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MAGIC, OCCULTISM, TALISMANS AND “HISTORIANS” By Marcel Kahne Translated by Gerald D. Woodard (Original French text at www.idumea.org) In 1833, one Philastus Hurlbut, a recent convert, was excommunicated for immoral conduct. Non‑Mormon residents of Kirtland seized the opportunity of his desire for vengeance to finance his trip to Palmyra and Manchester to collect statements on the morality of Joseph Smith and his family. Hurlbut returned with sworn statements (a fashion at that time) from 62 residents, according to which Smith was lazy, indolent, given to drink, with no moral character and spending his time using magic rituals to look for buried treasures. Various elements undermine the credibility of these statements: First are the investigator’s motives. Then is the unlikelihood of the accusation of indolence and frantic, vain searches for hidden treasures. The Smiths were a family of ten who had to ensure their living year after year, which could only be done through hard work every day. Searches for treasure would only have been possible during leisure time, which was probably quite rare. Interviewed years later, William Smith, the Prophet’s brother, would state the following in response to a question about whether Joseph and the rest of their family were lazy and indolent: “We never heard of such a thing until after Joseph told his vision, and not then, by our friends. Whenever the neighbours wanted a good day's work done they knew where they could get a good hand and they were not particular to take any of the other boys before Joseph either. We cleared sixty acres of the heaviest timber I ever saw. We had a good place, but it required a great deal of labor to make it a good place. We also had on it from twelve to fifteen hundred sugar trees, and to gather the sap and make sugar and molasses from that number of trees was no lazy job. We worked hard to clear our place and the neighbours were a little jealous. If you will figure up how much work it would take to clear sixty acres of heavy timber land, heavier than any here, trees you could not conveniently cut down, you can tell whether we were lazy or not, and Joseph did his share of the work with the rest of the boys. We never knew we were bad folks until Joseph told his vision. We were considered respectable till then, but at once people began to circulate falsehoods and stories in a wonderful way.” (Quoted in B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, Vol. 1, p. 40) If the accusation of laziness is false, what credit can be given to the rest of these accusations? Other elements further undermine their value. The people interviewed, who represented only a small portion of the local population, must have been selected by Hurlbut based on his objective. The accusations are general and provide no specific details. More serious is the fact that the wording is very similar from one to another, suggesting that Hurlbut either wrote them himself or asked questions in a manner that would guide the people interviewed. Finally, one must wonder to what degree the people of Palmyra and Manchester were qualified to judge the Smiths, when the family lived in the country, where houses were very isolated from each other. They probably only saw the Smiths when they went to Palmyra for supplies… Regardless, Hurlbut returned with his statements and proposed that Eber D. Howe, editor of the Painesville Telegraph, publish them. The result was one of the first anti‑Mormon books, Mormonism Unvailed, published in 1834. The book became a classic, on which anti‑Mormon writers rely to this day. In fact, there is no concrete link between Joseph Smith and magic, the occult or treasure hunting other than the fact that such practices were common among his contemporaries. The time that Joseph Smith spent searching on behalf of Josiah Stoal or Stowell, who was convinced of the existence of a Spanish silver mine, is one example of such practices. One can easily imagine that the magic powers attributed to Joseph Smith are the result of the fact that he actually did find treasure in the Earth by supernatural means: the golden plates of the Book of Mormon sealed in a stone box and buried in a hill near his home, the existence of which was revealed to him by the angel Moroni. That discovery and the translation of the gold plates using the Urim and Thummim could easily have been interpreted by his contemporaries as a magical or occult practice. However, a critical review of all the facts that have been put forth shows that nothing serious can be held against Joseph Smith. The absence of occultism in the standard works, the doctrines and the practices of the Church only confirm this conclusion. The accusations of magical and occult practices regained popularity from 1981 to 1985, when one Mark Hofmann, a member of the Church and dealer in original documents (i.e. he would find original documents from the 19th century and sell them to collectors or interested institutions) sold 48 documents to the Church, a part of which at least he would later admit were fakes that he had created. However, he was not happy just creating fakes. He also wanted to alter Church history. He thus invented a blessing given by Joseph Smith to his oldest son, Joseph Smith III, naming him as his successor (in 1860, the latter would become the first President of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ), a letter from Joseph Smith to Josiah Stowell, dated 18 June 1825, describing the magic ritual to use to find the silver mine, the “salamander letter”, written on 23 October 1830 by Martin Harris to W. W. Phelps, in which he said that he had heard Joseph Smith state that he could not remove the golden bible from its hiding place because a salamander in the bottom of the hole had changed into a spirit (Moroni?) and struck him three times to keep him from taking the treasure and, finally, the supposed original of the Anthon transcription (the characters copied by Joseph Smith from the Book of Mormon plates and given to Martin Harris to show to Professor Anthon (Joseph Smith – History, verses 62‑65). The publication of these fake documents caused joy among “anti‑Mormons”. In the mean time, Hofmann’s illegal activities led him to build homemade bombs with which he would kill two clients. The third bomb exploded prematurely in his car. Arrested, Hofmann was found guilty of murder and forgery. Two years later, a book entitled “Early Mormonism and the Magic World View” by D. Michael Quinn, a “progressive” Mormon intellectual, was published by Signature Books, a publisher specializing in books about the Church by non‑believing Mormons. In his review of the book in Book Reviews, BYU Studies vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 88 et seq, Stephen E. Robinson, a lecturer at Brigham Young University, wrote: The major strength of Quinn's book is the incredible breadth of its research. The bibliography appended to the main text is no less than sixty-seven pages in length and lists a multitude of arcane and often inaccessible volumes, including even rare medieval manuscripts. A second strength of the book for the non‑Mormon reader is a total lack of any pro-Mormon bias. Although he is a Latter-day