Joseph Smith: America's Hermetic Prophet
by Lance S. Owens
This article appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western
Inner Traditions, Spring 1995. It is reproduced here by permission
of the author.
Those readers seeking a more indepth study of
the material covered in this short article should also read ;Joseph
Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection" by Lance S. Owens --
published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Fall 1994,
and winner of the Mormon History Association's prestigious award for
"Best Work in Mormon History".
You don't know me--you never will. You never knew my heart.
No man knows my history. I cannot tell it; I shall never undertake it.
I don't blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced
what I have, I could not have believed it myself.
--Joseph
Smith, April 7, 1844.
IF THERE IS A RELIGION uniquely and intrinsically American--a religion
worked from its soil, and cast in the ardent furnace of its primal dreams--that
religion must be Mormonism. Founded in 1830 by the then twenty-four year
old Joseph Smith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (as it
is formally named) has emerged from relative insularity during the mid-twentieth
century to become a world-wide movement now numbering nine million members.
Patriotic, conservative, influential, and vastly wealthy: modern Mormonism
is a bastion of American culture.
Despite its success and respectability, however, a fundamental crisis
looms before Joseph Smith's church--and the crux of the predicament is Joseph
Smith. Late twentieth-century Mormonism is being forced into an uncomfortable
confrontation with its early nineteenth-century origins--an inevitable encounter
given the preeminent import of the founding prophet to his religion. From
the start, Joseph Smith has been cast by his church as a man more enlightened
than any mortal to walk the earth since the passing of the last biblical
apostles. No historical life could be granted a more mythological tenor
than has his. To Mormons, Joseph Smith is, simply, "The Prophet".
He bares the imago Christi. He alone stands as doorkeeper to the last dispensation
of time; to him angels came and restored God's necessary priestly "keys"
and powers; he built the Temple and taught the ancient rituals which therein
make of men and women, gods.
But now, one hundred and fifty years after his death, Smith's place in
Western religious history is undergoing an important and creative reevaluation.
Historians and religious critics alike are examining him anew. And in his
history's newest reading, themes unrecognized by its orthodox interpreters
are quickly moving to stage center. Quite simply put, modern Mormonism--guardian
of the Prophet's story--has no idea what to do with the rediscovered, historical,
and rather occult Joseph Smith.
Two years ago, Harold Bloom's boldly original work, The American Religion,
offered introduction to this unknown Prophet. The intrinsic and true American
religion, pronounces Bloom in his widely reviewed book, is a kind of Gnosticism--alone
a surprising enough declaration. But in evidence of this American Gnosis
and as first hero of his story, Bloom gives us Joseph Smith. Of the man
himself, he judges:
Other Americans have been religion makers....but none of
them has the imaginative vitality of Joseph Smith's revelation, a judgment
one makes on the authority of a lifetime spent in apprehending the visions
of great poets and original speculators.... So self-created was he that
he transcends Emerson and Whitman in my imaginative response, and takes
his place with the great figures of our fiction."1
And of his religious creation,
The God of Joseph Smith is a daring revival of the God of
some of the Kabbalists and Gnostics, prophetic sages who, like Smith
himself, asserted that they had returned to the true religion....Mormonism
is a purely American Gnosis, for which Joseph Smith was and is a far
more crucial figure than Jesus could be. Smith is not just 'a' prophet,
another prophet, but he is the essential prophet of these latter days,
leading into the end time, whenever it comes.2
II.
Joseph Smith a modern Gnostic prophet? Certainly nowhere within the vast
domains of America religion did this proclamation cause more consternation
or amazement than within its Mormon provinces and borderlands. But Bloom
(a self-pronounced "Jewish Gnostic") is no casual observer; his
knowledge of Gnosis and Kabbalah is tempered by vast experience critiquing
the creative matrix of its vision. His thesis deserves--and is receiving--attention.
Joseph Smith is taking on a new visage, and words like "gnostic",
"kabbalistic" and "hermetic" have suddenly gained a
quite prominent place in the vocabulary employed by those trying to understand
him.
In the form now foreshadowed, Joseph Smith's story is, of course, almost
entirely unknown to his church. The oft-repeated orthodox version of the
story--and the mythic function of that story's recounting--remains so central
to the Mormon past and present that it must be heard before exploring the
evolving (and in turn, heretical) rereading.
