The Smith family and early members of the church practiced folk magic which was quite popular in early America. So popular that an over indulgence in it was looked down upon by the more educated members of society.

Joseph Smith was able to sell himself as a skilled folk magician. Dousing was used to find things like water in the ground. A douser would use rods or a witching stick to find the best place to dig a well.

Joseph took this practice further by claiming he could find buried treasure. Sounds weird today but it’s no different than people going to some guru or prosperity minister hoping they will learn the secrets of becoming rich or getting into some new financial system ran by wealthy Asian investors.

The temple is just an eclectic hodgepodge of things including folk magic. It’s highly focused on symbols, set rituals and the afterlife. Much like a seance you can visit with the dead. You can even do proxy rituals for the dead using magical signs and symbols. The dead can’t advance in their journey without us performing magic in their image.

The church has made such a sizable investment in temples but modern people find the old magical rituals bizarre and creepy. The more easy temples are to attend the more the members distain for them becomes apparent. Why there is excitement about stuff getting cut out or watered down is people hate it.


People do want a spiritual experience. Most members like a basic Christ image without all the weird magical mambo jumbo. Maybe the temple will slowly just morph into a place people meditate on Christ and make commitments to be more like him.

Maybe all the magical ritual work for the dead fades away. The church would still be ahead on its genealogy program. That data is worth a fortune. In fact the temple made the church enter a very lucrative field of data collection.

Anyways it’s just the church changing because it has to. As Buddha says,”Nothing stays the same. The only constant is change”. In 30 years what goes on in a temple probably will be way different than it is today.

At first, when considering all the things that get changed in the cult, I worried about how this might make things palatable to the younger generation when they're indoctrinated, making it harder for them to get out.

Because I didn't know about the slicing the neck or the disemboweling gestures until my shelf broke. I also was never naked or touched inappropriately in my initiatory. I went through in 2008 for the first time in preparation for my marriage and by then, they weren't fondling members with oil.

They never talk about the temple outside of it and this information is not common knowledge inside. I do not know if my shelf would have broke easier if those things were still in there when I went through. I mean, I already had the thought "omg, I am in a cult..." with the "oh god" prayer. I wonder if the touching or the graphic threat-promises would have further alienated me?

Anyway, I stopped getting worried for young people getting such a cushy, lily white version of Mormonism that they do not want to leave, when I realized WHY my shelf broke. I had been lied to. The church claimed exclusive authority, ultimate goodand truth, and they had lied to me and changed things.

Even if in 2030 the temple is just the peaceful celestial room to go sit and reflect and an 18 year old going through for the first time thinks that all it is, it will be an earth-shattering revelation when they hear that there used to be a video, that there used to be weird costumes, that the men and women were separated, that there were handshakes, that they used to mime slitting throats and bellies, that they used to touch people naked, etc. And they will have to contend with the restoration being changed so much that it almost seems like god is confused or that the temple was never important after all.

OR, alternatively... If the church no longer has temple rituals, no longer talks about restoration, no longer claims ultimate authority and truth, then fine. If it's just a protestant church then it stops being a cult and I support this defanging.

When I went for the first time 50 years ago I fully expected to meet my deceased mother in the celestial room.

The temple stories of the veil being thin, people see loved ones, the people they were doing the work for and or angels had been ingrained in me from birth.

Yes, a silly notion for many. I lost my mother when I was two years old. I desperately wanted to meet her, see her, hold her and for a brief few hours grasped that hope with all the passion a teenager could.

When I asked my Father where she was he said "It doesn't work that way." So I said, loudly, angrily, "Then what the hell did I just do all that for?"

>>So I said, loudly, angrily, "Then what the hell did I just do all that for?"

LOL! No wonder. They make a big deal about how dead people are there, all thrilled and grateful, to see their work being done.
Plus, there were plenty of urban legends about people "seeing" dead people in the temple.

I expected some sort of physical clues that God actually showed up there face to face talking to prophets. I realized it was just a bunch of old folks mumbling to themselves, pretending to be God at the veil.

Exactly. From everything I had heard my first 19 years about the temple---how holy, the thinness of the veil, an experience so holy it cannot even be talked about outside those walls---I went expecting Jesus himself to be there or at the very least some Angels hanging around the chandeliers and crown molding.


When I left that Peggy Lee song actually popped into my head, "Is That All There Is?" It was nothing more than Sunday School turned into a costume party fit for Dick and Jane.

Then when I went to ask questions in the Celestial Room I was promptly rushed out by some old temple matron. She knew her job!

