At around the turn of the millenium, I found myself in the grand tetons with my group of scouts.

One night after all of our activities we were all gathered around in a cabin playing egyptian rat screw with a deck of face cards I brought with me. We were all laughing and having a really good time when suddenly the 1st counselor "Brother Dishonestbusinessman" comes bursting into our cabin screaming like a wild maniac.

"HOW DARE YOU GUYS BRING FACE CARDS TO THIS CAMPOUT!! RWAH RWAH!!"

All of us were pretty much just like "Why? Its not like we're gambling or anything with them... this is a fun game"

"FACE CARDS ARE EVIL... THEY INVITE THE SPIRIT OF THE DEVIL... PUT THOSE AWAY RIGHT NOW! THE APOSTLE BRUCE R MCKONKIE SAYS THIS...AND THE APOSTLE BRUCE R MCKONKIE SAYS THAT.."

So I gathered up the cards and put them away in my bag and we suddenly found ourselves in an emergency-around-the-fire-testimony meeting type of deal. It was such a bizarre experience.

The next morning I looked in my bag to notice that my face cards were gone and I'm pretty sure Brother Dishonest Business man stole them out of my bag. What a bastard.

Anybody else have any similar experiences?

I learned that face cards are of the devil in my early teens, not long after we converted in the 80s. A woman who was a long-time family friend asked me why I didn't want to play cards and I informed her that Mormons didn't play with playing cards because the face cards have the spirit of the devil in them. Apparently the friend repeated this to my mom because a few minutes later my mom came tearing into my room, asking in her meanest, nastiest voice where I ever heard such a stupid thing and why I would say something like that and telling her friend how dumb and wrong I was for saying something like that. She totally made me feel stupid for repeating something I heard taught in church. Our friend seemed as appalled at my mom's overreaction as I was and I'm sure that friend thought Mormonism was a bad thing if this kind of crazy behavior ensued. She never got baptized or even took the missionary lessons, thats for sure.

haha I've had similar experiences like that too.. with my own parents and other parents of my friends.

A part of me on the inside would feel like "I don't think this is normal behavior outside of mormonism."

She caught my little brother playing with a face card that he found (too young to know what it was) and began shouting and yelling that they were of the devil, shaking her cane at him. He was smart enough to stay just out of her reach. This was in about 1949/50 We still laugh over that incident!

This notion goes back a very long time, probably comes from the Tarot cards that predated the decks of cards used today.

in a tent. The exact same words (of the devil) and all the cards taken away.

President Joseph F. Smith
“While a simple game of cards in itself may be harmless, it is a fact that by immoderate repetition it ends in an infatuation for chance schemes, in habits of excess, in waste of precious time, in dulling and stupor of the mind, and in the complete destruction of religious feeling. These are serious results, evils that should and must be avoided by the Latter-day Saints. Then again, there is the grave danger that lurks in persistent card playing, which begets the spirit of gambling, of speculation and that awakens the dangerous desire to get something for nothing” (Improvement Era, Vol. 6, August, 1903, p. 779).

" the dangerous desire to get something for nothing" sounds a lot like money digging if you ask me...

" the dangerous desire to get something for
nothing" sounds a lot like money digging if you
ask me...

Sounds more like tithing to me.

OnTheCouch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> " the dangerous desire to get something for
> nothing" sounds a lot like money digging if you
> ask me...
>
> Sounds more like tithing to me.


Haha, that's so funny AND true!

My TBM ex was told he couldn't play Magic, the Gathering inside the local community college's Institute building. He and his friend who was also TBM, just put their cards in their backpacks and left that building.

I wonder if it has to do with fortune telling cards - something "witches" used to do to earn a living.

J.S. doing necromancy might have made him and his family jealous of any competition in the flim-flam line.

Its funny because I would associate the spirit of the devil being more involved in the Temple ceremony than with playing an innocent game of egyptian rat screw haha.

My grandparents were born around the late 1800s and believed it.

My parents were born in the 1920s and thought it was pure superstition. They played a lot of cards.

... if you don't like the cards in your hand, don't you get to trade them for new ones at some point?

Trade those evil cards with faces for ones with innocent numbers.

and my other grandmother played endless games of canasta with me. I loved it and her!

So I was dealing with cognitive dissonance regarding the morg from a very early age!

to do some sleight-of-hand tricks to help entertain at a Scout function years ago. Mind you, he is talented enough to get paid for performing, and he was offering to do this for free.

The bishop asked, "Would cards be involved?" My son said "Yes." (He can do absolutely stunning illusions with cards.) The bishop looked at him very coldly and said, "We don't need that kind of thing for OUR Scouts."

No "Thank you for offering," or "Could you do tricks that didn't involve cards?" or any kind of appreciation for the offer.

You'd have thought that my son was offering to share porn with those kids. I thought that the bishop's behavior was incredibly rude.

Option 1: Use a tarot deck instead and watch dishonestbusinessman soil his sacred skivvies.

Option 2: Tell dishonestbusinessman: Bruce R McConkie is (a) a nut job, (b) dead, and (c) Mormon Doctrine has been yanked because it contained an unfixable amount of BS. Get with the 21st century program. Mormons are normal. They wear shorts and skateboard and surf and everything. You are being soooo 1953.