morning and talk with us.

In the night when I first saw him I thought he was an Indian, but the next day when I could see better he looked different. He was not dark as an Indian, nor so light as a white man. He had no beard or whiskers, but very heavy eyebrows. He was a good-looking man. We were crowded up very close. We had been told that nobody was to talk, and even if we whispered the Christ would know it. I had heard that Christ had been crucified, and I looked to see, and I saw a scar on his wrist and one on his face, and he seemed to be the man…

That evening we all assembled again…he began to sing, and he commenced to tremble all over, violently for a while, and then sat down. We danced all that night, the Christ lying down beside us apparently dead.

The next morning when we went to eat breakfast, the Christ was with us…He said he wanted to talk to us again and for us to listen. He said: ‘I am the man who made everything you see around you. I am not lying to you, my children. I made this earth and everything on it. I have been to heaven and seen your dead friends and have seen my own father and mother. In the beginning, after God made the earth, they sent me back to teach the people, and when I cam back on earth the people were afraid of me and treated me badly. This is what they did to me [showing his scars]. I did not try to defend myself. I found my children were bad, so went back to heaven and left them. I told them that in so many hundred years I would come back to see my children. At the end of this time I was sent back to try to teach them. My father told me the earth was getting old and worn out, and the people getting bad, and that I was to renew everything as it used to be, and make it better.’

He told us that all our dead were to be resurrected; that they were all to come back to earth, and that as the earth was too small for them and us, he would do away with heaven, and make the earth itself large enough to contain us all; that we must tell all the people we meet about these things…He said that in the fall of the year the youth of all the good people would be renewed, so that nobody would be more than 40 years old, and that if they behaved themselves well after this the youth of everyone would be renewed in the spring. He said if we were all good he would send people among us who could heal all our wounds and sickness by mere touch, and that we would live forever. He told us not to quarrel, or fight, nor strike each other, nor shoot one another; that the whites and Indians were to be all one people. He said if any man disobeyed what he order, his tribe would be wiped from the face of the earth; that if we did, he would know it; that he would know our thoughts and actions, in no matter what part of the world we might be.

When I heard this from the Christ, and came back home to tell it to my people, I thought they would listen. Where I went to there were lots of white people, but I never had one of them say an unkind word to me. I thought all of your people [the whites] knew all of this I have told you of, but it seems you do not.

…You can see this man [the messiah] in your sleep any time you want after you have seen him and shaken hands with him once. Through him you can go to heaven and meet your friends [those who are dead].”

Porcupine, Cheyenne representative of the Ghost Dance religion.

The Jesuit Government in Paraguay

It is relevant here to discuss briefly that the messiah doctrine of the Ghost Dance religion does not only have strong parallels with the Mormon teachings, but with Jesuit teachings, as seen with the Jesuit government of Paraguay which predates the Church of Latter-Day Saints by nearly two centuries.

Friedrich Schiller, whom I like to refer to as the Shakespeare of Germany, would write a short but insightful paper titled “The Jesuit Government in Paraguay” in 1788, published in the German Mercury journal. Schiller’s principal source for this study on the Jesuits was Christoph Harenberg’s “Pragmatic History of the Jesuit Order” published in 1760.

Recall the dawn myth described at the very beginning of Part I of this series, which describes a prophecy amongst the indigenous people that dates as far back as the Aztecs (1300-1521), which was foretold by a white man with a flowing beard, “at once a Moses and a messiah”[42] and many were drawn to this story that spoke of the salvation of their people. Over time this prophecy was heard by many including those living further north in the Americas, until it seemed all had heard of this foretelling of salvation by this god-like man. It is said that he had travelled to them from the east with the morning light and had brought life and joy to the world, only to return to the east with the dawn and that they were destined to wait for him until he would return once again and all would be paradise.

This fits into the timeline of the first Spanish expeditions to the Americas in the 1490s, and who would bring the Jesuits along with them. Officially the Jesuits were first formed in 1534 in Paris, France, however, this should be regarded as the official founding of The Society of Jesus as an official institution. There is no doubt that the teachings and the techniques of the Jesuits, many which they inherited, predates this year. Suffice to say, there is a great deal of overlap with the Jesuit teachings, the Mormon teachings and the beliefs of the Ghost Dance religion.

Schiller writes in his “The Jesuit Government in Paraguay”:

“In a campaign which preceded the battle of Paraguay, fought on the 12^th of September 1759, between the Jesuits and the united Spanish-Portuguese army, two Europeans, who had fought with desperate bravery, were brough in among the different Indian prisoners…The Indians who were captured with them, fell when they set eyes upon them, reverently went down on their knees before them, and struck themselves on their breast, whereby they repeatedly pronounced the word ‘Kau.’

…Not a single word could be brought out of him [one of the two Europeans] They hit him, they brought him to be tortured; a few involuntary sounds in the Portuguese language, which pain squeezed out of him, were all that they received from him. The other showed himself more open and free, and soon confessed, that he was a Jesuit. He had, said he, accompanied his Indians around as their chaplain and spiritual assistant in the battle, as he pretended, to keep their excessive fury within bounds, and to implant in them a gentle way of thinking toward the enemy. Finally, he revealed his name was Pater [Father] Rennez, and the other, whom the example of his comrade made likewise more talkative, at this point also confessed, that he was a Jesuit and a chaplain of the Indians, and his name was Pater [Father] Lenaumez.

When their pockets were searched, a small book was found, at whose discovery they became extremely restless. It was written in an unknown code;[43] on the edge, however, a key in the Latin language was attached thereto. This document contained a law of war of the Indians, or rather the chief tenets of the religion, which the Order had sought to implant in their Indian subjects. I relate them here, because they may interest the curious and, perhaps, give some information about the Jesuit government in Paraguay.