I can understand from the standpoint of I thought the temple would be like you thought it would as that is what they told us.

I realized not that long ago that the temple was one of the biggest disappointments of my life.

If my mother had died when I was 2 and then I was taught what mormonism taught us, I would definitely have expected to see her.

Which means we were all lied to. None of us had even a tenth of the experience we were lead to believe we were in for.

Damn liars. Lied to by the people we trusted most.

First thing I saw in the SLC temple was the upside down pentagram on the wall (WTF?) and then next thing you know Lucifer is running the show and even god is asking him what's going on.

Too holy to talk about outside those walls my ass.

Including the appropriation of Masonic ritual would be a useful expansion of the discussion.

Has Masonry similarly changed over the generations? I gather it used to be a very secretive, high-demand organization and belief system. Has it been weakened, or diluted ("defanged"--good one, blackcoatsdaughter) like LDS has? I gather that the secrets and mystery in Masonry were jealously protected, which allowed JS to appropriate (steal) them, and include them in his secret "revelatory" rituals, with the expectation that his flock would not know about the similarities in the Masonic sheepfold.

So where is Masonry today--have things there paralleled what's happened in the LDS temple? Has it just become a fraternal organization, like the Elks, as LDS is becoming a quasi-Evangelical-Protestant church?

It's not the Mormon church of the 60s.

TSSC seems to be in a can’t win situation. Their “unique” beliefs and practices used to be a selling point. They prided themselves in being a peculiar people, but that’s getting harder to sell these days. As it has been pointed out here, temples are very common now. If a member only had a chance to attend once every several years, it was likely easier to see the strange things as mysterious and spiritual. If a member has a temple nearby, and they get pressured to attend regularly, the weird stuff starts to look just weird. Plus, with the internet, it’s easy to research the origins of temple activities and symbols.

Watering down the experience makes it less strange, but also less “special.”

So if the people stop believing in magic, stop teaching magic.

Isn't magic the basic value proposition of the church? Without it, it is just an overpriced mainstream sect.

Unfortunately, the whole structure of most religion is based on magical thinking (that's why they require faith).

Without it, maybe they might become a non profit charity organization that focuses on factual world problems instead of telling everyone what God thinks about everything.

Agreed. Churches somehow became cults of magical thinking rather than places of white magic. The animistic worldview of the Middle Ages enabled real magic. We may live in an enchanted world because a bunch of guys in brown robes literally chanted the Enlightenment into being.

The modern church lost the magic because its normative truths were demolished by easy access to objective truth.

I was a fool.

I actually believed there was some room, a place where knowledge could be acquired with books and other celestial wisdom to be inferred to the faithful.

So after making it through the vail- I was so slow that I was the last one through even though I was called first. I walked around the celestial room expecting to see books, charts, writings. And all my eyes see are hotel chairs and coffee tables. I actually looked for a door- everyone had vacated the celestial room.

My dad never said- Ain't this grand? But my bishop did.

I thought it was lousy (and I was naked/touched).

I never understood about what members were learning about when attending the temple.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2023 11:51AM by messygoop.

It's a tough choice but Russ has made his. Either stick with the absolutely fascinating but utterly ridiculous legacy of Mormonism, or, reduce it to the most boring banal generic church possible so slowly that no one catches on.

When I was a kid some one always gave talks about how Satan always gets you not all at once but little by little. That seems to be the mode of operation for the Mormon church nowadays. Coincidence? I think not.

I went to the temple in 1980 expecting some deep doctrinal instruction, like the inspired "true" interpretation of the hieroglyphics in BoA Facs 2. After all, it's specifically promised in the canonized scripture. ("Fig. 8. Contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God.") Of course, nothing remotely like that was forthcoming, so it was a huge disappointment. The naked touching wasn't appreciated either. But it wasn't a total loss, since I did get to practice ritual suicide. </s>

By Now, most of the Frequent Fliers have read/seen this from me, so I apologize in advance....


I noted so Very Little about (what I consider) the Basic, Core elements of [daily] Christ-Like living such as Honesty, Kindness, or loving relationships with family, friends.

That was my biggest disappointment....
My Dorm Mom (Estella Shail) from Ensign Hall at Ricks (IF Temple, about '65) went thru with me (I WAS only family member), Of Course there was no person-to-person engagement or conversation, but I remember being in shock while listening to others crow about 'how wonderful' it is...


OKKKKKKKK



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2023 03:00PM by GNPE.

Busting ass doing signs and tokens and at the end of the big decode is: Drink More Ovaltine!

Come back soon!