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SOPHIA OF WISDOM III - SHAKERS 0
SOPHIA OF WISDOM III
THE SOPHIA OF ALL SOPHIA OF WISDOMS
SHAKERS
SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
RE: WHAT MADE THE QUAKERS SHAKE?
ENKI
Well they were eating ATOMIC engery. The first time they ate one they died. And they had to get their daily BLISS or they were dead anyway.
FURNITURE
If you have ever purchased Shaker furniture you will know that a chair can cost up $100,000.00. Because Mother Ann Lee was The God of All Gods and should of been the 1st President of The United States.
There were TIME TRAVELERS who were taking advantage of the situation and of her.
It is like The Kennedy Collection. They were Gods too......
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Shakers
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This article is about the Christian denomination. For other uses, see Shaker (disambiguation).
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The Shakers, a Protestant religious denomination, originated in Manchester, England in 1772 under the leadership of Mother Ann Lee, who moved the 9-person group to the United States in 1774, where they built 19 communal settlements that attracted over the next century some 200,000 converts. Strict believers in celibacy, Shakers maintained their numbers through conversion and adoption of orphans. Turnover was very high; the group reached maximum size of about 6,000 full members in 1850, and now has four members left. [1]
The Shakers of New England should not be confused with the religion of the Indian Shakers of the Pacific Northwest of North America.
Contents [hide]
1 Origin of the name
1.1 First Shaker society
2 Communalism under Joseph Meacham
2.1 Expansion and contraction
3 Communal spiritual family
3.1 Revelations and visions
3.2 Culture of work and further extremities
4 Culture and artifacts
5 Shaker music
6 Modern-day Shakers
7 Shaker Trust
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
[edit] Origin of the name
The name Shakers, originally pejorative, was applied as a mocking description of their rituals of trembling, shouting, dancing, shaking, singing, and glossolalia (speaking in strange and unknown languages). In 1774 Ann Lee pulled together nine of her followers from an English sect known as the Wardleys, which she joined in 1758. They arrived on August 6, 1774 in New York City, and in 1776 the Shakers settled in Niskayuna, New York (then in the township of Watervliet), near Albany, where a unique communal life began to develop and thrive. Lee taught her followers that it is possible to attain perfect holiness. Like her predecessors the Wardleys, she taught that the demonstrations of shaking and trembling were caused by sin being purged from the body by the power of the Holy Spirit, purifying the worshiper. Distinctively, the followers of Mother Ann came to believe that she embodied all the perfections of God in female form.
[edit] First Shaker society
The village was divided into groups or "families" that were named for points on the compass rose. Each house was divided so that men and women did everything separately. They used different staircases, doors and even sat on opposite sides of the room. The men and women were segregated to prevent them from touching one another during the epileptic-like fits that they fell into during worship. The elders would watch over them through the windows, to make sure no physical contact happened.
A spiritualistic revival in the neighboring town of New Lebanon sent many penitents to Watervliet, who accepted Mother Ann's teachings and organized in 1787 (before any formal organization in Watervliet) the New Lebanon Society, the first Shaker Society, at New Lebanon (since 1861 called Mt. Lebanon), Columbia county, New York. The Society at Watervliet, organized immediately afterwards, and the New Lebanon Society formed a bishopric. The Watervliet members, as pacifists and non-jurors, had got into trouble during the American War of Independence; in 1780 the Board of Elders were imprisoned, but all except Mother Ann rose were speedily set free, and she was released in 1781.
[edit] Communalism under Joseph Meacham
Between 1781 and 1783 the Mother, with chosen elders, visited her followers in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. She died in Watervliet, New York on September 8, 1784. James Whittaker was head of the Believers for three years. On his death he was succeeded by Joseph Meacham (1742–1796), who had been a Baptist minister in Enfield, Connecticut, and had, second only to Mother Ann, the spiritual gift of revelation. Under his rule and that of Lucy Wright (1760–1821), who shared the headship with him during his lifetime and then for twenty-five years ruled alone, the organization of the Shakers and, particularly, a rigid communalism (religious communism), began. By 1793 property had been made a "consecrated whole" in the different communities, but a "noncommunal order" also had been established, in which sympathizers with the principles of the Believers lived in families. The Shakers never forbade marriage, but refused to recognize it as a Christian institution since the second coming in the person of Mother Ann, and considered it less perfect than the celibate state. Shaker communities in this period were established in 1790 at Hancock, West Pittsfield, Massachusetts; in 1791 at Harvard, Massachusetts; in 1792 at East Canterbury, New Hampshire (or Shaker Village); and in 1793 at Shirley, Massachusetts; at Enfield, Connecticut (then also known as Shaker Station); at Enfield, New Hampshire (or "Chosen Vale"); at Tyringham, Massachusetts, where the Society was afterwards abandoned, its members joining the communities in Hancock and Enfield; at New Gloucester, Maine (since 1890: "Sabbathday Lake"); and at Alfred, Maine, where, more than anywhere else among the Shakers, spiritualistic healing of the sick was practiced. In Kentucky and Ohio, Shakerism entered after the Cane Ridge, Kentucky revival of 1800–1801, and in 1805–1807 Shaker societies were founded at South Union, Logan county, Kentucky, and Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Mercer County, Kentucky.
