A religion haunted by its past

"Inventing Mormonism" by H. Michael Marquardt and Wesley P. Walters is a controversial book claiming that the true origins of the Mormon religion were, to say the least, substantially different from the official accounts of the Mormon (LDS) Church. Mormons claim to be the only true Christians, and at least to disinterested outsiders, they certainly look like conservative, family-oriented, and frankly boring Christians.

But are they? Or, better put: What were the origins of Mormonism? Marquardt and Walters believe (as do many others) that the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was inspired by folk magic and occultism. The entire story about how he was contacted by an angel and found a secret document engraved on golden plates in Hill Cumorah is inspired by magical notions common in Upstate New York at the time. Later, Joseph Smith published a sanitized and Christianized version of these events. The authors quote many documents to prove their point.

In the area where Joseph Smith grew up, there was a widely believed folk tradition about hidden treasures. Various magical and occult notions were connected to this belief. To localize the treasure, a seer stone placed in a black hat was used. By gazing into the stone (a technique known as scrying), the treasure hunter would get a vision of where the gold was buried. Another method was to get the vision in a dream, which repeated itself for three nights. Once the treasure was located, it was necessary to deal with its guardian spirit. If it was malevolent, a magical circle was drawn around the spot where the treasure was located, and various magical formulas incanted. If the spirit was benevolent, one had to follow its instructions to the letter to get hold of the treasure. These instructions were often pretty strange: the treasure hunter would have to dress in black, ride a black horse, take a close relative to a designated spot, etc. The guardian spirit could be contacted three years in a row, but not more than that, and always on the same date.

According to "Inventing Mormonism", Joseph Smith's famous search for the Book of Mormon was organized according to these magical instructions. Willard Chase, a neighbour of the Smith family, wrote a statement in 1833 about how Joseph Smith had found the golden plates at which the message of Mormon was supposedly engraved. Chase's version of events is very different from the official one. He claims to have gotten his information from Joseph Smith's father, also named Joseph Smith. According to Chase, young Joseph had been contacted by a spirit rather than an angel. The spirit had instructed Joseph to dress in black, ride a black horse, and conjure up the Book of Mormon by reciting a magical formula. When he had the book in his possession, he was supposed to leave at once, without looking back, and not to place the book on the ground. Naturally, Joseph Smith made this mistake, at which point the book mysteriously vanished. Smith soon found the book again, back in the crate he had taken it from the first time. When he attempted to remove the book a second time, the spirit attacked him. Apparently, the spirit had first taken the form of a toad, and later that of a man. Finally, the spirit told Smith to come back one year later (on the same date), accompanied by his brother Alvin. Unfortunately, Alvin died before the designated date, and when Joseph returned alone, the spirit once again told him to wait another year, and bring another person, whose identity was to be magically revealed later.

Another neighbour, Fayette Lapham, told a similar story in 1870. In Lapham's version, the spirit had appeared to Joseph Smith in a dream. The spirit was dressed in bloodstained clothes, apparently because he was the spirit of a person murdered at the exact spot where the treasure was hidden. Lapham adds an interesting detail: the second person the spirit commanded Joseph to bring to Hill Cumorah was none other than Emma Hale, Joseph's future wife. Emma Hale's cousins Hiel and Joseph Lewis also wrote about what really happened when Joseph Smith found the Book of Mormon, and in their version the ghost had a long beard, a slit throat, and a bloodstained body. The toad makes a comeback in a statement by Benjamin Saunders (a friend of the Smith family), made in 1884. In this version, the toad and the spirit are adversaries, rather than identical. When Joseph Smith had finally secured the golden plates, he was said to have been attacked by a demon in the form of a toad.

What are we to make of these testimonies? The fact that Mormonism was intensely controversial, and that many of the statements were made decades later, could be used as evidence against them. On the other hand, there was a widespread belief in folk magic and hidden treasure in the area around Palmyra, New York State, where Joseph Smith lived. It's also more or less conclusively proven that Joseph Smith owned one or several seer stones. Nor was he a stranger to making up new revelations, or revising old ones, as he went along. It's also a well-established fact that Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter before he founded Mormonism.

What's really intriguing, is that even the official Mormon version of events has certain affinities with the folk beliefs. What other religion claims that its founder, instructed by an angel, dug up a mysterious, treasure-like sacred scripture from a nearby hill? Is it really a coincidence that this particular religion emerged in an area where superstitious treasure hunting was common, and that it was founded by a man who originally believed in the practice himself? Here are some parallels between the official story and the alternative versions referred to above. When the angel Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith, he told Smith that he would find two stones together with the golden plates, and that these stones had been used by ancient seers. In other words, they were seer stones! When Moroni spoke to Joseph Smith, he got a supernatural vision of Hill Cumorah, and saw the exact spot where the golden plates were hidden. In the same way, a treasure hunter could get a dream vision of the whereabouts of the treasure. Further, Moroni appeared to Smith three times during the course of one night. In folk magic, a dream that was repeated three times was believed to be true. When Joseph Smith finally went to Cumorah, dug up the crate and attempted to remove the plates, the angel prohibited it, and informed him that he wouldn't be allowed to get possession of the plates until four years had passed. However, he also had to return to Cumorah on the same date, four years in a row. Compare this to folk beliefs about the spirits giving strange instructions, or the idea that it could take three years to get hold of a treasure.

The main difference between Joseph Smith's version and the alternative versions, is that Joseph's own story is purged of all references that could be interpreted as ambivalent, evil or scary. There are no bloodstained dresses, black horses or sorcery, and definitely no toads! Are we to believe the documents quoted in this book, Joseph Smith originally told the story in the usual superstitious idiom of his peers. Later, when he was the leader of a growing "Christian" group, this version could have become an embarrassment, so he published a more innocent version. The magician and treasure hunter became a pious Christian prophet communing with shining angelic beings.

It seems as if Mormonism was originally a religion based on the belief in haunted treasure. Now, the truth is out to haunt Mormonism.