I'm trying to compile info about the Masonic and/or Satanic origins of Mormon temples for a couple of friends who have asked. Does anyone have any good sources?

ETA: I'm atheist/agnostic so the word "Satanic" has no negative or positive connotations for me personally (no different than "Christian"). I don't think Satanism or the occult is "bad" or "wrong." It's a religion like anything else. I'm just asking for people who want to know, and I want to point out to them that the church isn't what it says it is.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2015 11:36AM by woodsmoke.

I don't know how reliable this first one is because it quotes Ed Decker, a notorious overreactor and story teller in the debunking Mormonism community. The second is pretty interesting though ...

http://www.mazeministry.com/resources/books/doombook/doomtext/00contents.htm

http://vigilantcitizen.com/sinistersites/sinister-sites-temple-square-utah/

Ed Decker is so out there, I have a hard time believing he is not in concert with The Morg. He almost always ends up making TSCC look good in comparison.

Parts of the MORmON temple ceremony are definitely Masonic in nature /origin. That means they are anti Christian, even IF the Masonic lodge will not currently own up to its anti Christian origins/ roots for the sake of maintaining its current membership numbers ( does that sound familiar in anyway??) It does NOT mean they are Satanic. Christians are the ones that conclude that Masonic elements are Satanic because they are anti Christian, which is NOT necessarily so. America is a land of religious freedom, because it was founded on Masonic principle, NOT because it was founded on Christian principle. Many of the founding fathers were openly lodge members. NONE of the signers of the declaration of independence were catholic. Christianity (catholicism) historically had zero tolerance for other religions. It was the Masonic lodge that allowed people the latitude of freedom of worship, NOT Christianity. The masonic lodge really was a benevolent society, painted as evil by Christianity. The nasty throat slashing and death penalties were an ode/ allusion to what THE Christian church was going to do to those who were discovered to be NON believers, much more than what the lodge was going to do to those that exposed the secret of the lodge -which was that Christianity was a giant fraud. Catholicism has cut far more throats and tortured more people to death than the Masonic lodge ever thought of doing.

Christianity IS the New world, it is the second coming of the Roman Empire in the form of the Christian church/ Catholicism.
How comical when Brainless Christians are on the look out for the illuminati and/or the New World Order at the urging of Christianity. How comical that anti Christian symbology is incorporated into MORmON'S highest form of *Christian* worship in their MORmON temple.

Let's start with the concept of "Satanic". Remember that there is no actual Satan. Throughout history, however, there have been plenty of people who have tried to convince other people that there is a real Satan, and (quite contrary to the teachings of some guy named Jesus) that the easiest way to access this supposed Satan is through ritual ceremonies. Partly, I suppose, they get this idea from the fact that the major Christian religions insist that the best way to access this guy named God is likewise via ritual ceremonies- again, exactly opposite to the teachings of some guy named Jesus. So yes, people who call themselves "Satanists" frequently do ritual ceremonies, and Mormons also do ritual ceremonies in their temples.

A lot of people do ritual ceremonies.

As for Freemasonry: the influence is a lot more evident. JS clearly wanted his temple ceremonies to look like Masonic ones. The parallels have been reported countless times, including on this website. But we must understand a few things about Freemasonry. First: it was rampant in American culture at the time of Joseph Smith. People (men) were considered unusual if they did not belong to at least one, and often several, fraternal orders, most of whom included ritual ceremonies that owe a great deal to "orthodox" Freemasonry (if one can even use such a word to describe the phenomenon). A better word is "consensus"- because of point number two. There are several things Freemasonry is not. It is not cosmic. It is not ancient. And it is not organized. Any group of men could, at the time of JS anyway, put together what they called a lodge, invent some ritual ceremony, and claim it was the original-true-really-really-ancient ceremony practiced by Adam or Noah or (here's a biggie) Solomon in the mists of time. And other people would believe them. Aren't people fascinating?