‘Hear, O man! The commands of God and of the holy Michael:

1. God is the ultimate purpose of all action.
2. Is the source of all bravery and strength.
3. Bravery is a virtue as well of the body as of the soul.
4. God does nothing in vain.
5. Bravery is given to Man, so that he may defend himself.
6. Man must defend himself against his enemies.
7. The enemies are the white men, who come from a far distant region, to conduct war, and are cursed by God.
8. The Europeans, i.e. the Spanish and Portuguese, are such people who are cursed by God.
9. God’s enemies cannot be our friends.
10. God commands, that we exterminate his enemies and go forth to their country, to exterminate them.
11. In order that one cursed by God, for example a Spaniard, be destroyed, one must also lose one’s temporal life, in order to serve the eternal.
12. Whoever speaks with a European or understands their language, shall be condemned to the infernal fire.
13. Whoever kills a European, will become blessed.
14. Whoever closes a day without having performed a deed of hatred and cursing against a European shall be condemned to the eternal fire.
15. God permits him, who despises temporal goods and is always ready to fight against the friends with the Europeans, shall be blessed.
16. Whoever perishes in an encounter with the Europeans, shall be blessed.
17. Whoever discharges a cannon against the enemies of God, shall be blessed, and all sins of his life be forgiven him.
18. Whoever, at great danger of death, be the cause, of reconquest of a castle and fortress, which is thus possessed illegitimately, he shall have, from among all the women of the heavens, a very beautiful wife in Paradise.
19. Whoever be the cause, that our empire extend beyond its borders, he shall have four very beautiful wives among all God’s daughters.
20. Whoever be the cause, that our weapons extend to Europe, he shall have many beautiful maidens in Paradise.
21. Whoever is devoted to the fruit of the earth, he shall enjoy no fruit of the heavens.
22. Whoever fathers more children, he will have more glory in heaven.
23. Whoever drinks wine, he will not come into heaven’s kingdom.
24. Whoever does not obey his Kau and is not humble, shall come into Hell.
25. The Kau are the sons of God, who come out of the heavens[44] over Europe, that they help the people against the enemies of God.
26. The Kau are the angels of God, who descended to the people, to teach them how one comes into heaven, and the art to destroy the enemy of God.
27. One must give to the Kaus all fruits of the land and all labor of mankind, so that they make use of the same, to destroy the people who are the friends of the devil.
28. Whoever dies in disgrace of his Kau, shall not be blessed.
29. Whoever touches the highest Kau, will be blessed.
30. Every man be subservient to his Kau, and go wherever he tells him to go, and give him what he demands, and do what he commands.
31. Men are in the world to fight with the devil and his friends, so that they come into heaven’s kingdom, where joy and pleasure are eternal, which no man’s heart can grasp.

Sitting Bull, the Arapaho Apostle

The first Ghost dance on Walker Lake reservation took place in January 1889.[45] The doctrine spread almost simultaneously from the Paiute in Nevada, Oregon and the Ute from Utah, eastern neighbours of the Paiute and the Bannocks, northern neighbours of the Paiute.

The Arapaho are marked in smaller font below the Cheyenne, the Bannock are marked in smaller font north of the Paiute and Shoshone. Also note Caddo, Wichita and Kiowa.

Mooney writes:[46]

“The first direct knowledge of the messiah and the Ghost dance came to the northern Arapaho in Wyoming, through Nakash, ‘Sage’, who, with several Shoshoni, visited the messiah [at Walker Lake] in the early spring of 1889, and on his return brought back to his people the first songs of the dance…The Ghost dance was at once inaugurated among the Shoshoni and northern Arapaho. In the summer of the same year the first rumors of the new redeemer reached the southern Arapaho and Cheyenne in Oklahoma, through the medium of letters written by returned pupils of eastern government schools.

…the excitement grew until the close of the year 1889, when a large delegation, including Sioux, northern Cheyenne, and northern Arapaho, crossed the mountains to the Paiute country to see and talk with the messiah. Among the Sioux delegates were Short Bull, Fire Thunder, and Kicking Bear…Among the Cheyenne were Porcupine…The Arapaho representatives were Sitting Bull and Friday…According to the statement of Nakash they had a five days’ conference with the messiah, who at one time went into a trance, but his visitors did not”

[Note: Sitting Bull the Arapaho apostle of the Ghost Dance is not to be confused with the more famous Sitting Bull the Sioux medicine-man who also lived during this time and was implicated in the Ghost Dance politics during the Sioux outbreak of 1890. When the name Sitting Bull is mentioned in this paper it should be assumed that it is in reference to the Arapaho apostle unless otherwise stated.]

As a result of this, the first Ghost dance in the south among the Arapaho was inaugurated April 1890 and among the Cheyenne in the summer of 1890.

Mooney continues:[47]

“For several years the old Indian dances had been nearly obsolete with these tribes, but as the new religion meant a revival of the Indian idea they soon became common again, with the exception of the war dance and others of that kind which were strictly prohibited by the messiah.

From this time the Ghost dance grew in fervor and frequently among the Arapaho and Cheyenne. In almost every camp the dance would be held two or three times a week, beginning about sunset and often continuing until daylight. The excitement reached fever heat in September, 1890, when Sitting Bull came down from the northern Arapaho to instruct the southern tribes in the doctrine and ceremony.

