Cunning folk traditions, sometimes referred to as folk magic, were intertwined with the early culture and practice of the Latter Day Saint movement. These traditions were widespread in unorganized religion in the parts of Europe and America where the Latter Day Saint movement began in the 1820s and 1830s.Walker, Ronald W. (1984) "Joseph Smith: The Palmyra Seer" BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 24 : Iss. 4, Article 5.Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2003); Practices of the culture included folk healing, folk medicine, folk magic, and divination, remnants of which have been incorporated or rejected to varying degrees into the liturgy, culture, and practice of modern Latter Day Saints.Stapley, Jonathan. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology. Oxford University Press, 2018: page 106.
Early church leaders were tolerant of and participated in these traditions, but by the beginning of the 20th century folk practices were not considered part of the orthopraxy of most branches of the movement, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).Stapley, Jonathan. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology. Oxford University Press, 2018: page 4, 107. The extent that the founder of the movement Joseph Smith and his early followers participated in the culture has been the subject of controversy since before the church's founding in 1830, and continues modernly.Walker, Ronald W. (1984) "Joseph Smith: The Palmyra Seer", BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 24 : Iss. 4, Article 5.
Folk magic in the early American frontier
Folk magic was an extremely widespread practice throughout the American frontier of the early 19th century among Christians of all denominations.Ferdinand KPOHOUE, Revue Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée, de Littérature et d’Education, Volume 1 Numéro 1 Décembre 2018 ISSN 1840-9318Superstition as seen through Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Divining rods were widely used to find locations for wells. Seasonal markers were important to farming cultures, including the Solstices (the shortest and longest days of the year) and the Equinoxes (when daytime and nighttime are nearly-equal in duration). Astrology was a widespread practice.Vogel p.43
Treasure hunting was a common pastime, inspired by stories of Native American relics, Spanish mines, and the pirate Captain Kidd burying gold and a bible. On July 24, 1822, the local newspaper in Palmyra reprinted an article titled "The Money Diggers" about the wave of treasure digging going on throughout New England.Quoted in Vogel "Occult Context of Joseph Smith's 1823 Discovery of Gold Plates" It reported that one man in Pennsylvania had discovered a treasure worth $50,000. The article explained "We could name, if we pleased, at least five hundred respectable men, who do, in the simplicity and sincerity of their hearts, verily believe that immense treasures lie concealed upon our Green Mountains; many of whom have been for a number of years, most industriously and perserveringly engaged in digging it up."Quinn, p. 23
Frontier Americans often believed in the ability of some people to have supernatural sight aided by stones, crystals, minerals, or glass. "Glass-looking", scrying, and use of a 'peep-stone' or 'seer-stone' were thought to aid in finding lost items. Lore held that buried treasures might be associated with ghosts or spirits of the dead, particularly people who had, in life, been murdered in connection to the treasure.Lore held Kidd had kill his mate Timothy Jones to protect the pirate's treasure. Visions or dreams, particularly thrice-repeated dreams, were seen as a way for spirits to contact the living.Quinn p. 118
Joseph Smith and folk magic Joseph Smith and his family were folk magic practitioners and Smith described himself as a "seer" throughout his life. The family was controversial in the region for their practice of nighttime treasure digs aided by incantations, charms, magic circles, animal sacrifices, and allegedly necromancy.Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magical Worldview p. 211: "magical milieu of the Smith family included seer stones, astrology, talismans, a dagger for drawing magic circles of treasure digging and spirit invocation, and magic parchments for purification, protection, and conjuring a spirit.", p. 137 "Someone evidently talked openly about the possibility of using part of Alvin’s remains to fulfill the requirement of the treasure guardian by necromancy, and village rumors required the denial, which Joseph Smith, Sr., published in six consecutive issues of the local weekly." Joseph Smith's recently-deceased older brother was reportedly exhumed and Smith reportedly left the Methodists amid accusations of necromancy.Bushman, p. 69M As early as 1834, the Smiths' involvement in folk magic was documented in the book Mormonism Unvailed.Vogel, p. 596-597
The church consistently minimized and denied Smith's usage of magic. As late as 1954, Joseph Fielding Smith claimed, incorrectly, that seer stones had not been used during the dictation of the Book of Mormon.
Smith's involvement in magic received further attention in the 1980s when forger (and later bomber) Mark Hoffman created the Salamander letter, a fake letter which purported to corroborate Willard Chase's account that Smith "saw in the box something like a toad, which soon assumed the appearance of a man, and struck him on the side of his head".Quinn (1987) p. 124-127 By 1984, even church critics were claiming that Hoffman's letter wasn't authentic and it was ultimately revealed to be a forgery. However, as a Church article noted: "such issues as Joseph Smith's involvement in treasure-seeking and folk magic remain. Ample evidence exists for both of these".CES 1985, quoted in Quinn p.ix In 1987, D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View brought wide attention to the topic.
