This blog is no longer being updated. About this blog.

A Seer, Or a Stone

Sunday, 20 May 2007 at 9:14 am

From the reaction to The Mormons, it seems that a significant portion of the members of the LDS church had never heard of Joseph Smith’s seer stone or that it had been used in translation. The seer stones aren’t discussed often in the Mormon church or presented in reenactments of the translation of the Book of Mormon, but their use in early church history is an open secret. There have been many accounts of the seer stones from official church sources:

A search for “seer stone” in the Gospel Library at lds.org turned up these articles and many others. Russell M. Nelson quoted David Whitmer about the seer stone:

Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.

Photos of two of the seer stones alleged to be owned by Joseph Smith are readily available though I suspect that many Mormons have never seen them:

Another stone—the “brown” stone supposed to be the one Joseph Smith used to translate—is currently held in the vaults of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City.

I suspect that the seer stones aren’t often mentioned in LDS conversation because they make Joseph Smith seem peculiar (in a bad way) and reinforce the fact that Joseph was heavily involved in folk magic practices. This conflicts with the modern LDS distaste for such things and with their more romanticized notions of Joseph Smith.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

4 Comments

  1. Kullervo said,

    May 21, 2007 @ 3:48 am

    I knew about the seer stone from institute classes.

  2. Jonathan Blake said,

    May 21, 2007 @ 7:35 am

    I seem to remember seeing the second photo in an institute manual, but I couldn’t find it when I skimmed through the church history manual yesterday. It still surprises me that so many well read members outright denied the claim that Joseph translated using the seer stone in a hat. Several of personal acquaintance said they wouldn’t believe until they saw it from official church sources. This post is partly for their benefit—if they ever happen to read my blog. ;)

    I think this demonstrates a conditioned response that Mormons have to anything which seems to denigrate the faith. Their immediate reaction is to dismiss it as a lie. In this case, that instinct doesn’t serve them well because the seer stone story is a well attested fact.

  3. Cybr said,

    June 2, 2007 @ 9:54 pm

    Thrown together rather quickly:

    Many computers are silicon based.

    Humans need a form of interface with computers (ie: keyboard, monitor, microphone, etc.)

    According to myth, in the last days the earth shall be burned and become as glass. What’s glass made of?

    According to Mormon myth, those remaining inhabitants will each have an Urum & Thumum (seer stones).

    Generic conclusion: The earth will be a giant super computer and the seer stones will be our interface with it.

    Like I said, thrown together. Debate me if you want later, but I can believe in the almighty computer.

    Now back to my popcorn.

  4. Jonathan Blake said,

    June 4, 2007 @ 7:55 am

    Spoken like a true computer geek. :)

    I would hope that the Great Celestial Supercomputer would at least have gotten away from our crude silicon based computing. SiO2 makes me think perhaps it would be an optical computer with a wireless connection to the white stone.

RSS feed for comments on this post