That story begins around 1820 when the adolescent Smith retired to a
grove near his family's farm in Palmyra, New York and knelt in prayer. Troubled
over his own deeply aroused religious yearnings and uncertain where to turn
for sustenance, he felt compelled to petition God's mercy. "The Lord
heard my cry in the wilderness", he wrote in his dairy several years
later, "and while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord a pillar
of light above the brightness of the sun at noonday came down from above
and rested upon me and I was filled with the spirit of God and the Lord
opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord."3
When he came to himself again, he was lying on his back, totally drained
of strength, looking up at heaven. This was the new Prophet's first vision.
The young man apparently told several persons about his experience but,
outside his own closely knit family, the account was met with general derision.
Then in 1823 there came a second manifestation. On the night of September
21, while engaged again in prayer, a light suddenly began filling his room.
Within the light there appeared an angelic being. "His whole person
was glorious beyond description, and his countenance truly like lightening."
The angel--named Moroni--explained there was a book deposited in a nearby
hill, a record written upon gold plates by the ancient inhabitants of the
American continent. Joseph was instructed that in due time he would be allowed
to obtain the record and commence its translation. No sooner had the messenger
departed and the vision ceased, than it began again. Three times the messenger
came, each time repeating exactly the same message. As the cock crowed dawn,
the final apparition ended. His experience had occupied the entire night.
That day Joseph visited the hill. Straightway he found the location shown
him in the vision, and there unearthed a stone box containing the plates.
The angel Moroni again appeared, however, warning he could not yet remove
the plates from their resting place. Instead, he would need return to the
spot on this same appointed day each year for four years. Only on the fourth
visit would he be allowed to remove the treasure and begin the work of translation.
Smith did as instructed and four years later, on September 22, 1827, the
angel delivered the record to his charge.
Soon after obtaining the records, Joseph began his translation. The record
was engraved upon the plates in "reformed Egyptian", a language
Smith read by gazing into the "Urim and Thummim", the biblical
"seers" delivered to him with the plates. Called the Book of Mormon
after its last ancient redactor and scribe, the record purportedly contained
an abridged history of America's ancient inhabitants--descendants of a Jewish
clan who fled Jerusalem shortly before destruction of the first Temple.
Led by their prophetic patriarch, the wandering Israelites had built a boat,
launched themselves into the ocean, and eventually been washed ashore somewhere
in the Americas. After arrival in the new land, their descendants multiplied
greatly, but were plagued by perpetual fratricidal divisions: a few of the
people remained loyal to God, the prophets and their heritage as descendants
of Israel, while many more became unbelieving pagans.
According to the book, Christ had appeared after his resurrection and
taught this American remnant of Israel. For a century thereafter the converted
Christians lived in peace; but, inevitably, dissension returned. About 400
years after Christ's visitation there came a final series of great wars
in which the barbarous unbelievers vanquished the last of Christ's people.
Prior to this final catastrophe, the golden records comprising the Book
of Mormon were hidden up to await the time when God would call them forth
again.
The call came in 1830. In March of that year three thousand copies of
the Book of Mormon were printed. A few weeks later the Church of Christ
(as it was first named) was established with Joseph Smith as its prophet,
seer and revelator. Though central to the events, the Book of Mormon was,
however, only one element in the complete "restoration". Smith
soon produced several other less noted pseudepigraphic works, prophetic
texts authored under identity of the ancients: books of Enoch, Abraham,
and Moses. After the Angel Moroni (who, we should add, returned and retrieved
from Smith the golden plates), several other angelic messengers also came
bearing "keys" pertaining to the true church of God--priestly
powers and consecrations lost in the great apostasy overtaking Christianity
after its first centuries. John the Baptist appeared and ordained Smith
and a disciple to the lesser, or Aaronic, priesthood, granting the authority
to baptize. Next came a visitation of the apostles Peter, James and John,
who ordained Joseph to the higher priesthood after the ancient order of
Melchizedek. By 1836, Elijah, Moses, and Christ had all appeared to the
new prophet, restoring the fullness of God's power and truth.
Duly ordained to the restored priesthood, and with Book of Mormon in
hand, Joseph's disciples fanned out across the northeastern states. Their
message was simple: the ancient church of God had been restored with its
powers, priesthood, and with a re-opened canon--a restoration accomplished
by God through a modern prophet. The flock grew quickly.
By 1836, a Mormon communalist society flourished at Kirtland, Ohio (near
Cleveland), and a second gathering of Saints was taking form on the Missouri
frontier. But between 1837 and 1839 a series of disasters struck. First,
amidst a general financial collapse, the Kirtland community was abandoned.