At a great Ghost dance held on South Canadian river, about 2 miles [from]…Darlington, Oklahoma, it was estimated that 3,000 Indians were present, including nearly all of the Arapaho and Cheyenne, with a number of Caddo, Wichita, Kiowa, and others. The first trances of the Ghost dance among the southern tribes occurred at this time through the medium of Sitting Bull…

As Siting Bull was the great apostle of the Ghost dance among the southern tribes, being regarded almost in the same light as the messiah himself…He…speaks only his native language, but converses with ease in the universal sign language of the plains. It was chiefly by means of this sign language that he instructed his disciples among the Caddo, Wichita, and Kiowa…Since the failure of his predictions, especially with regard to the recovery of the ceded reservation, he has fallen from his high estate…the first trances in the southern Ghost dance occurred at the great dance held near the Cheyenne and Arapaho agency under the auspices of Sitting Bull in September, 1890. On this occasion Cheyenne and Arapaho, Caddo, Wichita, Kiowa, and Apache to the number of perhaps 3,000 assembled, and remained together for about two weeks, dancing very night until daylight. This was the largest Ghost dance ever held in the south. After the dances had been held for two or three nights Sitting Bull announced that at the next one he would perform a great wonder in the sight of all the people… Nothing unusual occurred for several hours until the dancers had gradually worked themselves up to a high state of excitement, when Sitting Bull stepped into the circle, and going up close in front of a young Arapaho woman, he began to make hypnotic passes before her face with the eagle feather. In a few seconds she became rigid and then fell to the ground unconscious. Sitting Bull then turned his attention to another and another, and the same thing happened to each in turn until nearly a hundred were stretched out on the ground at once. As usual in the trances some lay thus for a long time, and others recovered sooner, but none were disturbed [moved in position], as Sitting Bull told the dancers that these were now beholding happy visions of the spirit world…and from that time the Ghost dance was naturalized in the south and developed rapidly along new lines. Each succeeding dance resulted in other visions and new songs, and from time to time other hypnotists arose, until almost every camp had its own.

…About this time a commission arrived to treat with the Cheyenne and Arapaho for the sale of their reservation. The Indians were much divided in opinion, the great majority opposing any sale whatsoever, even of their claim in the Cherokee strip, which they believed was all that the agreement was intended to cover. While the debate was in progress Left Hand, chief of the Arapaho, went to Sitting Bull and asked his opinion on the matter. Sitting Bull advised him to sell for what they could get, as they had need of the money, and in a short time the messiah would come and restore the land to them. On this advice Left Hand signed the agreement, in the face of threats from those opposed to it, and his example was followed by nearly all of his tribe. This incident shows how thoroughly Sitting Bull and the other Arapaho believed in the new doctrine. In view of the misery that has come to these tribes from the sale of their reservation, it is sad to think that they could have so deceived themselves by false hopes of divine interposition. A large party of the Cheyenne refused to have anything to do with the sale or to countenance the transaction by accepting their share of the purchase money, even after the whites had taken possession of the lands.

…The dance constantly gathered strength among the Arapaho and Cheyenne, and spread rapidly to the neighbouring tribes, Sitting Bull himself being the high priest and chief propagandist…In accord with the messiah’s instructions the two tribes [Cheyenne and Arapaho] now changed their manner of dancing from frequent small dances at each camp at irregular intervals to larger dances participated in by several camps together at regular intervals of six weeks, each dance continuing for five consecutive days…The opening of the reservation and the influx of the whites served to intensify the religious fervor of the Indians, who were now more than ever made to feel their dependent and helpless condition. It was impossible, however, that the intense mental strain could endure forever, and after the failure of the predictions on the appointed dates the wild excitement gradually cooled and crystallized into a fixed but tranquil expectation of ultimate happiness under the old conditions in another world.”

Sitting Bull the Arapaho apostle.

The best account of the dance itself and of the ghost shirt, what would be specifically adopted by the Sioux, is given by Mrs. Z.A. Parker, at that time a teacher on the Pine Ridge reservation, writing of a Ghost dance observed by her on White Clay creek, on June 20, 1890:[48]

“…Presently we saw over three hundred tents placed in a circle, with a large pine tree in the center, which was covered with strips of cloth of various colors, eagle feathers, stuffed birds, claws, and horns – all offerings to the Great Spirit. The ceremonies had just begun. In the center, around the tree, were gathered their medicine-men; also those who had been so fortunate as to have had visions and in them had seen and talked with friends who had died…I think they wore the ghost shirt or ghost dress for the first time that day. I noticed that these were all new and were worn by about seventy men and forty women…

As the crowd gathered about the tree the high priest, or master of ceremonies, began his address, giving them directions as to the chant and other matters. After he had spoken for about fifteen minutes they arose and formed in a circle. As nearly as I could count, there were between three and four hundred persons. One stood directly behind another, each with his hands on his neighbor’s shoulders. After walking about a few times, chanting, ‘Father, I come,’ they stopped marching, but remained in the circle, and set up the most fearful, heart-piercing wails I ever heard – crying, moaning, groaning, and shrieking out their grief, and naming over their departed friends and relatives, at the same time taking up handfuls of dust at their feet, washing their hands in it, and throwing it over their heads. Finally, they raised their eyes to heaven, their hands clasped high above their heads, and stood straight and perfectly still, invoking the power of the Great Spirit to allow them to see and talk with their people who had died. This ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes, when they all sat down where they were and listened to another address…words of encouragement and assurance of the coming messiah.

When they arose again, they enlarged the circle by facing toward the center, taking hold of hands…And now the most intense excitement began. They would go as fast as they could, their hands moving from side to side, their bodies swaying, their arms, with hands gripped tightly in their neighbor’s, swinging back and forth with all their might. If one, more weak and frail, came near falling, he would be jerked up and into position until tired nature gave away. The ground had been worked and worn by many feet, until the fine, flour-like dust lay light and loose to the depth of two or three inches. The wind, which had increased, would sometimes take it up, enveloping the dancers and hiding them from view. In the ring were men, women, and children; the strong and robust, the weak consumptive, and those near to death’s door. They believed those who were sick would be cured by joining in the dance and losing consciousness. From the beginning they chanted, to a monotonous tune, the words –

Father, I come;
Mother, I come;
Brother, I come;
Father, give us back our arrows.

All of which they would repeat over and over again until first one and then another would break from the ring and stagger away and fall down. One woman fell a few feet from me. She came toward us, her hair flying over her face, which was purple, looking as if the blood would burst through; her hands and arms moving wildly; every breath a pant and a groan; and she fell on her back, and went down like a log. I stepped up to her as she lay there motionless, but with every muscle twitching and quivering. She seemed to be perfectly unconscious…Some told me afterward that they had a sensation as if the ground were rising towards them and would strike them in the face. Others drop where they stood. One woman fell directly into the ring, and her husband stepped out and stood over her to prevent them from trampling upon her. No one ever disturbed those who fell or took any notice of them except to keep the crowd away.

