Anti-Mormonism and the Magic World View

[Pahoran]

No. They show you calling for LDS references, thus rejecting any non-LDS reference and casting a shadow of doubt over anybody who provided the non-LDS reference. I thought you were smart enough to make the connection.

Thinking, FOR THE LAST TIME, this is off-topic for this thread.

It is also false. I do sometimes -- rather rarely -- specifically ask for LDS references. But that is not "thus rejecting any non-LDS reference and casting a shadow of doubt over anybody who provided the non-LDS reference." Your assertion is not true. On the rare occasions when I specifically ask for LDS references it is because the other party claims to be providing an LDS position; therefore, an LDS reference is what is properly required to support it.

You really need to learn to read in context.

And then to discuss things in threads where they are on topic.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Thinking]

Stinking

Is this my new nickname? Also is this the kind of personal vitriol which we critics are so often accused of spewing?

[Pahoran]

Is this my new nickname? Also is this the kind of personal vitriol which we critics are so often accused of spewing?

I apologise for that. That was out of line. I will edit the offending post.

But your diversion is still off-topic.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Pahoran]

Pahoran, did you ever respond to Mike's point that Richard Bushman (an actual expert on the early Latter-day Saint movement and early America, which, AFAIK, Gee is not) and other LDS historians use the term "magic" to describe some of the practices of the Smith family and other early Latter-day Saints? Do you think Bushman is out of line?

I maintain that there is simply no evidence that Bushman has thought through the issues that Gee raises. Word choices are largely habitual and unconscious; reread your own paragraph above, and ask yourself how deeply and carefully you thought about each word. Of course we can't spend time weighing up all the possible choices for every word -- nobody would manage to write more than a sentence a day if they did -- but what that means is that the mere fact that someone uses a word does not constitute a valid response to someone who has studied the problem at length and concluded that it is unusable in the context of LDS studies.

Regards,

Pahoran

[John Williams]

I maintain that there is simply no evidence that Bushman has thought through the issues that Gee raises. Word choices are largely habitual and unconscious; reread your own paragraph above, and ask yourself how deeply and carefully you thought about each word. Of course we can't spend time weighing up all the possible choices for every word -- nobody would manage to write more than a sentence a day if they did -- but what that means is that the mere fact that someone uses a word does not constitute a valid response to someone who has studied the problem at length and concluded that it is unusable in the context of LDS studies.

Regards,

Pahoran

Brilliant. When Bushman, one of the pre-eminent LDS historians in the world, uses the term "magic," it's because he hasn't "thought through the issues that Gee raises." But when a critic uses it, it's "poisoning the well." Not only does this little exercise require you to do some serious mind-reading, but it also allows you to demonstrate your double-standard without even the slightest hint of embarrassment. Well done.

[Pahoran]

Brilliant. When Bushman, one of the pre-eminent LDS historians in the world, uses the term "magic," it's because he hasn't "thought through the issues that Gee raises." But when a critic uses it, it's "poisoning the well." Not only does this little exercise require you to do some serious mind-reading, but it also allows you to demonstrate your double-standard without even the slightest hint of embarrassment. Well done.

What got up your nose?

Quinn virtually invented the concept of "magic" that he then retrofitted onto early LDS events. He chose the word quite deliberately as part of a campaign to rewrite LDS history in the image of Mark Hofmann's "Salamander letter."

Bushman did not.

So where exactly do you see a double standard?

Regards,

Pahoran

[Nevo]

Quinn virtually invented the concept of "magic" that he then retrofitted onto early LDS events. He chose the word quite deliberately as part of a campaign to rewrite LDS history in the image of Mark Hofmann's "Salamander letter." Bushman did not.

Quinn "virtually invented the concept of 'magic'"? Um, no. Historians were using to the term "magic" to describe folk-magical practices long before Quinn. Keith Thomas's 1971 book, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (still in print), is a notable example of this. And the term is still used in academic discourse. David D. Hall's Worlds of Wonder; Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (1989) makes frequent reference to "magic," as does Richard Godbeer's The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (1992). Anybody having a passing familiarity with early modern European and early American historiography would not be scandalized by Quinn's or Bushman's use of the term "magic."

