Cornelius Agrippa and Joseph Smith

[_mentalgymnast]

I find it interesting that in a 'restoration of all things' that these ideas which had been discussed were then encapsulated within the 'fullness of the gospel' framework. Yes, it is possible...and from the outside looking in... to simply shrug it off and say that there isn't any metaphysical connection and/or it's "boring". To me, however, it's these connections between the serious philosophical and even magical meanderings/searchings of Agrippa/Swedenborg and Joseph Smith's revelations that provide food for thought.

Your rhetoric is dripping with the Mormocentrism I am criticizing. What restoration of all things? Were *all things* restored? Really? Is there really a "fullness of the Gospel" in what Joseph Smith did? Can you say that Agrippa and Swedenborg did not receive revelation, whereas Joseph Smith's work is superior because it is revelation?

I think it would be more than likely that Agrippa/Swedenborg would have been primed and ready to receive revelation. It seems, at least from what I've read, that they paid the price to be susceptible/able to receive inspiration in their work. Joseph Smith may have been in the right place at the right time to receive that "stream of consciousness" that I referred to earlier.

Let's put aside the question of metaphysical connections and address the problem of using Mormonism as the stick whereby all else is measured. This is what is boring and meaningless.

I don't see any reason to set aside the possibilities of the metaphysical and a 'restoration' of lost/incomplete truths.

Again, you still see them as forerunners and you imagine that they only had a "taste of eternity," whereas (implicitly) Joseph Smith had a whole banquet of it.

It seems that God works line upon line and precept upon precept. Here a little and there a little. If Joseph Smith lived in the milieu of a "stream of consciousness" that had previously come to others, who's to say that this may not have become the 'template' that he and his associates had to work with as he/they developed/received further light and knowledge? Masonry was obviously a template that was used for temple worship/endowment. Why not "streamed consciousness" that had come down through great thinkers/philosophers?

As I've said before, Kish, I like to deal in plausibilities/possibilities. I don't like to throw them out as a consequence of having 'shot the messenger'.

I look at the investigations/meanderings of great thinkers as potentially, and at least in some cases, being 'inspired' by the Great God of the Universe. Especially as those ideas pool together from one thinker to the next and rise to the top, so to speak. There is, obviously, the other side of the coin that some ideas pooled together by other 'leading lights' may lead away from religious and/or metaphysical belief.

Yes, potentially, but not affirmatively so as in the case of Joseph Smith, right?

The fact is, the ideas of Swedenborg/Agrippa would have remained just that. Ideas for folks to just talk about. With Joseph Smith these ideas became institutionalized within a religious community that has spread across the world. So there's something to say about the interaction/incarnation that may have occurred between Joseph and the "stream of consciousness" that had its start earlier through other folks.

OK, we get it. Joseph Smith is, in your eyes, the real McCoy. These other guys are forerunners, who philosophize (practically a dirty word in Mormonism) or "meander" in magic. I can't expect you to say anything different, I suppose. But it is, from my perspective, predictable, boring, and myopic.

As I look at a larger/global history and progression of cultures/religions and the myriad/types of trees and branches associated with the same, I can't help but look at the possibility that as part of His vineyard the Great God has planted truths through great minds. And that in some instances these truths become institutionalized and promulgated through religious organizations and/or other belief systems.

The LDS Church being one of those. With a certain authority/dispensation to do certain things and provide certain 'blessings'.

Different strokes for different folks...but all branches on the same tree of eternal Truth.

Along with possibility/plausibility I like to look at probabilities too. This is why I find these connections fascinating.

Regards,
MG

[_Sanctorian]

MG,

I know I'm on your ignore list, but come on. Kish points out your measuring stick is the problem and yet you continue to use it. Eternal Truth, According to who? Revelation from God, as defined by Mormonism?

As Kish pointed out, your answers are predictable because you've already defined the conclusion that "Mormormism is correct". What's so fascinating about that?

What would be more fascinating was if you took the assumption Mormonism was wrong and then tried to answer the question of "what is truth?"

[_mentalgymnast]

MG,

I know I'm on your ignore list, but come on.

No you're not...never were. I had very few on that list. They are off with the hopes that we can keep things civil.

Kish points out your measuring stick is the problem and yet you continue to use it.

Yes I do. I don't see it as a problem, however.

Eternal Truth, According to who? Revelation from God, as defined by Mormonism?

As I've said, I give the CofJCofLDS the benefit of doubt in these conversations. Someone's got to do it.

As Kish pointed out, your answers are predictable...

I'd like to think that I might have my own little 'twist' here and there.

...because you've already defined the conclusion that "Mormormism is correct".

Sanctorian, I've mentioned many times that I don't know for a fact that "Mormonism is correct" in all its 'glory'. I do have reason to believe that in the market place of ideas/religions it may have sanction/authority by a creator/God to do what it does. But I'm open to the possibility that it's all 'human imagination'. But I don't default to that as you do.

What would be more fascinating was if you took the assumption Mormonism was wrong and then tried to answer the question of "what is truth?"

I don't see why that would be any more fascinating than doing what I'm doing.

But to each his/her own, I guess.

Regards,
MG

[_Maksutov]

It is interesting to consider what kind of influence passages such as this may have had on Joseph Smith:

Seeing there is a three-fold world--elementary, celestial, and intellectual--and every inferior is governed by its superior, and receiveth the influence of the virtues thereof, so that the very original and chief worker of all doth by angels, the heaven, stars, elements, animals, plants, metals, and stones convey from Himself the virtues of his omnipotency upon us, for whose service He made and created all these things: wise men conceive it in no way irrational that it should be possible for us to ascend by the same degrees through each world, to the same very original world itself, the Maker of all things and First Cause, from whence all things are and proceed; and also to enjoy not only these virtues, which are already in the more excellent kind of things, but also besides these, to draw new virtues from above.