Then the new Zion in Missouri came under violent persecution, culminating
in the "Mormon war", a conflict which finally forced all Mormons
out of the state under threat of extermination. From this 1839 debacle in
Missouri, the beleaguered Mormon refugees retreated to Illinois, and the
new city named by the Prophet "Nauvoo".
Over the next four years the Mormon settlement at Nauvoo emerged from
a swampy backwater to become, in 1844, one of the largest cities in state
of Illinois. Nearly twenty thousand converts answered the call to Joseph's
new Zion, four thousand of them arriving from England alone. Handsome brick
homes and shops lined the city's well-planned streets; riverboats unloaded
at its Mississippi docks. And on the bluff above, overlooking the city and
river, masons raised a new temple after the ancient order of Solomon.
But behind a facade of success, danger and turmoil encompassed the Prophet.
By the Spring of 1844 rumors of his multiple marriages and sexual liaisons,
of strange rituals and unorthodox teachings, heralded growing turmoil within
the Mormon community. Plots abounded. Events were quickly escalating towards
scandal and open schism. In early June prominent Mormon dissidents assembled
a press in Nauvoo with the intent to publish a paper exposing Smith's secret
teachings, including the practice called polygamy. The first (and only)
issue of the paper did just that, creating an intolerable situation for
Smith. He responded by declaring the press a public nuisance and ordering
it destroyed.
For his enemies, this act of obstructing a free press was the last straw:
the Prophet had proven himself a theocratic tyrant, and played directly
into their hands. He was charged with treason and commanded by the Governor
of Illinois to surrender himself. Hoping to avoid the mob violence sure
to be directed at Nauvoo if he resisted or fled, Smith surrendered to jail
in the nearby but hostile village of Carthage, well aware that he would
probably never be allowed to escape alive. As expected, his most rabid enemies
quickly gathered to Carthage, and on June 27, 1844 a mob with painted faces--composed
in part of the militia assigned by the Governor to protect him--battered
down the jail doors and there shot to death both Joseph and his brother,
Hyrum.
III.
This summary of Smith's history is widely canonized in published accounts
of his life. But there is another side to the history just now emerging.
Ten years ago a bizarre series of events focused attention on several other
even more curious facts--elements never before integrated into narrations
of Joseph Smith's story. When add, they change its tenor entirely.
In the early 1980's an obscure book dealer in Salt Lake City named Mark
Hofmann began unearthing a series of previously unknown documents relating
to the early history of Mormonism. Most troublesome among these was a letter
purportedly written in 1830 by one of Joseph's first disciples. Brimming
with references to treasures and enchantments, the letter related how Joseph
Smith actually obtained the Book of Mormon not from an angel, but from a
magical white salamander which transfigured itself into a spirit. When disclosed
publicly in 1985, the "Salamander letter"--as it became known--received
prominent discussion in the national media, and stimulated intense new activity
in circles studying early Mormonism.
Unsettled by the damaging publicity brought by the letter, Mormon church
authorities began negotiating with Hofmann to purchase and sequester other
"newly discovered" materials, particularly any that might impugn
orthodox versions of their history. These secret and highly irregular dealings
tragically unraveled after a Mormon historian involved with the documents
was the victim of a brutal bomb murder. Complex forensic investigations
revolving around the murder eventually revealed the "Salamander letter"
and several companion documents to be bogus--the pathologically intuitive
creations of Hofmann, a master forger turned killer. 4
By then, however, several historians already had undertaken detailed
reevaluations of Smith, focusing careful attention towards any overlooked
associations he might have had with things magical. Ironically, investigators
soon brought to the surface a wealth of unquestionably genuine historical
evidence--much of it long available but either misunderstood, suppressed,
or ignored--substantiating that Smith and his early followers had multiple
involvements with magic, irregular Freemasonry, and traditions generally
termed occult.
IV.
Though a work still very much "in progress", Joseph Smith's
story is now being pieced together in a new and entirely unorthodox fashion.
5
Beginning in his late-adolescent years Joseph was first recognized by
others to have paranormal abilities, and between 1822 and 1827 he was enlisted
to act as "seer" for several groups engaged in treasure digging.
