It's like when the Russians stole the US drawings for F-15s and built a look-alike MIG fighter. When asked how it was that their version looked just like ours, the Russian officials response was "we have wind tunnels too".

What is sacred is a matter of belief. There are no rules or legalities on what makes something sacred.

There are similarities to the Masons in some of the LDS temple ceremony, but they are not totally the same.

They are sacred in this case, if the LDS believer considers the temple ceremonies, for instance, to be sacred.

I don't hold anything sacred in the religious sense. It's all an artifice. I hold certain vows made to others as important to me as if they were sacred, but I prefer not to call it that. Sacredness is just a concept used to avoid analysis, questioning or skepticism. Another thing in the religionist's bag of tricks along with faith, obedience and infallibility.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

I can call it both stolen and stupid. No wonder they don't want people to talk about it.

Deep down it's got nothing to do with sacredness, people are happy to go along with that because they are truly, deeply embarrassed about it all.

DW and I were watching "From Hell" the other night. There is a scene where a guy is being initiated into the masonic order. They say the oaths, and they are very close to the pre-1990 temple oaths. The funny thing is that since DW went through after, she does not know how close the scene was to the temple oaths. I almost made a comment about it, but DW is not quite to the point I am, and she would not have found it funny.

I don't know that we teach that.

What blew my mind was to find how utterly verbatim the temple process was copied from the Freemasons. I'd heard it had similarities. What?? Dang near everything is the same.

I fall in the camp that believes JS created the temple marriage part to make sure he could keep secret the fact he was joining with wives of others' and teenagers. Tell people they are damned if they squeal and you can do the most outlandish things.

In the Book of Mormon, you read a lot about people who practice secret combinations. These are always the wicked people who do this in these stories. The Mormon temple ceremony (at least speaking from my experience of the pre-1990 ceremony) is a secret combination. The church wants to use this practice for itself but doesn't want other organizations to use it. In my opinion, any time they threaten you with life taking "penalties", they've crossed the line in to cult territory.

The Masons have ceremonies that are admitted to be allegorical, and are a part of their history as a brotherhood who needed to be rather secretive to avoid the wrath of the catholic church.

The Jesus spoken of in the bible would never go for the ripped off stuff JS put into the temple ceremony.

End of story.

Mormons actually had it first, way back when Jesus was a Mormon, and the Masonic stuff is actually a corruption of the gospel that was taken from the Earth. Mormonism restored the true ritual, blood oaths, oath of vengeance, outfits etc that Jesus and the apostles enjoyed.

Ha ha. Don't you know that silly?

I hate to sound like a one-note samba,but: originally the Masonic practices were anything but allegorical. They were passwords and countersigns developed to preserve the lives pf a group who had a price on their heads. The central "ageant" was a reenactment of their previous high station as preservers of the area encompassing Solomon's temple, and the treacherous way in which that high status was taken away. Latert generations did not understand the practical nature of it all, and started dumping all sorts of mystical and mysterious meanings on it. They also started inventing further pageants that along the same pattern of the original, but by that time having lost all connection with its original purpose.

At the time of Joseph Smith Freemasonry was a major aspect of American life. There are several histories written about this phenomenon. A great many people at the time were convinced that the Masons were indeed possessors of secrets of the universe that would allow them to take over the world upon getting the signal from the head Masons

You ask why people still endow the pageants, passowrds and handshakes with spiritual powers. IMO, it is at heart because they want to. They want to believe that such powers exist, and they insist that they gain access to those powers. The idea that the universe is controlled by a secret handshake is so alluring.

Whatever they adopted or integrated into their "own" rituals is sacred to them, to Mormons.

Mormonism feels like such a mongrel religion. So cross-bred with other religious rituals, history, and beliefs, that I don't think even Mormons know what Mormonism is or was.

Such a strange and elusive religion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2013 01:54PM by liminal state.

In his book, The Mormon Church and Freemasonry (2001), Terry Chateau writes:

[The Joseph Smith family] was a Masonic family which lived by and practiced the estimable and admirable tenets of Freemasonry. The father, Joseph Smith, Sr., was a documented member in upstate New York. He was raised to the degree of Master Mason on May 7, 1818 in Ontario Lodge No. 23 of Canandaigua, New York. An older son, Hyrum Smith, was a member of Mount Moriah Lodge No. 112, Palmyra New York.

Hard to imagine that the hocus-pocus of the masonic rites wasn't well known in the mysticism oriented treasure seeking Smith household.

Joseph stated that "the secret of masonry is to keep a secret" and being all about secrecy, it was only natural to incorporate masonic symbolism and oaths into his new version of the church.