They kept up dancing until fully 100 person were lying unconscious. Then they stopped and seated themselves in a circle, and as each one recovered from his trance he was brought to the center of the ring to relate his experience. Each told his story to the medicine-man and he shouted it to the crowd…After resting for a time they would go through the same performance, perhaps three times a day. They practiced fasting, and every morning those who joined the dance were obliged to immerse themselves in the creek. (Comr.,44.)”

Mooney writes:[49]

“The most important feature of the Ghost dance, and the secret of the trances, is hypnotism. It has been hastily assumed that hypnotic knowledge and ability belong only to an overripe civilization, such as that of India and ancient Egypt, or to the most modern period of scientific investigation…Numerous references in the works of the early Jesuit missionaries…would indicate that hypnotic ability no less than sleight of hand dexterity formed part of the medicine-man’s equipment from the Saint Lawrence to the Gulf…It can not be said that the Indian priests understand the phenomenon, for they ascribe it to a supernatural cause, but they know how to produce the effect, as I have witnessed hundreds of times.

…Not every leader in the Ghost dance is able to bring about the hypnotic sleep, but anyone may try who feels so inspired. Excepting the seven chosen ones who start the songs there is no priesthood in the dance, the authority of such men as Sitting Bull…being due to the voluntary recognition of their superior ability or interest in the matter. Any man or woman who has been in a trance, and has thus, derived inspiration from the other world, is at liberty to go within the circle and endeavor to bring others to the trance…

We shall now describe the hypnotic process as used by the operators, with the various stages of the trance. The hypnotist, usually a man, stands within the ring, holding in his hand an eagle feather or a scarf or handkerchief [reminiscent of the Shakers of Puget Sound[50]]…As the dancers circle around singing the songs in time with the dance step the excitement increases until the more sensitive ones are visibly affected. In order to hasten the result certain songs are sung to quicker time[51]…The first indication that [a subject, referred to here as a woman] is being affected is a slight muscular tremor, distinctly felt by her two partners who hold her hands on either side [recall everyone is holding hands in a circle]. The medicine-man is on the watch, and as soon as he notices the woman’s condition he comes over and stands immediately in front of her, looking intently into her face and whirling the feather or the handkerchief, or both, rapidly in front of her eyes, moving slowly around with the dancers at the same time, but constantly facing the woman. All this time he keeps up a series of sharp exclamations, Hu! Hu! Hu! Like the rapid breathing of an exhausted runner. From time to time he changes the motion of the feather or handkerchief from a whirling to a rapid up and down movement in front of her eyes. For a while the woman continues to move around with the circle of dancers, singing the song with the others, but usually before the circuit is completed she loses control of herself entirely, and, breaking away from the partners who have hold of her hands on either side, she staggers into the ring, while the circle at once closes up again behind her. She is now standing before the medicine-man, who gives his whole attention to her, whirling the feather swiftly in front of her yes, waving his hands before her face as though fanning her, and drawing his hand slowly from the level of her eyes away to one side or upward into the arid, while her gaze follows it with a fixed stare. All the time he keeps up the Hu! Hu! Hu! While the song and dance go on around them without a pause. For a few minutes she continues to repeat the words of the song and keep time with the step, but in a staggering, drunken fashion. Then the words become unintelligible sounds, and her movements violently spasmodic, until at last she becomes rigid, with her eyes shut or fixed and staring, and stands thus uttering low pitiful moans…The subject may retain this fixed, immovable posture for an indefinite time, but at last falls heavily to the ground, unconscious and motionless. The dance and the song never stop, but as soon as the woman falls the medicine-man gives his attention to another subject among the dancers. The first one may lie unconscious for ten or twenty minutes or sometimes for hours, but no one goes near to disturb her, as her soul is now communing with the spirit world. At last consciousness gradually returns. A violent tremor seizes her body as in the beginning of the fit….Her whole form trembles violently, but at last she rises to her feet…All the phenomena of recovery, except rigidity, occur in direct reverse of those which precede unconsciousness.

…In many instances the hypnotized person spins around for minutes at a time like a dervish, or whirls the arms with apparently impossible speed, or assumes and retains until the final fall in the most uncomfortable position which it would be impossible to keep for any length of time under normal conditions.”

At the time of his writing Mooney had received a report that about 146,000 Indians west of Missouri river were adherent to the Ghost dance and messiah doctrine.

All of this wouldn’t be as troubling if it wasn’t during a time of critical food shortage amongst especially the prairie tribes who had completely relied on the hunting of buffalo (which were driven to extinction in only a few years by certain whites) to sustain themselves. This was only made further excruciating by the fact that the treaties signed with the American government in agreement to cede land for peace, food rations and other resources were constantly violated, with food rations severely short of their promised quotas.

The fact that a religion emerged during this period of utter desperation and helplessness that encouraged a delusional belief in invulnerability, the return of the dead, the return of the buffalo and immortality is suspect to say the least in its intentions. It is also rather suspect that the success of spreading the word of the Ghost Dance appears to have entirely relied on the letters written by eastern government schools.

Mooney writes:[52]

“As Selwyn was postmaster, the Indians who could not read usually brought their letters to him to read for them, so that he was thus in position to get accurate knowledge of the extent and nature of the excitement. It may be remarked here that, under present conditions, when the various tribes are isolated upon widely separated reservations, the Ghost dance could never have become so widespread, and would probably have died out within a year of its inception, had it not been for the efficient aid it received from the returned pupils of various eastern government schools, who conducted the sacred correspondence for their friends at the different agencies, acted as interpreters for the delegates to the messiah, and in various ways assumed the leadership and conduct of the dance.”

