NOM

I hate to spam with another thread so soon but I had a thought that chilled me while reading Fawn Brodie's book tonight. Just, trigger warning, gonna talk upfront about the Devil.

So, I think there has always been something sinister about the "official" first vision account. But I was reading it the other day and it kinda collided with the whole " selling the BoM copyright to someone in Canada" wrap up. Some revelations are from God, some from man, and some from the Devil. Did anyone else have a thought to the positioning of the dark presence attacking right before the sudden appearance of God and Christ? There is no acknowledgement of the dark presence once they arrive and Joseph didn't touch them during their visit. Isn't that the way you tell? You shake their hand?

I know, I know, it was all bunk. He's a narcissistic storyteller. But if we go with the theory that Mormon's push, that this really happened....it sounds to me like he got visited by the other guy. In the guise of the Father and Son.

Reading Fawn Brodie tonight, the recounted Moroni visits sounded like something from Donnie Darko. Joseph getting visited by this bright, hard to look at being(again, no touch, no handshake!!), lectured at by this man who doesn't quite look like a man. Then again. Then again, no change in the lecture, late into the night. Joseph, exhausted now, plagued by this being pestering him with this arcane task. Then the next day, working with his dad in the field, heading home to rest, passing out by a fence, then getting up. And there, in the daylight, the being that is not a man but only looks like a man.

"JoSEph. JosePH, why hAve YOu not tOLd him Yet? TELl youR faTHer of mY vISit, jOSeph. yOU havE 1,396 HoUrs uNTil the WoRLd endS."

Then later...an angel threatens him with a sword on fire.

"weD Her. Bed hER. BrINg fORth ThY sEEd."

"She is already wed to another! I cannot!"

"The FrUIt of tHY lOIns mUSt wALk. WEd heR. bED hEr."

"Please...I beg of you...show me mercy..."

"JosePH. ReMEmbeR yoUr PrOMises. tHE seED, jOSepH. We DeMAnd IT."

I think I should write a book. If I wrote a fictional story based on church history, framing it like a Joker (2019) horror novel, would you read it?

Happy spooky season!

I like where you're going with this, Five.

And then to top it off, when Satan dictated the Book of Mormon (a counterfeit Bible given through a crystal ball!), he gives us a peek at the hand he's holding with the story of Korihor, who was deceived by an angel of the devil appearing in the guise of an angel of light. It's like he sets up the dominoes for us but nobody wants to push the first one down.

Here's another possibility. The First Vision and Moroni's visit both sound very much to me like sleep paralysis, something that I have experienced many times myself. These experiences are often accompanied by feelings of being unable to move or speak and the appearance of supernatural beings. I once had a knight in armor on a white steed come through my bedroom door and ride right up to my bedside. I could have sworn I was wide awake and actually experiencing it, and if I believed in such things I might still believe that it really happened. I attribute alien abductions and demon experiences to sleep paralysis too. The telling point is that all of these things happen when people are in bed, as with Joseph's Moroni sighting. Maybe he took a little nap in the grove? I would cut Joseph a little more slack if Moroni turned out to be a convincing dream experience, but I don't give the first vision story much credit at all; there are too many clues that it is an after-the-fact reinvention and exaggeration of a far more mundane mental imagery kind of thing.

Oddly enough, I agree with the comments about Moroni. There is a different account of the story in the BYU archives that I found fascinating. Joseph Smith was young, a treasure hunter, and playing with old powers that most good Christians had discarded. He used divining rods, seer-stones, and other ancient methods to find the "treasures." In those days, people were happy to believe they might be living on top of a pile of ancient gold.

Emma (Smith) was into the occult arts along with a few other kids. Joseph learned (I forget how) that an angel or demon was hiding a treasure. Moroni, it turns out, isn't just a Mormon angel. He has a history among other people in America. Using his different diving tools, (I think largely from the Swedenborg writings) he approached the angel. In other descriptions of Moroni, he is an ancient protector of the peoples of America. He isn't exactly nice, or pretty. He is a guardian.

The treasure, it turns out, was a book. Joseph picked Sept 22, (the fall solstice) because is supposed to be the most powerful day for reaching through the veil. The demon/angel refused to give the book to Joseph. In the account, Emma would be waiting for him down the path some distance each time he went. Each time he would come back, according to Emma, he looked ragged and beaten, but also without the book.

The book, according this other account, was a "Magic Book" which is a technique taught by Swedenborg. Basically, this Magic Book was made of wood. It was "infused with the story." It took Joseph 4 years to get the "angel" to release it, and from other accounts, Joseph really did "wrestle" with the angel. Once infused, no one could look at the book, it must stay covered. So the part about translation by initution and inspiration was very true. The "scribe" had to sit on the other side of a curtain.