Not only did he possessed a "seer stone" into which he could gaze
and locate things lost or hidden in the earth, but it has recently became
evident this same stone was probably the "Urim and Thummim" later
used to "translate" portions of the Book of Mormon. According
to contemporary accounts of the book's writing, Joseph would place his "seer
stone" in the crown of his hat, and then bend forward with his arms
upon his knees and his face buried in the hat. Gazing into the stone while
in this posture, he would visualize and then dictate the words to a scribe
seated nearby.
The treasure digging activities also had involved magical rituals, and
it is likely Joseph Smith was cognizant of at least the rudiments of ceremonial
magic during his adolescent years. A possible occult mentor to the young
Smith has also been identified--a physician named Dr. Luman Walter. Walter
was a distant cousin of Smith's future wife and a member of the circle associated
with Smith's early treasure quests. By contemporary reports he was not only
a physician, but a magician and mesmerist who had traveled extensively in
Europe to obtain "profound learning"--probably including knowledge
of alchemy, Paracelcian medicine, and hermetic lore. Other pieces of evidence
added to the picture. Three very curious parchments and a dagger owned by
Joseph Smith's brother, Hyrum, have been careful preserved by his descendants
as sacred relics, handed down from eldest son to eldest son after his death.
Family tradition maintained they were religious objects somehow used by
Hyrum and Joseph. When finally allowed scrutiny by individuals outside the
family, it was recognized they were the implements of a ceremonial magician.
The dagger bears the sigil of Mars. The three parchments, each apparently
intended for a different magical operation, are inscribed with a variety
of magic symbols and sigils. Another heirloom also fell into perspective:
a "silver medallion" owned by Joseph Smith and carried on his
person at the time of his murder in Carthage jail, was identified to be
a talisman. It is inscribed front and back with the magic square and sigil
of Jupiter, the astrological force associated with the year of Joseph Smith's
birth. All of these items could have been constructed using the standard
texts of ceremonial magic available in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century: Agrippa's Occult Philosophy, Sibly's Occult Sciences, and Barrett's
The Magus.
In this light, the visit of the angel Moroni took on unusual aspects.
The angel had appeared on the night of the Autumnal equinox, between midnight
and dawn--hours auspicious for a magical invocation. On the day of the equinox
Joseph had subsequently made his four annual visits to the hill. When finally
he retrieved the plates, it was the eve of the equinox, in the first hour
after midnight. Accounts suggested he had been required to take with him
that night a consort (his wife), to ride a black horse, and to dress in
black--all lending a further magical tenor to the operation.
Historians puzzled over how this information fit into the more commonly
recounted story of Smith. Had the magical parchments been used to invoke
the Angel Moroni or other of the angelic visitors seen by Joseph? And above
all, how did this relate to the doctrinal substance and evolution of Mormonism,
which seemed outwardly devoid of a magical tenor?
V.
While ceremonial magic was a virtually unknown--or at least, little documented--element
in Mormonism as encountered by Joseph's followers, other occult aspects
in his religion were openly evident. The most obvious was its irregular
Masonic connections. In 1842, two years before his death, Joseph had embraced
Masonry. But long before his own initiation as a Mason in Nauvoo, he had
traveled in company with Masons--a society which included, among other prominent
disciples, Brigham Young. His earliest connection with the Craft probably
came with his brother (and close life-long companion) Hyrum's initiation
as a Mason around 1826, just shortly before Joseph began work on the Book
of Mormon.6
Sometime before 1826, Joseph may even have had contact with the historically
important Masonic figure, Capt. William Morgan. Morgan published the first
American authored exposé of Masonic rites at Batavia, New York in
1826; his disappearance (and assumed murder) just before the book's printing
was widely judged an act of Masonic vengeance and sparked a national wave
of fierce anti-Masonic activity. Given their close geographic proximity--they
lived about twelve miles apart--it is quite possible Morgan and Smith met;
one nineteenth century Masonic historian even suggested that Smith influenced
Morgan.
Interestingly, in 1834 the widow of William Morgan, Lucinda, converted
to Mormonism along with her second husband, George Washington Harris. Harris
was also a Mason and former associate of William Morgan. Joseph Smith became
closely acquainted with George and Lucinda around 1836, and sometime thereafter
he entered into an intimate relationship with Lucinda. Eventually Lucinda
became one of his ritually wed "spiritual wives"--a relationship
which fully evolved despite her still being married to Harris.
The Prophet's intercourse with Masonry after 1841 became extremely complex.
