1.8.9 v2.2.0-6

Is the soul cage activated/deactivated via redstone signal? If that is the intended behaviour, then it does not work in the above version.

I know you have updated since, so was this fixed if that is the way it's supposed to work?

With the default configs, only a Tier 5 shard responds to redstone.

thanks for the info...would it be possible to add a config for lower tiered spawners to be redstone-controlled (there is no option in the current config).

There already is. Look in ShardTiers.json.