In 2003, South Park episode "All About Mormons" introduced a global audience to Smith's use of a seer stone to dictate the Book of Mormon. A decade later, in a 2013 essay, the LDS church publicly acknowledged that a seer stone had been used in the translation of the Book of Mormon. Scholar John-Charles Duffy praised the essay for candidly admitting that Smith didn't translate the plates while actually looking at them, but instead by placing a seer stone in a hat and pressing his face into the hat. In 2015, the LDS church released images of one of Smith's seer stones.
Extended chronology
The Smith family and their neighbors practiced a form of folk religion,: A 1985 memorandum sent from the headquarters of the LDS Church Educational System to regional and local administrators read, "Even if the [Mark Hofmann] letters were to be unauthentic, such issues as Joseph Smith's involvement in treasure-seeking and folk magic remain. Ample evidence exists for both of these, even without the letters." which, although not uncommon in his time and place, was criticized by many contemporary Protestants "as either fraudulent illusion or the workings of the Devil." Both Joseph Smith Sr. and at least two of his sons worked at "money digging," using seer stones in mostly unsuccessful attempts to locate lost items and buried treasure. (saying that he had been a "money digger" but that it "was never a very profitable job to him, as he only got fourteen dollars a month for it"). . For a discussion of Smith's money-digging activities by an academic LDS biographer, see .Quinn notes Joseph Smith Sr.'s paternal great-grandfather Samuel was among the accusers at the 1629 Salem witchcraft trials, In a draft of her memoirs, Lucy Mack Smith referred to folk magic:I shall change my theme for the present, but let not my reader suppose that because I shall pursue another topic for a season that we stopt our labor and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing magic circles or soothsaying, to the neglect of all kinds of business. We never during our lives suffered one important interest to swallow up every other obligation. But whilst we worked with our hands, we endeavored to remember the service of and the welfare of our souls. D. Michael Quinn has written that Lucy Mack Smith viewed these magical practices as "part of her family's religious quest" while denying that they prevented "family members from accomplishing other, equally important work.": "Joseph Smith's mother did not deny her family participation in occult activities but simply affirmed that these did not prevent family members from accomplishing other, equally important work." In a note at (n. 84), Dan Vogel argues that this sentence from the draft may have been excised from the 1853 edition of Lucy Mack Smith's memoirs because of its allusion to folk magic, "which was a sensitive subject for those not wishing to give credence to claims made in affidavits collected in 1833 by Philastus Hurlbut." Jan Shipps notes that while Smith's "religious claims were rejected by many of the persons who had known him in the 1820s because they remembered him as a practitioner of the magic arts," others of his earliest followers were attracted to his claims "for precisely the same reason.".
Smith reports using seer stones in the translation of the Book of Mormon,"History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834]", p. 9, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed April 1, 2020. as well as in the reception of several early revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Scrying
In the early 1820s in the region where Joseph Smith grew up there was a subculture that practiced scrying through the use of "seer stones" or "peep stones".Walker, Ronald W. (1984) "The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting", BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 24 : Iss. 4, Article 4. Available at: Smith's hometown of Palmyra was no exception. Historian D. Michael Quinn states "Until the Book of Mormon thrust young Smith into prominence, Palmyra's most notable seer was Sally Chase, who used a greenish-colored stone. William Stafford also had a seer stone, and Joshua Stafford had a 'peepstone which looked like white marble and had a hole through the center.'"D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987), 38. Historian Richard Bushman adds Chauncy Hart, and an unnamed man in Susquehanna County, both of whom had stones with which they found lost objects.Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 70.
In September 1819, Smith reportedly borrowed a stone from local seer Sally Chase and used it to scry the location of a stone that was buried under a tree 150 miles away.
From about 1819, Smith regularly practiced scrying, a form of divination in which a "seer" looked into a seer stone to receive supernatural knowledge. Smith usually practiced "peeping" or seeing by putting a stone at the bottom of a white stovepipe hat, putting his face over the hat to block the light, then divining information from the stone.; . According to an account of an interview with Joseph Smith Sr., the 14-year-old Joseph borrowed a stone from a person working as a local crystal gazer which reportedly showed him the underground location of another stone near his home, which he located at a depth of about twenty-two feet. According to another story, in either 1819 or 1822 , while the older Smith males were digging a well for a Palmyra neighbor, they found an unusual stone , described as either white and glassy and shaped like a child's foot or "chocolate-colored, somewhat egg-shaped." . Smith then used this stone as a seer stone.. Smith and his father achieved "something of a mysterious local reputation in the profession—mysterious because there is no record that they ever found anything despite the readiness of some local residents to pay for their efforts.".