[John Williams]

What got up your nose?

Maybe it was some bad kiwi.

Quinn virtually invented the concept of "magic" that he then retrofitted onto early LDS events. He chose the word quite deliberately as part of a campaign to rewrite LDS history in the image of Mark Hofmann's "Salamander letter."

So, before Quinn, no one referred to such practices as scrying and peepstoning as "magic"? Really?

Bushman did not.

You really believe Bushman carelessly picked up Quinn's pejorative use of the term "magic" because he wasn't paying attention?

So where exactly do you see a double standard?

Again, according to you, the use of the term "magic" to describe the practices of early church members is not only inaccurate but pejorative, at least when critics do so. However, when faithful LDS members, such as Bushman use the word, it's obviously because they weren't choosing their words carefully. Maybe in New Zealand that's not considered a double standard, but it is here.

Edit: Once again, I agree that the term "magic" is too often used as a throwaway pejorative to describe Mormon beliefs and practices. But as Bushman's usage shows, it can be an apt description of some contemporary beliefs and practices in early 19th-century America.

[Pahoran]

Quinn "virtually invented the concept of 'magic'"? Um, no.

You're right; but that's not what I said.

I said that he virtually the concept of "magic" that he then retrofitted onto early LDS events. Not the entire lexical category of "magic," but the "magic" he supposed suffused early LDS belief and praxis. The fact is that Joseph Smith grew up in a culture that was suspicious of anything associated with "magic" and regarded it as essentially spurious and not genuinely supernatural. And that culture has largely continued unchanged in the Church. One of the reasons we are more tolerant than other conservative Christians of Harry Potter (just for example) is not because we are sympathetic to actual supernatural powers operating in the world apart from divine control, but because we do not imagine that it contains any hidden keys to "genuine" magical spells or powers: we don't believe any such thing to exist.

And that is the legacy -- the linear heritage -- of the real worldview of the first generation of Latter-day Saints.

When Quinn imagined a "magical world view," it was because he actually fell for the Hofmann "Salamander Letter." He then set about to rewrite Mormon history in that image. Today, when DrW prates about "magical thinking," he is using it as a pejorative intended to merely dismiss LDS beliefs as utterly unworthy of consideration.

Both of them are using a term that has no actual application to LDS life and teaching.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Joseph Antley]

The fact is that Joseph Smith grew up in a culture that was suspicious of anything associated with "magic" and regarded it as essentially spurious and not genuinely supernatural.

CfR for this "fact".

[Pahoran]

CfR for this "fact".

Happy to oblige:

Here.

Please note that I'm frequently absent from the board for long periods. If I don't reply to a CFR, feel free to bump the thread so that I see it.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Mike Reed]

Is it your position that you cannot have a conversation without them?

It is my position that the term "magic" can be useful in academic discourse.

as Gee demonstrates, Quinn does not recognise any such restrictions.

Perhaps he (like me) finds those "restrictions" unnecessary. I would agree that Ritner's approach can be a useful one (at times), but I disagree with the suggested notion that the term should be abandoned in all academic discourse on Mormonism. Besides... as I have shown, Latter-day Saints have indeed used the term in ways that weren't pejorative in the slightest. Because this is the case, all that seems to be left of the argument you have presented in your opening post is how outsiders have used the term. But to determine such restrictions now solely upon how outsiders have used it (rather than insiders).... this inverts Ritner's approach. Not only that, but the approach is further problematic because no set definition of "magic" universally exists among outsiders. Shipps is an outsider, and I wouldn't say that she uses the term as "a club to beat [Mormons] over the head" with. Bill Schnoebelen (and many counter-cultists), on the other hand... sure... I'd agree that their polemical use of the term should be avoided.

