Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

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_SuperDell
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Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _SuperDell »

Joe got the Gold Plates on the Autumnal Equinox, Sept 22, 1823.

Do you think the date related to his belief in magic? After all, he did have a magic peepstone for finding buried treasure.

Is the date any indication of his belief or practice of the occult or magic?
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_Maksutov
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Maksutov »

The family's use of the Jupiter talisman indicated some belief in astrology. Treasure hunting was often conducted in concert with supposed significant alignments of the Moon, stars and planets. This is another instance of Joseph mingling Christian and magical elements.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_grindael
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _grindael »

Here are some of my concerns about apologist push back from my series on Smith's Histories:

Apologists are not shy about citing these fantastical Biblical stories about the use of “occult” objects or idols (and how they were “restored”), but the Church either denies them, considers them archaic curiosities (like seeing stones), or is silent about them except as “Bible stories” from the distant past. (But they will brag about the second hand stories of Joseph’s day of healing in Commerce, or his being able to understand the Lamanite/Indians when a real translator was supposedly messing with him, or his 1842 prophecy of the Rocky Mountains that was cobbled together after his death.

What is the purpose of restoring something, if it is almost immediately cast aside? Just to claim that hey, I restored that? It is beyond silly. It seems that all of the things mentioned by Ashurst-McGee have pretty much gone by the wayside… polygamy, Israelite lineage (the lost ten tribes are meaningless now), a divinely sanctioned kingdom where the faithful would “gather”, temple rituals gutted and changed, and yes a token prophet who doesn’t prophesy or have any real power except that he’s old and rich and white and can buy a lot of stuff.

Larry Morris also brings up these Biblical stories and then tries to persuade us that because Joseph claimed to have gotten the plates on September 22, 1827 and that was the Jewish holiday of Rosh Shahanah, that this has some kind of significance. He writes:

Joseph obtained the plates on Rosh ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year (which had begun at sundown on 21 September 1827). At Rosh ha-Shanah the faithful were commanded to set a day aside as “a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation” (Leviticus 23:24).

This works both ways, for Quinn as well as the apologists. One would be hard pressed to not find some kind of holiday or celebration on any of the Equinox days. And if it was so important for the angel to appear on the Jewish New Year, why did he not do so for the first appearance, and every year — because he did not appear on the Jewish New Year in 1823 (September 6), 1824 (September 23), 1825 (September 13) or 1826 (October 2nd). September 22 is a lot closer to the fall equinox than the other dates are to the Jewish New Year. Still Morris claims:

…the details of the plates’ disappearance and the shock, which Joseph acknowledges by describing three unsuccessful attempts to get the plates and the intense fright that followed, appear to have been part of a money-digging tale…

Of course they were and Morris and Ashurst McGee can’t really explain them. And,

As for “treasure-seeking” details, Joseph has surely de-emphasized these…

Of course he did. As he did the original treasure guardian who was a ghost/spirit (according to some of the Smiths), not an angel. And,

In producing the history of the church, Joseph was addressing a generation (and future generations) not well equipped to understand what a divining rod or a seer stone meant to people like the Smiths.

This is simply ad hoc presentism. How would they know this unless there were already problems mixing magic and religion? And aren’t they the ones claiming that religion and magic were so intertwined? If so, why would Smith have any difficulty explaining it? He could simply have used Moses as an example as Morris does! But Smith didn’t even try, not once, he simply denied it all and gave the story that he was a paid laborer. Morris and others try to tell us that we can understand it all, if we have all of this information about “religious treasure digging”. Then why was it so hard for the church to explain it for so many years? And when they try, they come up with this:

Some people have balked at this claim of physical instruments used in the divine translation process, but such aids to facilitate the communication of God’s power and inspiration are consistent with accounts in scripture. In addition to the Urim and Thummim, the Bible mentions other physical instruments used to access God’s power: the rod of Aaron, a brass serpent, holy anointing oils, the Ark of the Covenant, and even dirt from the ground mixed with saliva to heal the eyes of a blind man.

I’ve discussed most of the Old Testament examples, but what about the one from the New Testament, the spit and dirt that Jesus made and used when he healed a blind man. Actually the New Testament gives us the answer:

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see. Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” (John 9:13-16)

It was against the Law of Moses to make “clay” on the Sabbath and that is what the Pharisees accused Jesus of doing, breaking the Sabbath by mixing the spit with dirt to make “clay”. Jesus didn’t need to use spit and dirt, he did so to make a point to the Pharisees about what should be considered work. Let’s throw this apologist example in the trash bin with the others, where it belongs, and let’s think about how this could be applied to what Smith was doing with his peep stone.

