It's well known that the "tokens" in the LDS temple endowment were "borrowed" from Freemasonry. But where did they come from in the first place?
Freemasonry comes from the medieval guild system.
Joseph Smith introduced the handshakes (borrowed and adapted from Masonry) a few weeks after he, himself became a Master Mason. Along with the handshakes were their name, sign and penalty, also borrowed from Masonry.
They all made sense in terms of the medieval guild system. Back then there was no way to authenticate someone's credentials. You couldn't e-mail some organization to check and written documents could be forged or stolen.
So the guilds had secret signs that the members learned at each level. Let's say you are a Mason and show up to help build a cathedral or a castle. How do they know you are a member of the Mason's guild? How do they know what level of proficiency you have attained? If you are not competent the building you work on may collapse.
Let's say you claim to be a member of the Mason's Guild who has reached the level of "Fellow Craft Mason." Then the "project engineer" takes you into a private room and you give the secret handshakes, signs, names and penalties associated with the rank of Fellow Craft Mason. This proves you are the real deal.
Of course in such a system secrecy is of paramount importance. That is why there were penalties associated with each token and sign. That is why you would, as part of Guild ritual, symbolically slit your throat or symbolically disembowel yourself while promising never to reveal these things under penalty of "having my throat cut from ear to ear and my tongue torn out by the roots." This last phrase was borrowed verbatim from Masonry into the Endowment. In the 1920s is was changed to "suffer my life to be taken." In 1990 it was eliminated altogether in the Endowment.
In time the medieval Mason's guild morphed from a craft-guild to a fraternal organization.
In the Medieval Guild System all this makes perfect sense. In a religious/Christian context it makes no sense at all.
Oh, and by the way, even Masonic Historians have debunked the claim (common in Joseph Smith's day) that Masonic ceremonies dated back to Solomon's Temple.
I say whatever floats your boat. It's not for me that for sure. Some anachronistic rite replete with secret handshakes and decoder rings is not my idea of spirituality. Perhaps it is for others. I find most of the stuff utter nonsense.
Wow. Thank you so much for this post. I had actually learned this about masonry and other guilds but had never applied it to the temple ritual. Weird disconnect in my own mind. I am so glad you laid it out so clearly.
I never felt comfortable in that place. Thought there was something wrong with me. No, something wrong with that white castle. I remember thinking, I have to wear this costume in the CK? Laughable.
Have you ever read "Pillars Of The Earth"? One of the best (and longest) books ever. But you get a real feel for the period when the big cathedrals were built, and what building them really entailed. The more skilled you were, the better chances you had of finding work in these projects, something that was very coveted. And they needed to know that you did have those skills, especially skilled masons. So the tokens (with their accompanying name, sign and penalties), were extremely secretive.
One was only given them but by the grand master of a project and one did not divulge them because their livelihoods depended on it. The fewer people who knew the passwords, the better your chance of getting a job when they needed an entered apprentice or a more skilled person who had a password to match his skill. And unlike with the mormons, people actually did occassionally give up their lives rather than reveal the passwords.
As years went on, they didn't need them for masonry or trade, but it morphed into the masonic brotherhood orders. JS became a master mason and started the Nauvoo chapter and realized the system could work great for his secret brotherhood of polygamy. Especially since they would embrace it as Celestial Masonry, as journals and old documents show it was called by the early brethren.
Anyway, as I was saying. Pillars and World Without End are really great books if you want to understand the time period of the early trade cults.