IOW, Quinn's "rebuttal" relies upon a criterion that does not apply to the polemical use of "magic" by Quinn, you or any other anti-Mormon.

Indeed.

I don't see Quinn's use of the term "magic" as polemical. Do you have any quotes from Quinn that would show otherwise?

His use, rather, seems comparable to Bushman's, Ronald W. Walker's, Marvin S. Hill's, Jan Shipps, and mine.

[Sevenbak]

I'm coming into this thread at the end, but I thought I'd share this quote I found from Orson Pratt.

The "silver cup" which Joseph in Egypt commanded the steward to put in Benjamin's sack, in order to try his brethren, was, most probably, sanctified as a Urim and Thummim to Joseph. Hence, Joseph commanded the stewart to pursue his brethren, and say to them, "Is not this in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth?" And when Joseph's brethren were brought back, he said unto them, "What deed is this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?" (Masterful Discourses and Writings of Orson Pratt, compiled by N. B. Lundwall, page 589)

To me, it makes perfect sense.

A couple other quotes here that hit home on this:

"I think we must not limit the range of miraculous workings of any divine instrument prepared by the Lord for the use of his servants, whether it is the Urim and Thummim, the "seer stone," the Liahona, or the silver cup by which Joseph of Egypt divined (see Genesis 44:1â??5, 15). I regard the Urim and Thummim that Joseph Smith used as a multioperational and nonautomatic divine instrument, and no human can understand how it works unless he has actually used it himself."

Robert J. Matthews - http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=1...um=1&id=404

"It should be recognized that such tools as the Urim and Thummim, the Liahona, seerstones, and other articles have been used appropriately in biblical, Book of Mormon, and modern times by those who have the gift and authority to obtain revelation from God in connection with their use. At the same time, scriptural accounts and personal experience show that unauthorized though perhaps well-meaning persons have made inappropriate use of tangible objects while seeking or claiming to receive spiritual guidance. Those who define folk magic to include any use of tangible objects to aid in obtaining spiritual guidance confound the real with the counterfeit. They mislead themselves and their readers.

Dallin H. Oaks, "Recent Events Involving Church History and Forged Documents," Ensign (October 1987

[Mike Reed]

Happy to oblige:

Here.

Please note that I'm frequently absent from the board for long periods. If I don't reply to a CFR, feel free to bump the thread so that I see it.

Regards,

Pahoran

Could you provide the relevant quote, Pahoran? Thanks.

In my view... I'd say that the situation was a rather polarized one. James W. Cookâ??s book â??The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnumâ? shows that there were skeptics on one hand, who were actively trying to expose the "gullibility" of the superstitious on the other.

[Mike Reed]

Here is another quote: â??He [Jesus] went among them and ministered to the sick, healed the afflicted, unstopped the ears of the deaf, restored the blind to sight, cleansed the leper by His magic touch, raised the dead to life.â? Elder George A. Smith, Conference Report, April 1904, Third Dayâ??Morning Session, p.97.

[Mike Reed]

Here is an interesting story that was published in the Improvement Era (December 1926).

A Magic Stone;-Whoso Rests His Foot Thereon Sees Both Past and Present

By Frank Beckwith

In September, 1926, I discovered a most wonderful stone near the shores of Utah Lake, a few miles north of Mosida.

It is a very hard rock, on which, with much labor, an ancient craftsman in the long, long ago, had toilsomely cut a group of hieroglyphics; and then, as if to illustrate his narrative, had carved a most life-like picture group in the lower left corner. The narration is written like the Hebrew; that is, beginning at the right it proceeds to the left, in the opposite direction to the manner of writing English. The "paragraph," if such it may be, is indented at the right top, proceeds in three lines of "text" much resembling an attempt to write in some sort of ideagraphic character; and, sustaining its Hebrew character, the line is finished a short distance toward the left, as a sentence written from right to left would end.

Then, having incised his inscription contained in the message of the ideagraphs, explained his writing (or illustrated his message) by drawing a picture of the scene his text described.