Now we come to the question of the origins of Freemasonry. It did not come from Solomon's temple. It did not come from Adam, and it certainly did not come from either God or Satan. It started with the Knights Templars after their betrayal, and for them their ritual ceremony comes under the general heading of Drama. Not an attempt to access Satan, or any other cosmic powers. It was a pageant,, meant to remind fellow travelers of their former glory and hoped-for return to social acceptance. And they also used secret passwords and handshakes and so on. Again, there was nothing cosmic about any of this. It was all incredibly mundane, as a means of mutual recognition by a group of people who were on the run for their lives.

There was also probably a healthy dose of input from the practices of medieval stonemason guilds. Historians can debate the relative importance of the various points of origin for what we now call Freemasonry. Medieval guilds certainly had their ritual ceremonies, like everybody else. And they were really big on Solomon's temple, because, after all, it was built my stonemasons, so they were really cool. The Templars also liked Solomon things, because their original headquarters were at the site of the ruins of said temple.

And now we come to the Mormon phenomenon. Did JS believe that Freemasonry really was able to tap into cosmic forces? Or did he merely take advantage of the fact (I use that word precisely) that plenty of his contemporaries believed the Freemasonry really did have cosmic potential? We will never know, of course. But there are some things that we do know. We know that Freemasonry does not in fact have cosmic potential. We know that Mormons are and were into trying to tap into cosmic stuff, like the Priesthood (TM). We also, sadly, know that the patterns of Freemasonry can be used by unscrupulous people to scare the living daylights out of initiates into their secret clubs. And so we end up with contemporary Mormonism- a religion which purports to originate in the atonement of Jesus Christ, but which also insists that you have to know special handshakes and wear special clothes to please God.

I hope this helps.

thanks for your commentary, which was both quite accurate and quite objective.

The big contrast between the Masonic lodge and MORmONISM that strikes me is that the Masonic lodge and its ritual really was intended to intellectually enlighten and liberate its members/ followers (just as the Jesus character claimed to do, but that religions have no real interest in seeing happen) so they could be better people, and the lodge was willing to allow the extended time for their message to sink in and gel in the minds of lodge members. The huge impediment for more direct means of that enlightenment was the brutal totalitarian way in which Christian dogma was enforced by the reigning Christian / roman catholic empire, which forced the lodge into taking an indirect,subtle and symbolic approach to the matter of exposing the fraud of Christianity.

MORmONISM, on the other hand, PRETENDS to enlighten and liberate its initiates, but in high contrast to the lodge, MORmONISM really uses its masonic derived temple ritual to shackle and enslave it's initiate, and instant and permanent compliance is demanded of initiates as initiates are blindsided and then threatened much more than being enlightened,and then bound much more than being liberated.

Funny how MORmONS would emphatically say that was an underhanded and Satanic approach to handling people, IF they do not know who specifically is doing it in this particular instance, as in their very own *Satanic* MORmON church.

Thanks for this.

Personally I don't see the occult or Satanism as anything other than just another religion. I don't like or dislike it any more than any other superstition and I don't think it's "evil" in any way, but I'd like to be able to point out to my Christian friends that they are not worshipping who they think they are. Another layer of deception.

It's a 1974 presentation by Mormon scholar Reed Durham.

http://www.mormonismi.net/temppeli/durhamin_puhe1974.shtml

As others have said, the "satanic origins" are overblown fantasies of people like Ed Decker and Bill Schnoebelen. Some people see "Satan" in whatever they don't like.

But the origins are indeed Masonic. See similarities listed here:

http://packham.n4m.org/mason-endow.htm
"Freemasonry and the Mormon Temple Endowment"

Packham beat me to it.

When looking at church-related sources, always look for these names:

-- Walter Martin

-- Bill Schnoebelen

-- Ed Decker

-- "Saints Alive"

Anything from these people / organizations should be tossed aside.

Good to know, thank you.

JS had a fairly sophisticated understanding of the occult from what I gather and I don't think that the Lucifer character in the temple was meant to be conflated with Satan. Although the contemporary church and many fundamentalist Christians think of them as the same individual, historically the Lucifer figure is really not demonic.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1704322



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2015 09:14PM by steve benson.

. . . play the persecution card when criticized, and claim that any meaningful negative assessent of their preferred brand of faith--no matter how warranted or documented--is "unfair."



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2015 12:02AM by steve benson.