In June of 1841, efforts to establish a Masonic Lodge at Nauvoo began, and
a few months later a dispensation for the Lodge was granted. On March 15,
1842 the lodge was installed, and that evening Joseph Smith was initiated.
The next day he was passed and raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.
Two days later Smith organize a "Female Relief Society", perhaps
intending it to be a Masonic auxiliary, or the beginning of an "adoptive",
androgynous new Mormon Masonry. Eventually ever officer of the Female Relief
Society also became a spiritual wife and consort of Joseph's, with his first
wife Emma acting as president of the Society (a situation understandably
complicated by the fact that Emma did not completely understand Joseph's
relationship with the other women).
These last three years before his murder in 1844 were unquestionably
the most creative period in a uniquely creative life. Shortly after his
Masonic initiations, Smith began formulating the rituals that would be instituted
in his own Mormon Temple, then still under early phases of construction
in Nauvoo. Six weeks later a first version of this "endowment"
(as the ritual was subsequently called) was given by Joseph to a "Holy
Order" of nine disciples, all of whom were Master Masons. Many elements
of the "endowment" ritual directly paralleled Masonic ceremony,
a fact plainly evident to participants. Smith explained to his followers
that Masonry was a remnant--even if somewhat corrupted--of the ancient priesthood
God had commissioned him to restore in its fullness. In turn, essentially
every prominent male figure in the Mormon Church who was present as an adult
in Nauvoo became a Master Mason.
Another unusual element entered the matrix of Smith's creativity around
this time. From his associations with ceremonial magic and then Masonry,
Smith had almost certainly heard of "Cabala". But in 1841 a Jew
raised in the Polish borderlands of Prussia, educated at the University
of Berlin, and familiar with Kabbalah, joined the Mormon church, migrated
to Nauvoo, and there became Smith's frequent companion and tutor in Hebrew.
Documentation has recently come to light suggesting this individual, Alexander
Neibaur, not only knew Kabbalah, but probably possessed in Nauvoo a copy
of its classic text, the Zohar. Joseph likely became familiar with the Zohar
while under the tutelage of Neibaur. Indeed, it appears Smith's April 7,
1844 public declaration of a plurality of Gods was supported by an exegesis
on the first Hebrew words of Genesis (Bereshith bara Elohim) drawn from
opening section of the Zohar.7
During the period after 1841, Joseph introduced the practice of plural
"celestial marriage"--what later evolved into Mormon polygamy
in Utah--to a small group of his most trusted followers. In this era not
only men, but a few women--like Lucinda--secretly took a "plural"
spouse. The sacred wedding ritualized by Smith was a transformative union
that anointed men and women to become "priests and priestesses",
"kings and queens", and then ultimately Goddess and God--the dual
creative substance of Divinity in eternal, tantric intercourse. The ceremony
was intended to be performed in the holiest precincts of his new Temple.
By late 1843 Joseph revealed several ritual extensions to the "endowment",
all ultimately incorporated into Mormon Temple ceremony. This legacy of
mysterious initatory rituals revealed by Joseph Smith between 1842 and 1844
remains little altered as the sacred core of Mormonism.
Fifty years later, at the end of the nineteenth century, leaders of the
Utah church would still occasionally state in private that the Mormon temple
ritual embodied "true Masonry"--a fact unknown to most modern
Mormons. But then, of course, almost all of this history is unknown to the
average modern Mormon. Even well-educated "Latter-day Saints"
today seldom understand the origins of the compass and square embroidered
upon the breasts of the ritual garment worn by temple initiates. The relationship
of these temple rituals' development with Joseph Smith's occult vision and
the concurrent introduction of Masonry in Nauvoo is now, however, becoming
the subject of intense renewed interest.
VI.
In the autumn of 1994 pieces of the prophet puzzle began falling into
place; a unifying pattern was discerned within the unusual array of historical
information outlined above. Joseph Smith's quest for a sacred golden treasure
buried in dark earth, his involvement with ceremonial magic, the angelic
visitations, the pseudepigraphic texts he "translated", his declaration
of Masonry as a remnant of priesthood, and his restoration of a Temple with
its central mystery of a sacred wedding--all could be fitted into one very
recently recognized context: Hermeticism.