For we see a man leaning forward in the attitude of intense action, well typified, grasping in his upraised right hand some kind of implement, sword, or bludgeon; his left hand is extended across an altar to seize an animal to be slain thereon; behind him stands an attendant, priest, or other person, while behind that man, resting on the ground, is a brazier, out of which jagged tongues of flame are shooting up!

It is a most remarkable scene! One's thoughts fly onward in a wild race to account for this scene of a "Sacrificial Rite," combined with a group of very close resemblance to "near-writing,"-and both found so strangely in a group of Indian hieroglyphics. Were this found on the battle fields of Troy, in the debris on the Acropolis of Athens, in the Forum of Capitoline Rome, or in Palestine, it would be readily understandable.

But can you conceive such a scene,-a "Sacrificial Rite"-engraved by an American aboriginee in a group of mere Indian hieroglyphics?

Whence came the red man with this rite? What contact had he? What culture from a higher plane? What immigrants carried to this uncultured primitive this rite so common to the Old World?

* * *

This stone is found in a lonely spot, on an uninhabited waste, near the shores of Utah Lake,-a spot possibly but seldom visited by whites; and certainly, until my own discovery, never a word was published that such a wonderful rock was there to be seen.

There is something in (or on) the rock of great magic potency; for listen: One evening just at dusk, after a meager supper eaten there on the spot, I stood with my foot on that rock gazing across Utah Lake; in my hands I had an ordinary binocular, it aided me to see, yes!-but the magic of touching that stone gave me an extended vision, greater in range than the aid rendered by mere glass. For in my mind's eye I saw Father Escalante come down Spanish Fork canyon in the fall of 1776 (a year otherwise far more momentous), and with him a small band of Spaniards; I saw a rude, swarthy, copper-colored chieftain, and several sub-chiefs receive him. I saw braves in silent dignity stand on either side, unarmed, for this stranger comes on a peaceful mission-a man of God, unarmed.

I saw the Franciscan tell his beads; I saw him kneel and pray with and for those silent, untutored, grave people. I saw him give them a message of Christ, and I saw their ready acceptance of that message.

This I saw by the magic of that stone.

There must be great potency in a stone to bring into vision a scene faded these hundred and fifty years. I looked down at the one my foot was resting upon.

"Oh, stone," said I, addressing it as superior, "thou wert old when Father Escalante came to the shores of Utah Lake; thy message had been cut, aye, these many centuries before. Unfold to me more, I pray thee!"

Putting the glass back to my eyes, the stone did as it was bidden. For again I saw with greatly increased vision in the fast increasing dark. A luminous haze was seen faintly shining, mayhap at the very spot whereon Escalante stood; that haze was from innumerable electric lights in Spanish Fork; another haze farther north told me I was looking at Springville; and the rock said in tones scarcely audible, but more than vaguely felt by impress of foot, "Look once again, for I feel young in strength,-and much can the strong do, though youth I lack."

I looked again, shifting the glass still farther north. Tiny, little pin-point pricks of light caught the straining gaze-arc lights on the street intersections of Provo, directly opposite me on the lake!

A something luminous, a something shifting, ebbing up and down, now high, now low, a bright, red glare, wafting in the breeze, held me spellbound. What was I now seeing?

"Magic stone, tell me."

For reply the magic stone said through impress of foot,

"Look better into the past, that you may appreciate more fully the present."

I felt my gaze drawn back to the spot where the canyon debouches on the foothills leading to the water line; there I saw a red man without metals; a red man without glass; a red man without writing;-a primitive man living in skin tepees.

