Thread by @JimmyFalunGong

ancient Israel was said to use the Urim and the Thummim (meaning uncertain, possibly "Lights and Perfections") which was a breastplate worn by the High Priest along with an ephod

famously, this was one of several methods Joseph Smith used to translate the gold plates into the Book of Mormon, right?

according to Joseph Smith and the LDS church, the angel Moroni took back these artifacts, and most Mormons think that's the end of the story. and it is, in a way. but there's more, too.

In 1841, apostles Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith were on a mission in the UK. this was back when Mormon missionaries were roving around the UK (and Scandinavia) converting thousands and thousands of British working class people and getting them to move to the US

this was back when Victorian moralists though Mormons were hypnotizing and abducting people since these religious experiences were so foreign to the British, hahahaha. the whole thing features prominently in the first Sherlock story, A Study in Scarlet

it was a whole moral panic, and they were as lurid as you might imagine about it

anyway, back to Wilford Woodruff (later the 4th president of the LDS church) and George A. Smith. while they were on their mission, they "confiscated" several seer stones and grimoires

like, that's because Joseph Smith (among other things) and his family had been doing both folk magick and Enochian angel magick before any of the religion stuff came about. like divining rods

also treasure hunting (via magick)

Smith had various seerstones apart from the purported Urim and Thummim

I've posted and mentioned how Joseph Smith wore a Jupiter talisman before, but it's basically straight out of Francis Barrett's the Magus

and on and on, like, there's way way more magick, but the point I keep getting distracted from is that Woodruff and Smith confiscated several seer stones and grimoires, right?

they got these seer stones and grimoires from a recent convert named William Mountford in Staffordshire, England

the grimoires were destroyed and seer stones were sent to Nauvoo, which was a thriving Mormon city that, were it not destroyed by mobs, probably would've been more important than Chicago

when Joseph Smith examined the seer stones, he stated that they were "Urim and Thummim as good as ever was upon the earth" but that they had been "consecrated to devils"

now, obviously, if you don't believe in Joseph Smith or magick, this sounds like bullshit, right?

but the Brits do be doing black magick.

just a little tidbit to think about tonight. thanks for reading.

who am I kidding. I couldn't stop myself, I bought a book to go deeper lol.

there used to be (still is, I guess) "cunning folk" as a type of folk magick right?

a lot of British converts to Mormonism were deeply interested in cunning folk magick, and it was an ongoing tension between them and the Church. basically "how much magick is too much magick", which is a tension in every church, but especially in Mormonism

the aforementioned William Mountford had those glasses or 'chrystals', as he called them, which were described as about the size of a goose's egg made flat at each end

Mountford "also had a long list of prayers wrote down which he used. The prayers was unto certain Spirits which he said was in the Air"

we have journals from several people in Nauvoo describing the incident with the grimoires and stones from Staffordshire. One person wrote that Mountford had "practiced Magic, or Astrology. They had Books which had been handed down for many generations."

reportedly, these books included precise rituals, including invoking the name of a particular spirit to show a desired vision, commonly of family or future spouses.

"The procedure Mountford apparently used follows those described in two occult classics: Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft and Francis Barrett's the Magus" (the latter I already mentioned)

the LDS council, familiar with Joseph Smith's revelations condemning sorcerers, unanimously agreed that "no such Magic work be allowed in the Church", and Mountford gave over the stones and grimoires to the council, which I already mentioned they destroyed the grimoires

the Staffordshire Conference unanimously carried that no such thing as Magic, Fortunetelling, Witchcraft or any such devices should be allowed in the Church, and that fellowship would be withdrawn from any who used or caused to be used any of the aforesaid things,

and ruled against planet rulers, glass or crystal peepers, and fortune tellers

apparently, the concern with seer stones was that evil spirits could communicate through them and deceive the user

William W. Phelps, a prominent LDS leader, wrote about seer stones, citing a sixteenth-century British legal indictment against those who "use invocation, or conjuration, of any evil spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, imploy, feed, or reward an evil spirit"

"The primary difference between Woodruff's condemnation of such stones in this case and later tolerance of peep stone use appears to have been based in whether use of the stone was a natural gift or a function of an occult textual tradition"

one final note: there was a time in the 1840s when there were more Mormons in the UK than in the United States, and guess which region they were clustered in?

Northwestern England - "a region with a long history of crypto-Catholicism, anticessationism, and religious enthusiasm"

(one part of my family is from Northern England, lmao)

in the 19th century, over 90,000 converts left from Liverpool and immigrated to Utah (including some of my ancestors)

despite pressures to cease, there were a number of these British converts who continued to work Enochian angel magick in Utah

astrology was tacitly allowed by the LDS church until Wilford Woodruff became president, who 'cracked down' on it, presumably due to his experiences decades earlier in the UK

now, possibly to finish, Joseph Smith said (based on the white stone from the Book of Revelation) that one day everyone would get their own personal Urim and Thummim, like, after Christ's return, right?

you'll still hear people talk about that, sometimes, in the Church

Brigham Young navigated this culture by stating that many people appeared to be 'natural seers', but that he was not; still, he was still the head of the church, and seers could not "receive revelation" for the church - asserting his authority independent of seer stones, right?

then, over time, the Church pressured its membership to abandon the general usage of seer stones, leaving their authority instead

James E. Talmage (mostly known today for his book Jesus the Christ) was a trained geologist, and he examined many seer stones. he never found any unique or anomalous qualities in any of them

Talmage admitted "that his evaluation did not negate the possibility of some supernatural character (he admitted to receiving neither visual nor aural manifestations from God himself)" but the stones were not special in any other way

according to the book 'The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology', the US did not have an explicit culture of cunning folk (though of course there were parallels, arguably including Salem lol)

the book argues that "Joseph Smith did not translate the rituals, fixtures, and charms of the cunning folk into Mormonism; he translated the cunning-folk themselves...into Mormons"

ok I think I'm actually done now, thanks for reading, friends, god bless