Not only did Smith have numerous documented associations with historical
legacies of Hermeticism such as magic and Masonry, but his religious creation
also evidenced several parallels with Hermetic ideas. John L. Brooke, professor
of history at Tufts University, has recently explored this subject in a
seminal 1994 study of Mormonism and Hermeticism, The Refiner's Fire:
The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844.8
Brooke notes the "striking parallels between the Mormon concepts of
coequality of matter and spirit, of the covenant of celestial marriage,
and of an ultimate goal of human godhood and the philosophical traditions
of alchemy and Hermeticism, drawn from the ancient world and fused with
Christianity in the Italian Renaissance." Of course, in this light
Harold Bloom's poetic reading of Joseph Smith as a "Gnostic" takes
on broadened nuances: though unnoted by Bloom, Smith's religion-making imagination
was allied in several ways with remnants of an hermetic tradition frequently
linked to gnosticism.
In investigating Smith's connection with Hermeticism, historical attention
is also being newly focused on evidences supporting an oft-ignored claim
of esoteric lore: the import of Hermeticism in the evolution of early America's
religious consciousness and political culture. This has broad implications
for our understanding of the new nation's religious history. During the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there developed within Europe's religious
crucible a complex alloying of Hermeticism and alchemical mysticism with
radical aspirations for Christian reformation. Brooke well documents how
this intersection between dispensational restorationism and the hermetic
occult flowed into early American culture and religion: among Quakers, Pietists,
and perfectionists coming to Pennsylvania and New Jersey between about 1650
and 1730; through the "culture of print" conveyed by alchemical
and hermetic texts brought from Europe; and in the development of late-eighteenth
century esoteric Masonry with its rich foundations in Kabbalistic, hermetic
and alchemical mythology.
As a young man in the company of occult treasure seekers, drawing magic
circles and battling enchantments in the Pennsylvania countryside, Joseph
Smith probably first learned about this alternative and very un-Puritan
religious vision. Smith may even have there heard the old Rosicrucian legend
of a sixteen year old prophet named Christian Rosencreutz and the mysterious
Book M which he had translated. Certainly he would have learned of alchemy's
transmutational mystery, and of the Philosopher's Stone. Soon after, the
eighteen year old Smith found his own sacred treasure buried in earth, a
treasure golden and yet--as alchemical lore promised--of substance more
subtle than vulgar gold. Gazing into his seer stone, he saw in the Book
of Mormon's golden plates a of record ancient fratricidal oppositions, and
a Christ who brought union.
For a decade, Brooke suggests, Smith's emergent hermetic theology was
disguised under the coloring of traditional Christian restorationism and
formed as new Christian church. But finally, in the last years of his life,
the veil was parted:
At Nauvoo he publicly and unequivocally announced his new
theology of preexistent spirits, the unity of matter and spirit, and
the divinization of the faithful, and he privately pursued the consummation
of alchemical-celestial marriage as the ultimate vehicle to this divinity.
The alchemical-hermetic term of coniunctio powerfully summarizes the
resolution that Smith had achieved at Nauvoo by the summer of 1844.
He had established a theology of the conjunction--the unification--of
the living and the dead, of men and women, of material and spiritual,
of secular and sacred, all united in a "new and everlasting covenant"
over which he would preside as king and god. In these circumstances
the conventional boundary between purity and danger, right and wrong,
law and revolution, simply melted away.... In effect the greater Mormon
emergence can be visualized as meta-alchemical experience running from
opposition to union, an experience shaped and driven by the personality
of Joseph Smith.9
VII.
How this strange hermetic religion evolved into today's Mormon church
is one of the more interesting questions awaiting detailed study, particularly
as the contours of Joseph Smith's vision become more sharply defined. I
can here, however, give only a rough summary of what followed Smith's death.
Joseph established no clear order of prophetic succession, and in the
chaotic period after his martyrdom several followers claimed his office
and prophetic mantle. Brigham Young, long a loyal apostle to Smith, emerged
as the natural organizational leader and was eventually proclaimed the new
"prophet, seer and revelator"--a position he held until his death
three decades later. Forced to abandon Nauvoo in the winter of 1846, Brigham
Young led his people through their difficult flight to the valley of the
Great Salt Lake, and there organized the new Mormon society.
Young staunchly defended the teachings and rituals presented by Smith
in Nauvoo, including the temple ceremonies and the doctrines relating to
polygamy. Isolated in the Rocky Mountain wilderness, he hoped to realize
Joseph's millennial dreams and establish Zion unhampered by a hostile, misunderstanding
world. But it was not to be. With the full force of the United States government
and a Victorian public morality marshaled against the Mormon church, in
1890 the practice of polygamy had to be publicly abandoned. After its defeat
in that epochal battle, Mormonism slowly found accommodation with the world
it had fled. In the process, many elements of Joseph's mystery religion
were necessarily veil or attenuated--and by the late twentieth century,
perhaps largely forgotten.