But a man in a long sacredotal dress, of somber color, was bringing to this red man-What, hold! Can I believe my eyes! This man pale of face was in a soft effulgence, more faint than the luminosity I saw as the haze of electric lights, holding in his hands a wondrous, unformed thing gradually assuming shape. Then I saw it was destiny-the destiny of the white man-his hands were laden with the future. To those shores he (or his like) were carrying steamboats, railroads, cameras, the telegraph, the 'phone that talks from afar, the magic thing that picks out song, music and speech from the empty air-indeed I was in a spot of much magic! Nor was the stone underfoot impotent yet. On the shores of that lake, where a hundred and fifty years ago talk was Spanish on the one hand and deep gutturals on the other, I saw a college, teaching a language not then talked in Yewtah, teaching those arts developed which I had just seen beginning to form in the hands of that white man, laden with what was to be.

The stone underfoot impressed the message,

"Shift back your glass to the present-thou hast seen the past. Look!"

Again the shifting, vibrant, leaping, luminous, red flare caught my eye. The magic stone told me I was looking at the highest achievement of man's culture-his mastery over metallurgy. For I was looking at the gases burning at the end of a tall waste pipe at the site of the great steel mills near Provo-by-products blazing in the night. Take steel from us-take from us the knowledge of all metals,-deprive us of all machines and the product of all machines-and we are thrown back as far as were the copper-colored natives when Father Escalante visited Utah a hundred and fifty years ago.

That saw I in the night by the aid of the magic stone.

And yet, that stone, so potent as to bring past and present into the same field of view-to bring to my vision a sight my unaided eyes could not discern, restored a sight faded now one hundred and fifty years!

Who says my stone was not a wonderful discovery?

Yet, its message as to itself was a locked, silent, baffling mystery. Impenetrable was it to the aboriginee found across the lake when the first white trod that shore. And why to them? Because sons, descendants, generations of them, forsook the walks and ways of those who had carved that stone-gave up their heritage in a culture that knew the rite-deliberately sought another walk of life, and traded writing, peaceful arts, and advance, to roam; left stone temples for habitations of skin stretched on a few poles-they became skilled in the ways of the chase, but forgot how to conjugate a verb!

Oh, magic stone, thou tellest much.

"Now wondrous rock, I with foot upon thee, imbibing thy message,-tell it me direct; speak of thyself! Impart why this Sacrificial Scene. Speak on, or give me vision!"

The stone refused. Nor got I anything further. I had asked for the opposite side of the lake and had gotten it; anything there the stone would and did unfold-everything. But ask it of itself, and my stone was more taciturn than the red man who carved it.

* * *

Reader of the Era, run with me in the open here untrammelled by words; let us expand our lungs on flights of fancy, deep inhaling.

On!

Is this stone marking a spot where a people in the long ago suddenly came upon the shores of the fresh, inland sea, after many days on the salt, parching wilderness we now call the "Great Salt Lake Desert?" Could they have dropped to their knees in thanksgiving, and followed that by the rite we know so well as having been practiced in Greece, in Rome, in Judah? Had they carved a message on that stone in commemoration of that deliverance-a message in the lines we see but cannot understand? And thereupon sacrificed an animal, with all the rites which a term of living under those very customs gave them knowledge of?-nay, even more, a people themselves from that land knowing the act. Can we race, O those who read, in that fancy flight, or must we slow down, prosaic reader, to a dull walk, mumbling incoherently our misgivings that our limited vision lets us see nothing more than "just another meaningless hieroglyphic?"

For myself I like that bracing air in high flights, and no altitude dizzies-the greater the height the greater the zest. I think just as calmly in those great heights as the merest earth walker who ne'er didst soar.

* * *

"Magic stone, if thou wilt not talk of thyself, I thank thee for thy vision of Father Escalante and his handful of the future. I thank thee for what I have seen this night on the shores of Utah Lake, aided by thy power. As far as thou hast talked have I received."

Delta, Utah

[Sevenbak]

Here is another quote: â??He [Jesus] went among them and ministered to the sick, healed the afflicted, unstopped the ears of the deaf, restored the blind to sight, cleansed the leper by His magic touch, raised the dead to life.â? Elder George A. Smith, Conference Report, April 1904, Third Dayâ??Morning Session, p.97.