[edit] Expansion and contraction
A prominent part in this revival had been taken by Richard McNemar, a Presbyterian, who had broken with his Church because of his Arminian tendencies and had established the quasi-independent Turtle Creek Church. McNemar was won by Shaker missionaries in 1805, and many of his parishioners joined him to form the Union Village community in Turtlecreek Township, Warren County, Ohio, four miles west of Lebanon. McNemar was a favorite of Lucy Wright, who gave him the spiritual name Eleazer Riotht, which he changed to Eleazer Wright; he wrote The Kentucky Revival (Cincinnati, 1807), probably the earliest defense of Shakerism, and a poem, entitled A Concise Answer to the General Inquiry Who or What are the Shakers (1808).
In 1811 a community settled at Busro on the Wabash in Indiana; but it was soon abandoned and its members went to Ohio and to Kentucky. In Ohio later communities were formed at Watervliet, Montgomery and Greene counties, and at Whitewater, Butler and Hamilton counties. In New York, the communal property at Sodus Bay was sold in 1828 and the community removed to Groveland, or Sonyea; their land here was sold to the state and the few remaining members went to Watervliet. A short-lived community at Canaan, was merged into the communities in Mount Lebanon (in New Lebanon) and Enfield, Connecticut.
The peak was probably reached between 1830 and 1850 at about 6000 members. The numerical strength of the sect decreased rapidly, probably from 4000 to 1000 from 1887 to 1908, and there has been little effort made to plant new communities. The Mt. Lebanon Society in 1894 established a colony at Narcoossee, Florida; the attempt of the Union Village Society in 1898 to plant a settlement at White Oak, Georgia, was unsuccessful. In 1910 the Union Village Society went into the hands of a receiver.
At various times, the Shakers had eighteen major communities in eight states and six smaller communities in Florida and Indiana. The city of Shaker Heights, Ohio, population 29,000, a suburb of Cleveland, was originally a Shaker settlement.
Today there are very few remaining Shakers left. They reside in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.
[edit] Communal spiritual family
The Shakers did not believe in procreation so therefore had to adopt a child if they wanted one. Another way they could expand their community's population was to allow converts into the Shaker society to live and function as one. When Shaker boys reached the age of twenty-one, they were given the choice to leave the Shaker religion and go their own separate way or to continue on as a Shaker. The Shakers lived in "families" sharing a large house with separate entrances for each family within the "family"; thus the families were exclusively male or female — the sexes were segregated into separate living areas.
The Shakers struggled with complex human problems that have no simple answers, and they managed to set up and sustain a distinctive way of life with much appeal for more than two hundred years.
[edit] Revelations and visions
A peculiar, intense kind of spirituality began to develop under this unique arrangement. A period of spiritual manifestations among the Believers began in 1837 and lasted through 1847. Children told of visits to cities in the spirit realm and brought messages to the community which they received from Mother Ann. In 1838 the gift of tongues was manifested and sacred places were set aside in each community, with names like Holy Mount; but in 1847 the spirits, after warning, left the Believers. The theology of the denomination is based on the idea of the dualism of God: the creation of man as male and female "in our image" showing the bi-sexuality of the Creator; in Jesus, born of a woman, the son of a Jewish carpenter, were the male manifestation of Christ and the first Christian Church; and in Mother Ann, daughter of an English blacksmith, were the female manifestation of Christ and the second Christian Church — she was the Bride ready for the Bridegroom, and in her the promises of the Second Coming were fulfilled. Adam's sin was in sexual impurity; marriage is done away with in the body of the Believers in the Second Appearance, who must pattern after the Kingdom in which there is no marriage or giving in marriage. The four virtues are virgin purity; Christian communism; confession of sin, without which none can become Believers; and separation from the world. Their insistence on the bi-sexuality of God and their reverence for Mother Ann have made them advocates of sex equality. Their spiritual directors are elders and "eldresses," and their temporal guides are deacons and deaconesses in equal numbers.
[edit] Culture of work and further extremities
The prescribed uniform costume with woman's neckerchief and cap, and the custom of men wearing their hair long on the neck and cut in a straight bang on the forehead, still persist; but the women wear different colors. The communism of the Believers was an economic success, and their cleanliness, honesty and frugality received the highest praise. They made leather in New York for several years, but in selling herbs and garden seeds, in making "apple-sauce" (at Shirley), in weaving linen (at Alfred), and in knitting underwear they did better work.
"Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow."
"Put your hands to work, and your heart to God."
Shakers were known for a style of furniture, known as Shaker furniture. It was plain in style, durable, and functional. Shaker chairs were usually mass-produced since a great number of them were needed to seat all the Shakers in a community. Around the time of the American Civil War, the Shakers at Mount Lebanon, NY, greatly increased their production and marketing of Shaker chairs. They were so successful that several furniture companies produced their own versions of "Shaker" chairs. Because of the quality of their craftsmanship, original Shaker furniture is costly. One Shaker chair, actually a tall stool, sold for just under US$100,000
A Shaker box-maker (Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1935)Shakers worshipped in plain meetinghouses where they marched , sang songs, danced, twitched and shouted. Many outsiders who witnessed Shaker worship services considered them heretics and protested in front of their places of worship. Mother Ann was arrested several times for disturbing the peace. Early Shaker worship services were unstructured, loud, chaotic and emotional. However, later on, Shakers developed precision dances and orderly rituals. The Shakers have also written thousands of religious songs.
The meetinghouses were painted white and unadorned, with shutters and carvings eschewed as worldly things. The Shakers believed in the value of hard work and kept comfortably busy. Each member learned a craft and did chores. Mother Ann said, "Labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling."
[edit] Culture and artifacts
Shaker beliefs have generated a unique culture and ways of life that have enriched the cultural history of the United States as well as subsequently inspired many modern fields.
Shaker barn, Hancock, Massachu
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