The part of Moroni not being a "Sunday School" figure is probably what intrigued me the most. There is a lot of wisdom, IMHO, in the official story but it's not how it happened. But though my faith is different because I know the official story false, what seems like the real story, the human story, is totally fascinating.

It's a lot of fun to speculate about mysterious powers influencing the minds of humans, but of course it is far more likely that Joseph Smith is fundamentally no different than the people who made up most religions: deceptive, deluded, or a combination of both.

My testimony of Satan was the first brick that fell.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:04 am It's a lot of fun to speculate about mysterious powers influencing the minds of humans, but of course it is far more likely that Joseph Smith is fundamentally no different than the people who made up most religions: deceptive, deluded, or a combination of both.

My testimony of Satan was the first brick that fell.

Oh come on, surely that ole line, "The first thing the devil does is convince you that he doesn't exist" still influences you.

SaidNobody wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:26 am Oh come on, surely that ole line, "The first thing the devil does is convince you that he doesn't exist" still influences you.

You're bringing up old shame trauma for me and I'd kindly ask you to stop.

Joking aside, I thoroughly enjoyed your post bringing in this different version of the tale. I agree that from a truth and faith perspective, I don't find it believable. I'm with Hagoth in thinking that half of the stuff was Joseph's lies getting away from him and the other half were written in later to lend his claims legitimacy.

However, from a storytelling perspective where it deals with it from the spooky fantasy aspect, it's really fascinating. I do enjoy a good supernatural horror flick and book. If I wrote it into a fiction book, I'd blur the line and leave it open ended. Was Joe possessed and tormented by these otherworldly beings? Or was he plagued by madness? Who'd have thunk it? Here, finally, the church has inspired me.

Do you know the specific place you found this version? I'd like to do research on this.

Five wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:44 am
Do you know the specific place you found this version? I'd like to do research on this.

No. An old NOM guy, Seerstoned, pointed me to it. It was sort of a backdoor into the BYU database, because I cannot find it through the search engine. The link was in the old NOM but we lost that history, which is a shame.

You know how church artists create our expectations about how things looked? Maybe the First Vision was really more like:

Ah, unfortunate, @SaidNobody . Hopefully, you don't mind if I take from what you've shared here as inspiration? It's not like it's going to be a "cite your sources" kind of book.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 12:48 pm You know how church artists create our expectations about how things looked? Maybe the First Vision was really more like:
Img of Cthulhu.

Brilliant! Yes, exactly.

I was watching The Magick of Solomon for a bit of research on this story I hope to write. However, something the guy Poke Runyon said while narrating his research, is the conjecture that these wizards and warlocks were mostly conjuring things from their imagination. He even quotes Aleister Crowley saying something similar.

This reminded me of things Martin Harris and David Whitmer said about their witness experience, using odd language, implying a visionary rather than a physical manifestation. Even Dan Vogel in talking of the superstitions that had caught up 19th century folk, they would often discuss their dreams as if they were of great importance, or they'd constantly have heavenly and dark visitations in the form of visions. Often, they'd describe seeing something in their mind's eye and be taken as a credible witness of something occurring.

Did people in ancient times not understand imagination? We already have some account of how people in older civilizations anthropomorphized the elements, weather, disasters, emotions, in the form of gods or deities that could demand sacrifices and such. I always used to read old Irish folklore and fairytales, the will o' the wisps, the brownies and gnomes, the kelpies, etc. and be baffled on people's genuine beliefs in these things. I mean...they had to have seen something, right? ...unless they were doing the "seeing pictures in your head" sort of fantasizing and didn't understand that this thing wasn't real.

I've always been in touch with this spacey area of my being. It's not exactly like in the movies, where the person imagining something is totally transported. It's more like, when you're reading a book and the visuals slip like a veil in front of your eyes. You're no longer seeing each word on the page but you're reading.

However, even at 33 years old, living in the country, sometimes, when I take my dog out to do his business late at night, beyond the scope of the porch light, I imagine critters in the woods lurking in wait. We have coyotes around here and bears and sometimes even a vagrant might wander these woods. How am I to know? You get that hair on your neck sensation, the depth of the shadows seem to dance, and your heart pounds. Inside, the moment of nervousness is gone, especially if nothing happened, but I sometimes still feel like a kid, scared of the dark.

I can see how these feelings, in combination with fantasizing could make old "witches" and "wizards" feel like they'd genuinely summoned something. I just thought it was an interesting thought. Most of the time, I fall into the trap of judging older cultures by 21st century intellectual standards. As if their sacrifices and offerings to temples and beseeching of oracles was separate and compartmentalized. "Yeah, they did all that...but they knew stuff in their head was just make believe." What if they didn't?