Along the lines of what Elder oaks said about counterfeit gifts, using spittle and clay to make the blind see, or licking your finger and touching someone's tounge so they can speak are not only what Christ did, it's also what Egyptian pagans practiced.

The same counterfeit examples can be found in Moses's rod and the Egyptian priest's rods.

We know which snake won! Opposition in all things.

[Sevenbak]

Here is an interesting story that was published in the Improvement Era (December 1926).

That is fascinating!

The stuff about the steel mill north of Provo is interesting, considering it wasn't built till WWII.

[CV75]

Here is an interesting story that was published in the Improvement Era (December 1926).

This article was introduced as â??Escalante From a Different Angleâ? and is entitled, â??A Magic Stone;-Whoso Rests His Foot Thereon Sees Both Past and Presentâ? By Frank Beckwith. It was not uncommon in those days to include tales of adventure, mystery and fascination in publications for youth in both secular and non-secular publications.

Frank was a newspaper editor (Delta Utah Chronicle) and aficionado of things geological, Native American, Friar Escalante, etc.â??he was also the leader of the Arches National Monument Scientific Expedition in 1933 and named the Landscape Arch, Delicate Arch and several other formations. And he certainly provides a "different angle."

[Mike Reed]

This article was introduced as â??Escalante From a Different Angleâ? and is entitled, â??A Magic Stone;-Whoso Rests His Foot Thereon Sees Both Past and Presentâ? By Frank Beckwith. It was not uncommon in those days to include tales of adventure, mystery and fascination in publications for youth in both secular and non-secular publications.

Frank was a newspaper editor (Delta Utah Chronicle) and aficionado of things geological, Native American, Friar Escalante, etc.â??he was also the leader of the Arches National Monument Scientific Expedition in 1933 and named the Landscape Arch, Delicate Arch and several other formations. And he certainly provides a "different angle."

Thanks for the additional info, CV75. As you may have realized, the reason I posted the story was to give an example of the word "magic" being used in a non-polemic manner.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Thanks for the additional info, CV75. As you may have realized, the reason I posted the story was to give an example of the word "magic" being used in a non-polemic manner.

Well this is true how ever he did claim "It was not uncommon in those days to include tales of adventure, mystery and fascination in publications for youth in both secular and non-secular publications."

So in a sense one would try to say that the term magic would be used in "tales". Well it is interesting none the less. yeah?

[All-Seeing Eye]

I like the word magic. LDS do not like it because the word can encompass a lot of different things, from voodoo rituals to Chris Angel mind freak tricks. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like one, well.......

How else can the act of "seeing" using a rock in a hat be described? There is no natural process for rock looking. On the religious side, there aren't any ordinances or rituals governing such a thing (that I know of of). Its just something incredibly weird that you can't explain. Magic is a good word for that. If you believe that such wierd, unexplainable things can and do happen, do you not have a magical world view? I expect many LDS won't like that conclusion, because they are assuming that some natural process does exists whereby rocks are like mini-ipod videos, and we just haven't discovered that process. Well, until that process is discovered, explained, and duplicated, isn't Magic a good word?

(As a side note, the system of magic in a fantasy book is a critical component of the books success. Whether its called the Source, The Will and the Word, Saidin or Saidar, it has to be believable to work. It has to be explained how the magic works, how the user calls forth the power, what the magician's limits are, etc. If all of that isn't explained in well thought out detail, then the story isn't believable and powerful mages just seem too arbitrary. Maybe this is why the rock in the hat story just doesn't work well. Maybe if Joseph explained how he was actually reaching out to he male form of magic called Saidin (Wheel of Time FTW!) and explained the weaves of power through which he used the seer stone, then the story would sound better or be more believable. Okay, maybe not.

The stone in the hat clearly was actually an Elfstone.

[Pahoran]

<!--quoteo(post=1208690748:date=Jul 12 2009, 05:54 PM:name=Pahoran)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pahoran @ Jul 12 2009, 05:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1208690748"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Happy to oblige:

<a href="http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=12&num=2&id=363" target="_blank">Here.</a>

Please note that I'm frequently absent from the board for long periods. If I don't reply to a CFR, feel free to bump the thread so that I see it.

