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Date: January 28, 2013 05:45AM
Not included in the movie is the washing and anointing, nor how the witnesses are picked, so I've included the details below. After doing the washing and anointing for yourself the first time at the temple, it is omitted from the endowment in future visits. You have to request specifically to do that part for the dead. Otherwise, you skip the “naked experience” and go straight to the chapel.
WASHINGS AND ANOINTING—FIRST TIME TO THE TEMPLE
You go to the temple and show them your recommend.
You are escorted to a locker room to remove your clothes. They give you a sheet-type of clothing to wear.
First is the washing and anointing. It is done with water, and then with oil. You sit in a stall naked with a loose sheet-type of clothing covering your body. A person (man if you are a man and woman if you are a woman) pronounces a blessing over different parts of your body. He or she touches your forehead, ears, eyes, nose, lips, neck, chest, arms, hands, back, loins, legs, and feet. They pretty much touch all of your body parts except the sex organs, your butt, and nipples of your breasts. The prayers are very specific as they touch you, such as saying, “The lips to never speak guile,” or for the legs, “To run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint.”
After they are finished, they give you a piece of paper with your new name on it. Mine was Thomas. They tell you never to reveal the name to anyone except at a place they will tell you and later. You are told to hold that paper until you finished going through the endowment and are ready to provide the new name at the veil to the celestial kingdom. If you forget, they will tell you. Everyone gets the same new name on the same day, so if you ever forget it, they will look up the date and give you the new name you forgot.
Then they tell you to get dressed in your “garment underwear” and white temple clothes, and you carry the robe, sash, hat, and a "green apron" with you in a special bag, and you are escorted a chapel to wait for the next endowment room to be vacated. The garments have markings over the breast, navel, and right knee. The garment markings are explained at the veil to the celestial kingdom, which is at the end of a 90 minute endowment session that includes a movie, instruction in covenants and priesthood orders, and learning the “true order of prayer”.
After waiting in the chapel, an officiator picks a “witness couple”, who are married, and the witness couple leads the group waiting in the chapel into the endowment room to watch a movie. In the Salt Lake City Temple, instead of a movie, you actually move from room to room with live actors that play the parts of God, Jesus, Michael, Satan, Adam, Eve, Peter, James, and John. All new temples have movies.
When you enter the modern endowment room, curtains conceal a movie screen and a large rectangular altar is at the front. The room is divided into two sections of seats. Men are on the right. Women are on the left. The witness couples sits in the front row on the seats on the edges in the middle room in front of the altar. The witnesses are invited to go to the altar from time to time.
The movie presentation covers the creation garden and telestial kingdom where we live today. The movie stops and starts at different points for instruction in covenants and priesthood order. After the movie is over, the lights go brighter to represent the terrestrial kingdom, and more covenants are made, but no more movie. The celestial room is entered later after the covenants are completed.
In the garden and each kingdom, you are given some instructions and make a covenant according to the "law" of that kingdom. Then you are given "signs and tokens" of the priesthood, which is a handshake with the temple patrons who go around the room one by one to shake everyone's hands, and then, you make a covenant with the arms by "cutting the covenant" and promising that you will never reveal the "sacred" handshakes or your new name, neither the signs, nor the penalties. If you do, you are threatened with death. The death penalty covenant is done by moving the arm across the body, with the thumb against it, representing a knife, of course. The telestial kingdom execution is across the guts. The terrestrial room is across the chest. The celestial kingdom is across the neck.