I want to follow up on this fascinating initial perspective. How and where did Joseph encounter Germanic mysticism? I believe there may have been a New Jerusalem Swedenborg church element in Pennsylvania and possibly NY at that time. The Harmonists/Rappists lived nearby and were still active to some degree. His activities in the vicinity of the Erie Canal likely brought him into contact with many from Germany, Holland, England and elsewhere where the ideas of Swedenborg and other mystics could be encountered. Some of it he may have found in manuscripts but there could have also been conversations and other contacts.

[_mentalgymnast]

I want to follow up on this fascinating initial perspective. How and where did Joseph encounter Germanic mysticism? I believe there may have been a New Jerusalem Swedenborg church element in Pennsylvania and possibly NY at that time. The Harmonists/Rappists lived nearby and were still active to some degree. His activities in the vicinity of the Erie Canal likely brought him into contact with many from Germany, Holland, England and elsewhere where the ideas of Swedenborg and other mystics could be encountered. Some of it he may have found in manuscripts but there could have also been conversations and other contacts.

I think we can agree that this "stream of consciousness" of ideas/enlightenment permeated the place and times of these early settlers. The more we learn, the more we understand that Joseph and many of his contemporaries did not grow up in a vacuum.

Regards,
MG

[_Blixa]

The more we learn, the more we understand that Joseph and many of his contemporaries did not grow up in a vacuum.

Regards,
MG

Just like every other human being at every other point in history. Remarkable!

[_moksha]

Cornelius Agrippa had his own Jupiter Talisman.

[_Kishkumen]

I want to follow up on this fascinating initial perspective. How and where did Joseph encounter Germanic mysticism? I believe there may have been a New Jerusalem Swedenborg church element in Pennsylvania and possibly NY at that time. The Harmonists/Rappists lived nearby and were still active to some degree. His activities in the vicinity of the Erie Canal likely brought him into contact with many from Germany, Holland, England and elsewhere where the ideas of Swedenborg and other mystics could be encountered. Some of it he may have found in manuscripts but there could have also been conversations and other contacts.

Germanic mysticism made its way to North America long before Joseph Smith. I don't know the precise mode of transmission to Joseph Smith. One guess, that I think is a very good and viable one, albeit not provable, is Luman Walter.

[_Blixa]

One guess, that I think is a very good and viable one, albeit not provable, is Luman Walter.

That guy. Such an enigmatic thread through the whole story...

[_Chap]

One guess, that I think is a very good and viable one, albeit not provable, is Luman Walter.

That guy. Such an enigmatic thread through the whole story...

Gracious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luman_Walters

In 1822 and 1823, Walter served as a seer for a treasure dig on the property of Abner Cole in Palmyra, Wayne County, New York. Joseph Smith, Sr., Alvin Smith, and Joseph Smith reportedly participated in this dig. Walter possessed a magical book and a seer stone, which he used to locate buried treasure.[12]

Beaman's daughter recalled that Walters was "a sort of fortune teller" who had been "sent for three times ... to dig for treasure".[2] Reportedly, Walters " pointed out Joseph Smith, who was sitting quietly among a group of men in the tavern, and said 'There was the young man that could find [the treasure]', and cursed and swore about him in a scientific manner: awful!"[2][12]

Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn has argued that Walter crafted the magical parchments owned by the Smith family, and Quinn theorizes that the young Joseph Smith looked to Walter as an occult mentor.[13]

According to non-Mormon Pomeroy Tucker, Walter was also one of the early members of Smith's Church of Christ,[14] though official church histories do not record Luman Walter's membership.[citation needed] It is unclear if Luman Walters followed the group when they relocated to Kirtland, Ohio.[15][not in citation given] Quinn cites a family history which lists Luman Walters as a "clairvoyant who moved to Ohio".[16][17]

Walter's second cousin, George Walter, did become a Mormon.[18] Dorothy Walter is listed on the rolls of the first Relief Society in Nauvoo, Illinois.[19] Her husband, Benjamin Hoyt, was ordered by his bishop to cease using a divining rod, calling other people wizards and witches, and "burning boards" to heal the bewitched. This decision was upheld by the church's high council, with Hyrum Smith presiding.[20]

Major weirdness here. I've never heard of this person before. But he certainly had quite an education:

Luman Walters was born in Winchester, Litchfield County, Connecticut, to John Walter and Sarah Gleason around 1789.[citation needed] Sometime between 1798 and 1800, the Walter family relocated to Burke, Vermont, a town founded by Luman's uncle.[1][not in citation given]

Walters was reportedly the "son of a rich man living on the Hudson". He had "received a scientific education" and studied in Paris. Alva Beaman's daughter recalled that "After he came home he lived like a misanthrope. He had come back an infidel, believing neither in man nor God."[2][3]

At an debate in the 1880s, Clark Braden alleged that Walters had mastered the arts of animal magnetism and Mesmerism.[4][5][6]

Walter returned to the United States by 1818 and began acting the part of a physician and occult expert.[7] In that year, James Giddings, the deputy sheriff of Boscawen, New Hampshire, offered a reward for the arrest of a "transient person, calling himself Laman Walter, [who] has for several days past been imposing himself upon the credulity of the people in this vicinity by a pretended knowledge of magic, palmistry and conjuration".[8] Walters was arrested for "juggling" that August in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, but escaped from jail.[9][10]

In November 1819, Walter married Harriet Howard in Vermont. By 1822, Walter had apparently taken up residence in Gorham, Ontario County, New York.[11]

He must have been a great help to JSJr.