The climax would be reached in December 1890 with the killing of Sitting Bull (the Sioux medicine-man, a war hero who had fought in the Sioux war against General Custer which led to his defeat at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876), and the arrest of Short Bull, a few weeks before the massacre at Wounded Knee. The Sioux outbreak was largely due to the frenzy that had been building up through the instigation of the Ghost Dance, and the tragedy at Wounded Knee would never have occurred in the way it did if the Sioux did not hold the delusional belief that their ghost shirts were impenetrable to the white man’s bullet and the belief that there was to be a divine intervention to stop the white man’s encroachment. [Part 3 of this series will discuss the events that led to the Sioux Outbreak and the massacre at Wounded Knee.]

In fact, there is reason to believe that the concept for the ghost shirt did not originate amongst the Indians but rather the Mormons themselves, Mooney writes:[53]

“The protective idea in connection with the ghost shirt does not seem to be aboriginal. The Indian warrior habitually went into battle naked above the waist…To cover the body in battle was not in accordance with Indian usage, which demanded that the warrior should be as free and unincumbered in movement as possible. The so-called ‘war-shirt’ was worn chiefly in ceremonial dress parades and only rarely on the warpath.

…The author is strongly inclined to the opinion that the idea of an invulnerable sacred garment is not original with the Indians, but, like several other important points pertaining to the Ghost-dance doctrine, is a practical adaptation by them of ideas derived from contact with some sectarian body among the whites. It may have been suggested by the ‘endowment robe’ of the Mormons, a seamless garment of white muslin adorned with symbolic figures, which is worn by their initiates as the most sacred badge of their father, and by many of the believers is supposed to render the wearer invulnerable. The Mormons have always manifested a particular interest in the Indians, whom they regard as the Lamanites of their sacred writings, and hence have made special efforts for their evangelization, with the result that a considerable number of the neighbouring tribes of Ute, Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshoni have been received into the Mormon church and invested with the endowment robe.” [emphasis added]

Recall Wovoka, the messiah, wore a white robe with stripes according to Porcupine’s account, and recall from Part I of this series, that Smohalla the Dreamer prophet who also had contact with the Mormons and wore a “priest’s gown” which was a “white garment with a colored stripe down the back.”

Tecumseh had also been led to believe that his warriors were invulnerable to the white man’s bullets in 1811 against Harrison’s forces by his younger brother the Shawnee prophet, a follower of the Master of Life religion, a religion who had its origin surrounded by Jesuit influence.[54] Coincidence?

It should also be noted that the Bureau of Ethnology itself, Mooney’s employer, was conducting a focused study on the Sioux and their creation myths several years before the Ghost Dance phenomenon.

The Sioux are amongst the most warrior-like of the Indian tribes, [;
W]was it decided that the Sioux would be more easily and effectively defeated through cultural/spiritual warfare?

As we will see in Part 3 of this series, the Scottish Rite and the Society for Psychical Research are deeply involved in the origins and mandate of the Bureau of Ethnology, which in turn would shape what would become the “science” of modern anthropology in the 20^th century.

As for the great messiah himself, when Mooney last heard of Wovoka, he was on exhibition as an attraction at the Midwinter fair in San Francisco.[55]

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The Dancing Mania

In 1374 an epidemic of maniacal religious dancing broke out on the lower Rhine and spread rapidly over Germany, the Netherlands, and into France. The victims of the mania claimed to dance in honor of Saint John. Men and women went about dancing hand in hand, in pairs, or in a circle, on the streets, in the churches, at their homes, or wherever they might be, hour after hour without rest until they fell into convulsions. While dancing they sang doggerel verses in honor of Saint John and uttered unintelligible cries.  Of course they saw visions. At last whole companies of these crazy fanatics, men, women, and children, went dancing through the country; along public roads, and into the cities, until the clergy felt compelled to interfere, and cured the dancers by exorcising the evil spirits that moved them. In the fifteenth century the epidemic broke out again. The dancers were now formed into division by the clergy and sent to the church of Saint Vitus at Rotestein, where prayers were said for them, and they were led in procession around the altar and dismissed cured. Hence the name of Saint Vitus’ dance given to one variety of abnormal muscular tremor.[56]

The pilgrimage of the epileptics to the Church at Molenbeek, by Pieter Bruegel The Elder in 1642. (Rijksmuseum)

In 1844, J.F.C. Hecker describes the hysterical dancing mania which occurred in Europe in the fourteenth century in his “The Epidemics of the Middles Ages”:

“The effects of the Black Death had not yet subsided, and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of hellish superstition...It was called the Dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed.

…[The dancers] exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They fanned circles hand in hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion…While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses , but were haunted by visions…Others , during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.”

By no coincidence this was a subject of great interest to the spiritual father of Tavistock and MK-Ultra, William Sargant who wrote in his “Battle for the Mind”:[57]

“The disease soon spread from Germany to Belgium. Many priests tried to disperse the symptoms by means of exorcism, attributing the disease to diabolic possession, despite the religious character of the ideas held by many of the victims. The streets of Metz were said to have been filled at one time with eleven hundred dancers.

…Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the dancing mania became the subject of medical interest by Paracelsus and others, the Church alone was considered capable of treating it. It is fascinating to see Hecker anticipating modern findings in recording that the most reliable cure found was to keep the patient dancing on until the point of total exhaustion and collapse was reached:

‘Roaring and foaming as they were, the bystanders could only succeed in restraining them by placing benches and chairs in their way, so that, by the high leaps they were thus tempted to take, their strength might be exhausted. As soon as this was the case, they fell as it were lifeless to the ground, and, by very slow degrees, again recovered their strength…The cure effected by these stormy attacks was in many cases so perfect that some patients returned to the factory or the plough as if nothing had happened.’

The Black Death would also have created widespread nervous depression. But what concerns us here is that the most effective treatment found was to carry such states of abnormal excitement to terminal exhaustion, after which the symptoms would disperse of themselves.

