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Sec. 3, Ch. 18 Coming to Grips with In
justice & Corruption
A Eucharist: Blood on the Corn
Dew from Heaven—Blood on the Corn
While "laboring in the field," Nathaniel received a
daylight "vision." This revelation was his seventh encounter. In this
third vision, Turner saw "drops of blood on the corn," like "dew
from heaven."
In the Bible the word "corn" is used to refer to
cereal crops such as wheat. "Israel then shall dwell in safety alone; the
fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall
drop down dew" (Deuteronomy, 33.28 This divine substance was something
special, refined.
In this instance, Christ sends down from heaven the dew of
blood.
Though nearer and more apparent, the language of God remained an enigma.
Was this vision a symbol of the Eucharist?
Rather than wheat, kernels of corn
were crushed and ground by slaves to make bread. That was their lot, unleavened
bread fried in a pan or bake in the fireplace ash. Is this then the body and
blood of Jesus represented in a natural setting? According to McKenzie, the
"Eucharist is a participation in the body of Christ, in which Christians
are all one; the many are one body, for they partake of one loaf [1 Col.
10:170]" (Dictionary of the Bible, p. 251).
Or did it mean more? Regarding this miracle, Turner told
Gray, "I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the
neighborhood." Some Southampton whites confounded Turner’s revelatory
vision with the charge that Turner fabricated the incident, the "dew from
heaven" by spitting pokeberry juice.
Disregarding the symbolism and the
symbolical value of Turner’s Christian images, other Turner critics have
subsequently sustained this denigrating view that Turner’s basic mode of
operation was one of deceit (Cromwell, p. 209). But, as in other such attacks,
there is no evidence to sustain their prejudice. Such are the ways of
unbelievers. Jesus too was accused of sleight of hand, magic, and deviltry (Jesus
the Magician, pp. 158-161).
Fourth Revelatory Vision -- Eighth Encounter
Turner’s vision at the plow was followed by yet another
vision. This was his eighth encounter with the Holy Spirit. In this fourth
revelatory vision, Turner saw mirrored the representations he "had seen in
the heavens." These signs occurred neither in the sky nor in the field, but
in a dark wood. In this wilderness experience, the bloody images yet recur.
Turner told Gray, "I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic
characters, and numbers with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed
in blood."
In this vision, Turner again attempted to read the word of God
in a natural setting. Holy words written on the leaves of the trees correspond
to the leaves of the bible in which God’s words also can be found. But here
God writes afresh without any intermediaries or translators. With the
hieroglyphics, numbers, and "form of men in different attitudes" (a
recurring image), God’s message, however, became more arcane, more obscure,
and possibly, as a result, gained greater and greater authority, assuring Turner
that these messages were not mere projections of his own mind.
That a Tidewater slave would have knowledge of hieroglyphics
in 1825 takes on the character of the extra-natural. Decoding of the Rosetta
Stone was only a recent discovery. That Gray did not question Turner on the use
of the term "hieroglyphics" seems significant. As a resident of Cross
Keys, Gray must have been familiar with the incident and thus allowed it to pass
without commentary.
In addition, in a letter printed in the Richmond Whig
(September 26, 1831), an anonymous Southampton resident thought to be Gray
claimed he had in his possession, some papers, given up by his wife, under the lash—they
are filled with
hieroglyphic characters, conveying no definite meaning.
The characters on the oldest paper appear to have been traced with blood;
and on each paper, a crucifix and the sun, is distinctly visible; with the
figures 6,000, 30,000, 80,000, etc—There is likewise a piece of paper, of
a late date, which all agree, is a list of men; if so, they were short of
twenty (Foner, p. 27).
Possibly, in Cross Keys, "hieroglyphics," in
popular use, signified any unknown script. Other possible sources of information
available to Turner included newspapers, itinerant ministers or other learned
people traveling through the region.
There is one other possible source: the one Turner furnished
us—namely, the Holy Spirit. It followed biblical traditions. Two memorable
biblical stories contain major instances of divine writing. On the mountain
Moses received directly from God the Ten Commandments. With his fiery finger,
God wrote the moral laws in stone tablets. Implicit, in this event was the
establishing of a covenant, which comprised blessings and atonement. In Daniel
5.1-30, the king of Babylon held a feast and a "hand appeared and wrote
three words on the wall, which Daniel interpreted." It prophesied "the
downfall of powers hostile to His people" (McKenzie, p. 173).
Turner’s
divine writings had a similar import.
The Blood of Christ -- A Divine Reversal
Turner unable to read God’s hieroglyphic message, the
Spirit came again and assisted him in translating God’s scripture inscribed in
an African language, indicating God’s antiquity. This was Turner’s ninth
encounter.
Turner told Gray, "the Holy Ghost . . . revealed itself to me,
and made plain the miracles it had shewn me." The "dew from
heaven" on the corn and leaves was the blood of Christ, "shed on this
earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners."
The blood
of Christ "was now returning to earth again." In this divine reversal,
crucified flesh, its essence, blood, became Spirit; and the spirit of that
crucified flesh returned now to earth as blood. This transformation of spirit
into blood, in a manner, is a reenactment of the conception of Mary and the
birth of Jesus Christ, God become human, man. This return of holy blood, a
divine reversal, can not but be at once a blessing for some and a warning to
others.
Clearly, it was intended as a type of consecration, an anointing, in
which a people are made holy.
God had heard the praises of Christian slaves in song and
prayer and their soul’s calling out to him and he had responded. They had done
well. And Christ had offered salvation to all. "Blessed are they that
mourn: for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5. 4) and "Blessed are
they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled" (Matthew 5.6). Christ identified with the American Christian slave.
There is always a message of salvation in the blood of the Crucified One.
In
Turner’s vision in the field, the symbols seem apt: Christ’s blood fell on
the corn. The slaves used corn to make bread; thus, in the harvest, their bodies
too were caught up in the body of Christ, even though the Cross Keys Christian
slaveholders barred them from Turner’s Methodist Church. Shut out from
communion with their earthly masters, the Spirit of Christ was still available
to the poor and the oppressed.
This array of related revelations, written in the blood of
Christ, established with a new people a new covenant, which was an old covenant,
that is, that Christ was the Savior of all. As in Hosea, Christian slaves were
once told, "‘You are not my people’. But in that very place they will
be called children of the living God" (Romans 9.26). That was indeed the
true Christian promise. These visions of the blood of Christ was a
"renewal" of an orthodox view of the gospel that had somehow gotten
lost in the American landscape.
In the night vision, the hands of the Cosmic
Christ stretched from east to west. His arms were opened to embrace all who
would come. Everyone would have an equal place in his kingdom. This vision was
in great contrast to the practice of the Christian slaveholders of Cross Keys,
who barred their slaves from this sacrament of thanksgiving in Turner’s
Methodist Church.
These oppressors of Christian slaves viewed the this-worldly
status of their servants as a mirror of the world to come, of God’s kingdom.
They had created their own religion and called it "Christian." They
desecrated the divine. For them, slavery was an eternal status allotted to the
African, the spawn of Cain. These Christian slaveholders, seemingly, suffered no
fear of the afterlife.
In contrast, Turner’s "Confessions,"
contains, as in the gospel, no "nationalistic messianism." Turner
preached an apocalyptic hope, for all, a time in which the righteous would be
"admitted as living people in the divine kingdom" (Colleen, p. 29).
All were welcomed in Turner’s "kingdom of heaven," all were invited
to the wedding of God and man, the manifestation of the true church in this
world. Next Chapter 19 --->>
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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