Saint, and despite his modest statement of faith in the introduction (xviii–xix), Quinn is clearly no LDS apologist. There is not a single page of the main text that would appear to be motivated by loyalty to the LDS church or its doctrines or to be apologetic of the Church's interests Quinn is now openly homosexual and is no longer a member of the Church. The purpose of Quinn’s book was to prove that, like his contemporaries, Joseph Smith was an adept of magic and the occult and that his religious activity could only be explained in that way. Unfortunately for his argument, he made the mistake of adapting the facts to his theory, rather than his theory to the facts, claiming that Joseph Smith had a passion for astrology and was fascinated by his dominant planet, Jupiter, to the point that he would not conceive any children except during the period in which that planet was astrologically dominant. However, Joseph Smith was a Capricorn, so his dominant planet was Saturn. If he was so passionate about astrological considerations, why would he be unconcerned with his dominant planet? Robinson also drew attention to the fact that the statement regarding the dates on which children were conceived was purely and simply incorrect. (Quinn went as far as to claim, without any proof, that two of the children were born premature.) Quinn supported his theory with another questionable element, the Jupiter talisman. Richard L. Anderson states the following: Mention of this first surfaced in 1937 when Charles Bidamon, who had been reared by Emma, listed items for sale that supposedly came from Joseph Smith. One was listed as “a silver pocket piece which was in the prophet’s pocket at the time of his assassination.” Wilford Wood a collector of Mormon memorabilia purchased it in 1938 and received Bidamon’s certificate that the prophet possessed it when murdered, but Charles Bidamon was born twenty years after the martyrdom; he claimed Emma as his source and said that “she prized this piece very highly on account of its being one of the prophet’s intimate possessions.” One might wonder what is sales talk and what is history sixty years after Emma’s death, particularly when one of her own sons should have retained the coin if it meant that much to their father. Nor does the Jupiter talisman clear the next historical hurdle. James W. Woods was Joseph Smith’s “principal lawyer” at the end he went to Carthage with him, at Joseph’s request went to Nauvoo the morning of the martyrdom, and rode back to Carthage the next day to help recover the bodies. Later he gave detailed memories, copying a receipt from Joe Smith’s wife of the articles found upon the person of Joe Smith. It was dated a week after the murder and signed by Emma, obviously at a time when she could begin to handle practical details. But the lawyer evidently collected the Prophet’s personal effects the day after the martyrdom. Emma signed for “one hundred and thirty five dollars and fifty cents in gold and silver,” along with the prophet’s gold ring and a half dozen other pocket items. But this detailed inventory names no item like the Bidamon talisman. The charm was distinct from money – It was an inch and a half in diameter and covered with symbols and a prayer on one side and a square of sixteen Hebrew characters on the other. Joseph’s possession of the talisman at any point of his life cannot be proved, nor can the talisman’s meaning to him be explained, if he used it. On one side, the square of Jewish letters is bordered by several Hebrew words for the divine “Father.” The other face has mystical symbols and an unpolished Latin sentence, “confermo O Deus potentissimus,” apparently intended to mean, “strengthen {me} Almighty God.” Basic studies in both languages gave the prophet the ability to recognize these Hebrew or Latin devotional terms. If he ever favored the coin, it could be for its divine names and the prayer alone. (Richard Lloyd Anderson, “The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Searching”, BYU Studies 24/4, Fall 1984, pp. 489-560) It is all good for Quinn if it serves his purpose. His book has become an authority on the issue, even though its content is questionable. Robinson presents the problem as follows: The real mystery, then, is why this book is so fragmented, so out of proportion, so very bad? The answer, I believe, is in the timing of its publication. Quinn must have begun his research when he still had the Hofmann letters and the salamander to serve as the rock of his hypotheses. It was those solid, indisputable historical documents that would give credibility to the rest of his data and make his case come together. Quinn's speculative notes would merely hang like decorations on the solid mass provided by the Hofmann documents, and the greater would justify the lesser. However, as Quinn approached publication, the Hofmann materials were pulled out from under him, leaving a huge salamander-shaped hole in the center of his theory… With the salamander letter and other Hofmann materials, Quinn had a respectable argument; without them he had a handful of fragmented and highly speculative research notes. It appears to me that when he was faced with the choice of seeing months of research go down the drain for lack of a credible context to put it in or of putting the best face on it and publishing anyway, Quinn simply made the wrong choice. This would explain why his remaining arguments are so strained and the scanty evidence so overworked. This would explain why the book is such a methodological nightmare. Having lost the turkey at the last minute, Quinn has served us the gravy and trimmings, hoping we won't notice the difference A university professor often called upon by national television networks as a specialist in history, particularly the history of the United States, told us in private correspondence that he had mistrusted Mormon historians, whom he had not read and whose methods he had not studied, as much as he did the Kremlin. This means, among other things, that those who “enlighten” the world about the “true” origins of the Church, have his implicit trust. As long as people have this attitude, the Howes, Brodies, Quinns and other pseudo‑historians will continue to flourish. As long as this is the case, our work at Idumea will continue to draw the attention of those who want information about the lack of reliability inherent in the word “specialist.” SOURCES Robinson, Stephen E. “Book Reviews.” BYU Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 88 et seq. Review of D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Roberts, B. H. A Comprehensive History of the Church, vol. 1 Anderson, Richard Lloyd. “The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Searching.” BYU Studies 24/4, Fall 1984, pp. 489‑560. Anderson, Richard Lloyd. “Review of Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined.” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 3. pp. 52-80. 1991 Backman Jr., Milton V. Joseph Smith’s First Vision. Salt Lake City, Bookcraft. 1971. Turley Jr., Richard E. Victims – The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case. Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press. 1992.
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