mentalgymnast wrote:I suppose the question that comes into my mind with folks like Agrippa, Swedenborg, John Dee, and others, is whether or not they spoke/wrote elements of Truth or not. MG
And just how will you perceive the "truth" when people are talking about visits from angels and the three glories of the afterlife?
You make it amply clear that you believe Joseph Smith and view all other sources as questionable. In other words, you have already decided which source you has as "truth".
And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love...you make. PMcC
mentalgymnast wrote:I suppose the question that comes into my mind with folks like Agrippa, Swedenborg, John Dee, and others, is whether or not they spoke/wrote elements of Truth or not. MG
And just how will you perceive the "truth" when people are talking about visits from angels and the three glories of the afterlife?
You make it amply clear that you believe Joseph Smith and view all other sources as questionable. In other words, you have already decided which source you has as "truth".
Hence 'Truth' with a capital T.
It's what come of starting with the conclusion that 'Truth' with a capital T exists, in only the form assumed, and that this 'Truth' is solely the purview of that one, single, tiny foregone conclusion.
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.
I wonder how one curses and swears in a scientific manner? Luman (or Laman) must have had significant rhetorical skills. Perhaps that came from his Parisian education.