For students of religion, the Prophet Joseph Smith today remains a grand
American enigma--too potent a force to be dismissed uncommented, and yet
too complex for facile categorization. In the final analysis, I must agree
with Bloom that "we do not know Joseph Smith, as he prophesied that
even his own could never hope to know him. He requires strong poets, major
novelist, accomplished dramatists to tell his history, and they have not
yet come to him." But the tides may be shifting. While the Prophet
still awaits his poets, historians are examining with new wonder this most
extraordinary chapter in American religious history.
A "Gnostic" Joseph Smith?
Harold Bloom's coupling of Joseph Smith to
the Gnostic tradition has aroused animated disagreement among students
of Mormonism and Gnosticism alike. Several questions crucial to modern
Gnostic studies are raised by this emerging dialogue: What is the relationship
of later "Gnostic" movements to classical Gnosticism? Were
rudiments of the tradition conveyed to post-classical groups by historical
links (oral transmissions, myths and texts); was it instead the independent
product of a recurrent type of creative vision? Or are dual forces of
historical transmission and primary Gnostic experience generally interdependent,
even occultly linked? While Joseph Smith had historical connection with
late remnants of Gnosticism conveyed by Renaissance Hermeticism and
Kabbalah, his religious creation nonetheless clearly derived in large
part from a personal experience. Was that primal creativity "Gnostic"?
If so, how did it relate to the matrix of tradition?
The complexity of these questions defy simple declarations. Nonetheless,
Smith did apparently espouse themes familiar to Gnosticism--prominent
among them being his affirmation of the reality and necessity of continuing,
individual revelation as the source of salvific knowledge. Joseph Smith
and his religion eschewed theology in favor of the dynamic process of
revelation. The result was best summarized in what Bloom remarked to
be "one of the truly remarkable sermons ever preached in America",
a discourse delivered by the Prophet on April 7, 1844. Known as the
the King Follett Discourse, it was Joseph's last major address to his
church, presented just ten weeks before his death at age 38.
"There are but very few beings in the world who understand rightly
the character of God," he began. "If men do not comprehend
the character of God, they do not comprehend their own character."
Within humankind there is an immortal spark of intelligence, taught
the Prophet, a seed of divine intellect or light which is "as immortal
as, and coequal with, God Himself." God is not, however, to be
understood as one and singular. Turning to Hebrew and an oddly Kabbalistic
exegesis of the first three words of Genesis (an exegesis probably taken
directly from the Zohar), Smith pronounced there are a multitude of
Gods emanated from the First God, existing one above the other without
end. He who humankind calls God was Himself once a man; and man, by
advancing in intelligence, knowledge--consciousness--may be exalted
with God, become as God.
Near the beginning of his ministry in 1833, Smith declared "the
glory of God is intelligence", eternal and uncreated. Those who
wish to find in him a Gnostic have pointed out that Smith used the word
"intelligence" interchangeably with "knowledge"
in his prophetic writings during this period. Indeed, they suggest,
his words might be read poetically to proclaim God's glory is Gnosis--a
Gnosis that saves woman and man by leading them together to a single
uncreated and intrinsically divine Self.
Notes
- Harold Bloom, The American Religion (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1992), 98, 127.
- Ibid., 99, 123.
- Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, Vol. 1 (Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989), 6. For a detailed examination of
Joseph Smith's early years, see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith
and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1984). Despite many interpretive limitations, Smith's best over-all
biography remains Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945, 2nd ed. 1971).
- See Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts, Salamander: The Story of
the Mormon Forgery Murders (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988);
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, The Mormon Murders (New
York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988).
- Smith's associations with occult traditions in early America, including
extensive documentation of events discuss here, are comprehensively
detailied in D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World
View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987). For a interpretive
reading of this history see Lance S. Owens, "Joseph Smith Kabbalah:
The Occult Connection", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
27 (Fall 1994): 117-194.
- Joseph Smith's and his religion's interactions with the Masonic
tradition are fully documented in Michael W. Homer, "'Similarity
of Priesthood in Masonry': The Relationship between Freemasonry and
Mormonism", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27 (Fall
1994): 1-113.
- Owens, 178-84.
- John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology,
1644-1844 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
- Brooke, 281.