‘On this account the magistrates hired musicians for the purpose of carrying the St. Vitus’s dancers so much the quicker through the attacks, and directed that athletic men should be sent among them in order to complete the exhaustion, which had been often observed to produce a good effect’.”

Sargant continues:[58]

“Hecker, who wrote over a century ago, seems to have had a far clearer insight into the physiological mechanisms of such group reactions than some modern theorists. He had grasped the importance of what psychologists now call ‘transference’; and in a special chapter entitled ‘Sympathy’ stressed the existence in all such movements of an increased state of suggestibility and the presence of an instinct, which connects individuals with the general body, which embraces with equal force, reason and folly, good and evil, and diminishes the praise of virtue as well as the criminality of vice.

He [Hecker] goes on to point out the similarity between this and the first efforts of the infant mind:

‘which arc in great measure based on imitation…To this instinct of imitation when it exists in its highest degree, is also united a loss of all power over the will, which occurs as soon as the impression on the senses has become firmly established, producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent.’

After thus anticipating Pavlov’s comparison of hypnotic phenomena in human beings and animals, Hecker claims that his findings:

‘…place the self-independence of the greater portion of mankind in a very doubtful light, and account for their union into a social whole. Still more nearly allied to morbid sympathy ... is the diffusion of violent excitements, especially those of a religious or political character, which have so powerfully agitated nations of ancient and modern times, and which may, after an incipient compliance, pass into a total loss of will-power and an actual disease of the mind.’

From a study of these epidemics, Hecker had come to understand pretty well some of the basic mechanics behind what we now call ‘brain-washing’ and ‘thought control’.” [emphasis added]

Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing

“In 1859…a Protestant priest, the Rev. George Salmon, later Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, had warned the Catholic writers, and especially the Jesuits of his day, that they could not afford to be too critical of the excitatory methods used by other sects:

‘And the person, perhaps, who best understood the art of exciting religious emotion, and who reduced it to a regular system, was the founder of the order of Jesuits. Any person who knows anything of the system of spiritual exercises which he invented, how the disciples in their retreats, assembled together in a darkened chapel have their feelings worked up by ejaculations gradually lengthening into powerful descriptions, first, of the punishment due to sin, of the torments of hell and purgatory, then of the love of God, of the sufferings of the Saviour, the tenderness of the Virgin; how the emotion heightens as the leader of the meditation proceeds, and spreads by sympathetic contagion from one to the other: — anyone who knows anything of this must be aware that the Roman Catholic Church has nothing to learn from anything which the most enthusiastic sects of Protestants have invented’.”

-          William Sargant “Battle for the Mind”

In 1957, William Sargant published the book “Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing.” Within the book he has a chapter on “Techniques of Religious Conversion” which focuses on the methods of sudden conversion that is common to all religions and how this relates to the physiology of the brain.

Sargant writes:[59]

“It has also been pointed out that those who wish to disperse wrong beliefs and undesirable behaviour patterns and afterwards implant saner beliefs and attitude are more likely to achieve success if they can first induce some degree of nervous tension or stir up sufficient feelings of anger or anxiety to secure the person’s undivided attention and possibly increase his suggestibility. By increasing or prolonging stresses in various ways, or inducing physical debilitation, a more thorough alteration of the person’s thinking processes may be achieved. The immediate effect of such treatment is, usually, to impair judgment and increase suggestibility; and though when the tension is removed the suggestibility likewise diminishes, yet ideas implanted while it lasted may remain. If the stress or the physical debilitation, or both, are carried one stage further, it may happen that patterns of thought and behaviour, especially those of recent acquisition, become disrupted. New patterns can then be substituted, or suppressed patterns allowed to re-assert themselves; or the subject may begin to think and act in ways that precisely contradict his former ones.

…With these facts in mind, one can hope to understand more clearly the physiological mechanisms at work in some types of sudden religious conversion…” [emphasis added]

Sargant goes on to discuss the work of religious conversion and healing as reported by John Wesley in his Journal of 1739. John Wesley (1703-1791) was a British evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.

Wesley writes in 1739:

“I will show you him that was a lion till then, and is now a lamb; him that was a drunkard, and is now extremely sober; the whore-monger that was, who now abhors the very ‘garment spotted by the flesh’.”[60]

Sargant writes:[61]

“Wesley and his followers attributed the phenomenon to the intervention of the Holy Ghost…As will be shown later, almost identical physiological and psychological phenomena may result from religious healing methods and conversion techniques, equally in the most primitive and the more highly civilized cultures. They may be adduced as convincing proofs of the truth of whatever religious or philosophic beliefs are invoked. But since those beliefs are often logically irreconcilable with each other, and since the similarity of the physiological and psychological phenomena produced by their invocation are all that they may have in common – we find ourselves confront with a mechanistic principle deserving the most careful examination.

Just as we have hitherto selected Pavlov’s experiments on dogs to illustrate one aspect of our larger problem, and war neuroses of World War II to illustrate another, so here John Wesley’s methods and results will be selected as typical of those seen in an effective and socially valuable religious setting. Nobody can doubt their religious efficiency or social value, for his preaching converted people by the thousands, and he also built up an efficient system for perpetuating these beliefs.

…It is now generally admitted that he made great numbers of ordinary English people think less about their material well-being than their spiritual salvation, thus fortifying them, at a critical period of the French Revolution, against the dangerous materialistic teachings of Tom Paine. The powerful influence of the Methodist Revival still permeates England in the form of its ‘Nonconformist conscience.’