Regards,

Pahoran<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Could you provide the relevant quote, Pahoran? Thanks.

Indeed. (Sorry I missed this one earlier.)

Instead of a careful analysis of what the term magic meant in Joseph Smith's day, Quinn has made the unfortunate choice of Webster's Third New International Dictionary as the source of his definition of magic (see pp. xxiii, 341â??42 n. 20).93 One can see why Quinn would prefer this definition since, while the academic definitions used in scholarly monographs usually try to be as specific and precise as possible in defining a term, a dictionary normally tries to derive a definition that will encompass all the ways in which a term might have been used. Since Quinn appears to want as broad and vague a definition as possible, he uses the dictionary. Still, the dictionary is a bit too broad in some respects and too narrow in others, and so Quinn eliminates any notion of trickery from this definition and quotes Professor Ritner to support this elimination (see p. xxiii). This is ironic not only because Ritner has published extensive critiques of the application of magic as a universal category,94 but also because on the very page Quinn cites, Ritner discusses how inappropriate the definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary for magic is in toto, not just in the part Quinn wants to eliminate.95 Quinn's elimination of any notion of trickery is unfortunate in another way since that was an important part of the definition in Joseph Smith's day.

Quinn's exclusion of trickery from his definition of the term magic puts his definition and analysis directly at odds with what Joseph Smith's neighbors meant by the term magic. (I cite these neighbors not for the veracity of their accusations but for their historical use of terminology.) For example, one early anti-Mormon whom Quinn cites,96 Pomeroy Tucker, used the term magician to refer to a "young imposter" who led "his dupes," "a selected audience of ignorant and superstitious persons," through "mystic ceremonies" with "some sort of a wand in his hand,"97 and who played "tricks" that were "sufficiently artful" that they "were not too absurd for the credence of his fanatical followers"98 as part of a "long-continued and astonishingly successful career of vice and deception."99 Tucker viewed Smith's actions as mere "performance," his followers as "victims of the imposture,"100 and concluded that "it certainly evidences extraordinary talent or subtlety, that for so long a period he could maintain the potency of his art over numbers of beings in the form of manhood, acknowledging their faith in his supernatural powers."101 The one concrete example of a "magical" practice that Tucker deigns to give is a "scheme" to obtain "fresh meat."102 In other words, when Pomeroy Tucker accused Joseph Smith of "magic," he did so in precisely the sense that Quinn has deliberately excluded.

To take another example, when E. D. Howe talks about "the arts of necromancy, jugling [sic],"103 it is apparent that Howe means "necromancy" not in the sense of "the art of revealing future events by means of a pretended communication with the dead" but of "enchantment; conjuration."104 He uses "jugling" in the sense of "to practice artifice or imposture,"105 for he refers to the individual as "the young impostor" and his followers as "sturdy dupes"106 and their way of life as "humbug."107 So Howe tooâ??although he does not use the term magicâ??is interested only in the sense of the word magic that Quinn disallows.

Use of the term magic and associated terms in Palmyra in Joseph Smith's early days clearly shows that Tucker and Howe are not alone in their use of the term. "Magic" was not believed to exist as a genu ine power. An 1812 quotation by Aaron Willey cited by Quinn also shows notâ??as Quinn would have itâ??that "magic" was widespread in northeast America at the beginning of the nineteenth century but that it was believed to be mere illusion or pretence:

There are men, now and then to be met with in New England, who profess a familiarity with magic. By the aid of this, they pretend to perform wonders; as raising and laying infernal spirits; disclosing the future events of a person's life; discovering of thieves, robbers, runaways, and lost property, with many others of a like nature.108

In general, "magic" and associated terminology were synonymous with imposture, as the following quotations from the local newspaper show:

The good and bad signs foretold by conjurors & fortune tellers, and so alarming to old women, the prognostications of good & bad weather, by Almanac-makers, &c. are hardly worth the notice of our good common sense people.109

The use of the term conjuror in this report is completely in harmony with Noah Webster's 1828 definitionâ??found under the alternate spelling of conjurerâ??as "one who pretends to the secret art of performing things supernatural or extraordinary, by the aid of superior powers; an impostor who pretends, by unknown means, to discover stolen goods, &c. Hence ironically, a man of shrewd conjecture; a man of sagacity."110

To see strange lights, is a sign that there is something to cause them, or that your head is disordered; and that somebody will surely die after it.