Now, if there was some lesson to be learned, then it might be appropriate to use the clay/spit analogy. But Joseph didn’t “translate” with a peep-stone and then announce it, and show the world what he was doing as Jesus did, he kept it all hidden. Joseph could have made the case for using such implements as an example of faith, etc., to teach the “gentiles” about God’s power, but he did not. It appears he actually tried to with the “spectacles” but abandoned that early on and then went with the invented “urim and thummim” fantasy. (Remember if the “interpreters” were a urim and thummim, that is not mentioned in the Book of Mormon).

There is only a decade between when Joseph first started telling the story of the angel to the press, and his writing the history he published a few years later. Morris and the other apologists want to claim that this is so simple once we are educated about folk magic, but that it was so hard for Smith and those who were in his own generation to understand and explain it. It is obvious that those like Brigham Young, Artemisia Beaman and Porter Rockwell had no such problems, they knew all about Captain Kidd and Luman Walters and Samuel Lawrence and the Smith’s money-digging past. But they too, were reluctant to elaborate on such matters in publications although every now and then we find a brief mention in the discourses of Young. They certainly had no compunction about telling treasure digging stories to selective private audiences. Which brings us back to Jesse Smith and why the Smith’s had such problems. https://mormonitemusings.com/2019/04/09 ... the-money/


We only have the two dates where others confirm he went to the hill, Sept. 22, 1823 and Sept. 22, 1827. The autumn equinox for 1823 was on Sept. 23, and for 1827 it was also Sept. 23. It was on Sept. 22 in 1824. (In 25 & 26 is was on the 23rd also).
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_Holy Ghost
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Holy Ghost »

SuperDell wrote:Joe got the Gold Plates on the Autumnal Equinox, Sept 22, 1823.

Do you think the date related to his belief in magic? After all, he did have a magic peepstone for finding buried treasure.

Is the date any indication of his belief or practice of the occult or magic?

An equinox is a day of equal sunlight and not, time wise. Maybe Joseph Smith picked an equinox to subtly suggest that the gold plats were equal parts of light and darkness--as much deception as anything.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Are we sure it wasn’t the 23rd? I checked an online calculator and got 9/23 for the equinox.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

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_Chap
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Chap »

Res Ipsa wrote:Are we sure it wasn’t the 23rd? I checked an online calculator and got 9/23 for the equinox.


The longitude of the sun was 180º at close to 4 pm, New York time (GMT -5), on September 23, 1823. So that was the moment of the autumn equinox.
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_Symmachus
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Symmachus »

Something that you incorrigible reprobates are forgetting is that Moroni's visit occurred during Sukkot in 1823, a festival celebrating the ingathering of autumn and teeming with eschatological significance. As one LDS divine has said, speaking of Joseph's retrieval of the plate four years later during Sukkot in 1827:

It is important to note that on 22 September 1827, the very day Israel celebrated the Feast of Trumpets, Moroni gave the golden plates to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Since this feast was ripe with meaning for the theme of the regathering of Israel, it is unlikely this timing was accidental. Indeed, young Joseph was asked to meet Moroni for four years in preparation for that significant day in 1827.


Joseph Smith could not have known this, ergo you all owe the Church 10% of your income.
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_Res Ipsa
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Brilliant! What a marvelous work! What a wonder!
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Kishkumen
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Re: Gold Plates on Autumnal Equinox - magic?

Post by _Kishkumen »

Symmachus wrote:Something that you incorrigible reprobates are forgetting is that Moroni's visit occurred during Sukkot in 1823, a festival celebrating the ingathering of autumn and teeming with eschatological significance. As one LDS divine has said, speaking of Joseph's retrieval of the plate four years later during Sukkot in 1827:

It is important to note that on 22 September 1827, the very day Israel celebrated the Feast of Trumpets, Moroni gave the golden plates to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Since this feast was ripe with meaning for the theme of the regathering of Israel, it is unlikely this timing was accidental. Indeed, young Joseph was asked to meet Moroni for four years in preparation for that significant day in 1827.


Joseph Smith could not have known this, ergo you all owe the Church 10% of your income.


I see gold Moronis blowing horns on the spires of gleaming marble buildings. A miracle!
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