…Wesley’s great success was due to his findings that such habits were most easily implanted or eradicated by a tremendous assault on the emotions…All evidence goes to show that there  can be no new Protestant Revival while the policy continues of appealing mainly to adult intelligence and reason and until Church leaders consent to take more advantage of the normal person’s emotional mechanism for disrupting old behaviour patterns and implanting new.” [emphasis added]

In fact, Wesley and his brother Charles had both suffered from a state of severe mental depression, but both brothers experienced a sudden religious conversion, over the span of just three days, under Peter Böhler, a Moravian missionary. Such techniques of sudden religious conversion over the span of just a few days are very much reminiscent of the Jesuits.[62]

Sargant continues:

“Once habituated to the new pattern of thought, John Wesley set about implanting it in others. With the help of his brother Charles, whose hymns were addressed to the religious emotions rather than the intelligence, he hit upon an extremely effective technique of conversion – a technique which is used not only in many other successful religions but in modern political warfare.

First of all, Wesley would create high emotional tension in his potential converts. He found it easy to convince large audiences of that period that a failure to achieve salvation would necessarily condemn them to hellfire for ever and ever. The immediate acceptance of an escape from such a ghastly fate was then very strongly urged on the ground that anybody who left the meeting ‘unchanged’ and met with a sudden fatal accident before he had accepted his salvation, would pass straight into the fiery furnace. This sense of urgency increased the prevailing anxiety which, as suggestibility increased, could infect the whole group.

Fear of everlasting hell, which was as real to Wesley’s own mind as the houses and fields in which he preached, affected the nervous system of his hearers very much as fear of death by drowning did Pavlov’s dogs in the Leningrad flood.” [emphasis added]

Wesley fills his Journal with day-to-day notes on the results of his preaching:[63]

“While I was speaking one before me dropped down as dead, and presently a second and a third. Five others sunk down in half and hour, most of whom were in violent agonies. The ‘pains as of hell came about them, the snares of death overtook them’. In their trouble we called upon the Lord, and He gave us an answer of peace. One indeed continued an hour in strong pain, and one or two more for three days; but the rest were greatly comforted in that hour, and went away rejoicing and praising God.”

In another example, John Wesley records the effects of his preaching at Newgate Prison to an audience of prisoners who had been sentenced to death and were expected soon to be hanged, Wesley writes:[64]

“Immediately one, and another, and another sunk to the earth; they dropped on every side as thunderstruck. One of them cried aloud. We besought God in her behalf, and He turned her heaviness to joy. A second being in the same agony, we called upon God for her also; and He spoke peace unto her soul…One was so wounded by the sword of the Spirit that you would have imagined she could not live a moment. But immediately His abundant kindness was showed, and she loudly sang of His righteousness.”

Sargant writes:[65]

“With such preaching methods it is not enough to disrupt previous patterns of behaviour by emotional assaults on the brain; one must also provide an escape from the induced mental stress.”

That is, a promise of salvation, whether it be on earth or in the afterlife.

Sargant writes:[66]

“…feelings of divine possession and subsequent conversion to a religious faith can be helped on by the use of many types of physiological stimuli. It should be more widely known that electrical recordings of the human brain show that it is particularly sensitive to rhythmic stimulation by percussion and bright light among other things and certain rates of rhythm can build up recordable abnormalities of brain function and explosive states of tension sufficient even to produce convulsive fits in predisposed subjects. Some people can be persuaded to dance in time with such rhythms until they collapse in exhaustion. Furthermore, it is easier to disorganize the normal function of the brain by attacking it simultaneously with several strong rhythms played in different tempos. This leads on to protective inhibition either rapidly in the weak inhibitory temperament or after a prolonged period of excitement in the strong excitatory one.

Rhythmic drumming is found in the ceremonies of many primitive religions all over the world. The accompanying excitement and dancing is also maintained until the same point of physical and emotional collapse has been reached. Alcohol and other drugs are often used to heighten the excitement of religious dancers and this too hastens the breakdown, after which feelings of being freed from sin and evil dispositions, and of starting life anew, may occur. Belief in divine possession is very common at such times, and so is the mystical trance – essentially similar to that experienced by so many Christians and other saints in cramped cells or under martyrdom…

The Voodoo cult in Haiti shows with what ease suggestibility can be increased by subjecting the brain to sever physiological stresses. Voodoo has numerous deities, or loa, some of them African tribal gods, brought to the West Indies by slaves, some of them saints whom Catholic priests [Jesuits[67]] later taught the slaves to invoke. The loa are believed to descend and take possession of a person, usually while he or she is dancing to the drums…

The case of men and women who have been worked up into a state of suggestibility by Voodoo drumming shows the power of such methods…A Voodoo priest increases excitement and suggestibility by altering the loudness and rhythms of the drums…the preacher used the tempo and volume of singing and hand-clapping to intensify the religious enthusiasm…After a terminal collapse into stupor, both groups of participants may awake with a sense of spiritual rebirth.” [emphasis added]

Sargant remarks:[68] “Somerset Maugham in his book Don Fernando says this about their founder St. Ignatius’s famous book Spiritual Exercises , used by Jesuits as their training manual:

‘When you look at the exercises as a whole you cannot but observe how marvellously they are devised to effect their object…It is said that the result of the first week is to reduce the neophyte to utter prostration. Contrition saddens, shame and fear harrow him. Not only is he terrified by the frightful pictures on which his mind has dwelt, he has been weakened by lack of food and exhausted by want of sleep. He has been brought to such despair that he does not know where to fly for relief. Then a new ideal is set before him, the ideal of Christ; and to this, his will broken, he is led to sacrifice himself with a joyful heart…The Spiritual Exercises are the most wonderful method that has ever been devised to gain control over that vagabond, unstable and wilful thing, the soul of man’.”

---

[As already mentioned Part 3 of this series will discuss the events leading to the Sioux outbreak of 1890 and the massacre at Wounded Knee. It will also discuss the Bureau of Ethnology and its origins in the Scottish Rite and the Society for Psychical Research. Later the relevance of modern anthropology will be discussed, including the work of Margaret Mead, and her husband Gregory Bateson who worked directly with MK Ultra. As well as the work of William Sargant and Aldous Huxley on MK Ultra and the counter-culture movement.]

Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

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Footnotes:

[1] Moore, Chieko; Hale, Hester Anne (2006). Benjamin Harrison: Centennial President. Nova Publishers.

[2] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896)

[3] Ibid, pg. 789

[4] Cynthia Chung, The Shaping of a World Religion: From Jesuits, Freemasons & Anthropologists to MK Ultra & the Counter-Culture Movement PART I.

[5] Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumseh and of his brother the Prophet (1841).

[6] Cynthia Chung, The Shaping of a World Religion: From Jesuits, Freemasons & Anthropologists to MK Ultra & the Counter-Culture Movement PART I.

[7] It should be noted that the Jesuits were known to use the foretelling of eclipses to impress the pagan peoples from all around the world. Bertrand Russell writes in his The Scientific Outlook: “The Chinese Emperors repeatedly refrained from persecuting the Jesuits because the latter were in the right as to the dates of eclipses when the Chinese astronomers were in the wrong.” It was pretty much a guarantee in such situations that if one was seen as having the ability to predict an eclipse, such a person was pretty much a shoo-in in being regarded with supernatural or divine powers. It was guaranteed to sky-rocket anyone to “prophet” status.

[8] Cynthia Chung, The Shaping of a World Religion: From Jesuits, Freemasons & Anthropologists to MK Ultra & the Counter-Culture Movement PART I.

[9] Recall from Part I the dawn myth, a very old prophecy shared amongst the indigenous people of the Americas, which is said to have originated in the south and dates as far back as the period of the Aztecs (1300-1521). This prophecy was foretold by a white man with a flowing beard, “at once a Moses and a messiah” and many were drawn to this story that spoke of the salvation of their people. Over time this prophecy was heard by many including those living further north, until it seemed all had heard of this foretelling of salvation by this god-like man. It is said that he had travelled to them from the east with the morning light and had brought life and joy to the world, only to return to the east with the dawn and that they were destined to wait for him until he would return once again and all would be paradise.

[10] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 701

[11] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 703

[12] Ibid, pg. 704

[13] Ibid, pg. 704

[14] Ibid, pg. 703-704

[15] See Part I for a detailed overview of this.

[16] See Part I for details on Smohalla the Dreamer prophet and John Slocum of the Shakers of Puget Sound.

[17] Ibid

[18] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 765, 771

[19] Ibid, pg. 772

[20] Ibid, pg. 773

[21] Ibid, pg. 784-785

[22] https://nationalheritagemuseum.typepad.com/library_and_archives/joseph-smith/

[23] The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter-Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter-Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to 421 AD and during an interlude dated by the text to the unspecified time of the Tower of Babel. Source: Wikipedia

[24] Book of Mormon 9:32

[25] Hardy, Grant (2010). Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press.

[26] Davis, William L. (2020). Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

[27] Ashurst-McGee, Mark (Summer 2012). "Zion in America: The Origins of Mormon Constitutionalism". Journal of Mormon History. 38 (3): 90–101.

[28] Underwood, Grant (1993). The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

[29] Hickman, Jared (September 2014). "The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse". American Literature. 86 (3): 429–461.

[30] Brodie, Fawn M. (1971). No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (2nd ed.). New York: Knopf..

[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_and_the_criminal_justice_system

[32] Quinn, D. Michael (1994). The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. Salt Lake City: Signature Books.

[33] Allen, James B. (1966), "The Significance of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Thought", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1 (3): 29,

[34] "Legal Trials of Joseph Smith". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. MacMillan. 1992. p. 1346. Archived from the original on 16 Nov 2022 – via BYU.edu.

[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_and_the_criminal_justice_system

[36] Bentley, Joseph I. (1992). "Smith, Joseph: Legal Trials of Joseph Smith". In Ludlow, Daniel H (ed.). Encyclopedia of Mormonism. New York: Macmillan Publishers. pp. 1346–1348.

[37] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg.792-793

[38] This is a clear reference to the Messiah, Wovoka, of the Ghost Dance religions’ meeting with several Indian tribes at Walker Lake the spring of 1890 to select his apostles, as the account of Porcupine and others support, and which the pamphlet again clearly references further below in point #5 which is underlined.

[39] It is being claimed here that the prophecy of the millennial new dawn will occur October 1892, a full 400 years after the first Spanish expedition to the Americas.

[40] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 793-796

[41] Recall from Part 1, Smohalla the Dreamer Prophet who also had contact with the Mormons and wore a “priest’s gown” which was a “white garment with a colored stripe down the back.”

[42] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 658

[43] Recall from Part I of this series that Smohalla the Dreamer Prophet also carried around a book with an unknown code that he would refer to for information on eclipses and prophecies.

[44] The concept of the Kau has overlap with the Book of Mormon theology of the age of the prophets and angels, as well as Joseph Smith’s promoting the idea that the righteous people will become gods in the afterlife, and a secular institution to govern the Millennial kingdom, as earlier discussed in this paper. 

[45] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 802

[46] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 894

[47] Ibid, pg. 895-901

[48] Ibid, pg. 916

[49] Ibid, pg. 922

[50] See Part I of this series concerning the Shakers of Puget Sound.

[51] Recall the Jesuit techniques discussed in Part I of this series.

[52] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg. 819

[53] Ibid, pg. 789

[54] Recall from Part I of this series Pontiac’s prophecy and his close relations the Jesuits.

[55] James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion (1896), pg.927

[56] Schaff, Religious Encyclopedia

[57] William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957), pg. 119

[58] Ibid, pg. 121

[59] William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957), pg. 74

[60] John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, Vol II. Standard edition edited by N. Curnock – Charles H. Kelly, London; 1909-16.

[61] William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957), pg. 76

[62] See Part I.

[63] Wesley’s Journal, Vol II.

[64] Ibid.

[65] William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957), pg. 81

[66] Ibid, pg. 89

[67] See Part I.

[68] William Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957), pg. 146