To see an apparition, or to be bewitched is an incontestible evidence that you are lacking in common sense.111

The general sense of apparition in Joseph Smith's day was "a ghost; a specter; a visible spirit."112 The term bewitch, however, had two meanings: "to gain an ascendancy over by charms or incantation," a sense ascribed to "ignorant people"; and "to deceive and mislead by juggling tricks or imposture."113

I must still endeavor to support, that fortune-telling is a useful art, and an art that may be very easily acquired. . . . By paying due attention many will be enabled to tell their own fortunes, by which means they will save the expense of buying it of knaves and conjurors.114

Such statements indicate that Palmyra residents, following widespread belief, did not normally condone "magic" and equated it with trickery, the very thing that Quinn excludes by definition. Quinn posits that "anti-occult rhetoric by early American opinion-makers (clergy, legislators, jurists, newspaper editors, book authors) may have been the embattled effort of an elite minority to convert a vastly larger populace that was sympathetic to the occult" and then explicitly assumes this view to have been the case (p. xiv). But his assumption and a demonstration of the soundness of that assumption are two different things. The interlocking use of the terms by both the townsfolk and the learned does not bear him out. Significantly, although the supposed writers of the Hurlbut and Howe affidavitsâ??such as Joseph Capron, Willard Chase, Isaac Hale, Henry Harris, Peter Ingersoll, Roswell Nichols, David Stafford, Joshua Stafford, William Stafford, and a host of others115â??accuse Joseph Smith of "digging for money,"116 they do not accuse him of "magic," just as earlier newspaper accounts do not describe money-digging as "magic" but as "an honorable and profitable employment" in Vermont.117 Joseph Smith admitted that he was involved in digging for money (see, for example, Joseph Smithâ??History 1:56), but he does not admit to being guilty of "magic." The accusation of "magic" against Joseph Smithâ??in the sense that Quinn proposesâ??would seem to be an entirely modern contrivance, anachronistically imposed by Quinn and others upon Joseph Smith, since in Joseph Smith's day the accusation of "magic" merely meant that they believed Joseph Smith was a fraud and not a prophet.

Does that cover it?

In my view... I'd say that the situation was a rather polarized one. James W. Cookâ??s book â??The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnumâ? shows that there were skeptics on one hand, who were actively trying to expose the "gullibility" of the superstitious on the other.

Gee shows how the term was used, and addresses your supposition.

IMHO, Quinn's "magic world view" did not exist in the time and place that he imagined it.

Just as a certain defunct poster's "magical thinkers" do not actually exist where he imagines them.

Regards,

Pahoran

[CV75]

So in a sense one would try to say that the term magic would be used in "tales". Well it is interesting none the less. yeah?

I think that these types of tales were once used as a means to stimulate wonder (as in the consideration of and a desire to explore) the world and people around us--which many a budding scholar might describe as a "magical" feeling--with the object of pursuing facts and truth. This approach demonstrated a level of confidence in the hearers (as in "I teach then correct principles..."), and was not so much used to deceive or promote the questionable perceptions of the protagonists (as in the parable of the unjust steward, or the unjust judge, or even Frank's story). Someone else posted how poorly the precepts of our era can be used to assess the approaches used in another. This in mind, a tale can be anything from a discourse to an account to an imaginative narrative of an event to libel to a falsehood. The usefulness of a tale in promoting the discovery of truth can follow along this same spectrum.