Mormonism and the Mysteries

I would like to share a passage from a the book The Ancient Mysteries (Marvin W Meyer University of Pennsylvania Press) and have you compare it to the story of Joseph Smiths first vision. I will be posting a little more on this. This is just information for those that want it.

The Ancient Mysteries:
In a literary fragment attributed to Plutarch, the experience of death is compared with initiation into great mysteries. Plutarch initially notes that similarity of the Greek verbs telautan(to die) and teleisthai(to be initiated) and then observes that people who die and people who are initiated go through comparable transformations. The author most likely was reflecting on the great mysteries of Eleusis in his idealized observations, but the passage may be read in a more general manner as a characterization of the place of death and life in the various mystery religions.

At first there is a wandering, and wearisome roaming, and fearful traveling through darkness with no end to be found. Then, just before the consummation (telos), there is every sort of terror, shuddering and trembling and perspiring and being alarmed. But after this a marvelous light(Phos) appears, and open places and meadows await, with voices and dances and the solemnities of sacred utterances and holy visions, In that place one walks about at will, now perfect and initiated (memuemenos) and free, and wearing a crown, one celebrates religious rites, and joins with pure pious people. Such a person looks over the uninitiated and unpurified crowd of people living here, who are packed together and trample each other in deep mud and murk, but who hold onto their evil things on account of their fear of death, because they do not believe in the good things that are in the other world.

These are the eternal blessings, the joys for this life and the hopes for the next, bestowed upon initiates unto the mystery religions.

Joseph Smiths Vision from LDS.org:
In accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.

After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction--not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being--just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.


One of them . . . said, pointing to the other--"This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"


It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other--"This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"

My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)--and which I should join.

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: "they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof."

He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven. When the light had departed, I had no strength; but soon recovering in some degree, I went home.
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Phoenix778m wrote:The Ancient Mysteries:
In a literary fragment attributed to Plutarch, the experience of death is compared with initiation into great mysteries. Plutarch initially notes that similarity of the Greek verbs telautan(to die) and teleisthai(to be initiated) and then observes that people who die and people who are initiated go through comparable transformations. The author most likely was reflecting on the great mysteries of Eleusis in his idealized observations, but the passage may be read in a more general manner as a characterization of the place of death and life in the various mystery religions.

At first there is a wandering, and wearisome roaming, and fearful traveling through darkness with no end to be found. Then, just before the consummation (telos), there is every sort of terror, shuddering and trembling and perspiring and being alarmed. But after this a marvelous light(Phos) appears, and open places and meadows await, with voices and dances and the solemnities of sacred utterances and holy visions, In that place one walks about at will, now perfect and initiated (memuemenos) and free, and wearing a crown, one celebrates religious rites, and joins with pure pious people. Such a person looks over the uninitiated and unpurified crowd of people living here, who are packed together and trample each other in deep mud and murk, but who hold onto their evil things on account of their fear of death, because they do not believe in the good things that are in the other world.

These are the eternal blessings, the joys for this life and the hopes for the next, bestowed upon initiates unto the mystery religions.

Over the years, I developed a theory that much of the spiritual illuminations undergone in the ancient mystery schools was a later development of a more ancient shamanistic practice that had to do with generation "sleep paralysis/lucid dreams" in the adepts. The descriptions of founders of religions who first go through a dreadful ordeal and to then be later redeemed with visions of illuminating lights, entities and deep mystical insights. To me personally, I feel this is a characteristic of a conscious dreaming process.

But a lot of people these days often associate experiences that Smith had with alien abductions and such. It may be a bit off topic, but there's this book I was briefly skimming through called "The Gods of Eden" by William Bramley. He's a UFO guy who includes Joseph Smith among the ranks of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Moses, and even more modern figures like Hitler and Louis Farrakhan, as being part of a chain of UFO abductee influencers of mass religions and social movements. All of those individuals talked about a life changing events of which they encountered dreamlike entities of high power and influence over them, demanding they create a new ideology.

Are you guys familiar with the bicameral mind theory of Julian Jaynes? He postulated that such communications with god/s, angels, entities, visions and such 'parareal' encounters were a hangup from the bicameral mind of mostly pre-historic societies. Forceful, extremely powerful command hallucinations would grip people as the presence and voice of the gods, or god. Cataclysms, war, plague, and various other forces of nature may have broken down this feature of consciousness completely, where only increasingly infrequent prophets who could hear the word of god sprung up, till there were almost none at all.

So called schizophrenia today is a vestige of those times. A further speculation could be that such stressful initiation ceremonies of the mystery schools had the intent of activating this mode of mind via the extreme stress induced in rituals that were arduous and intense (stress being a readily acknowledged component in triggering schizophrenia), and then others where sensory deprivation can activate the latent areas of the bicameral mind.
Shamans are today often thought of as being schizophrenics by some modern day anthropologists and psychohistorians.

Schizophrenia is just a label. A pejorative term at that.

I guess the question is for me if this bicameral mind was activated by these prophets, seers, shaman, medicine men, etc; and they entered into such visionary states were they actually communicating with entities foreign to this world/reality, an actual god or gods, or was it just an alternate construct of consciousness that served a purpose in prior time period only and has been shelved as 'not fit for purpose'?

Yeah Winston, I'm familiar with Julian Jaynes. I like the way he thinks about hallucinations, generally as inspiration for influential people in history; but I do not fully agree with the neuromechanics of his work. He theorized that what caused communications with "the other" (i.e. god-like hallucinations) was a formative separation of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The voices in the head being the left brain's comprehension of the right brain's signals. That theory is interesting, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that the left/right brain split was a sudden evolutionary process.

The hallucination aspect of it is fascinating on its own, even without all that speculative theories about dichotomous brain functionings. As you said yourself, hallucinations could be generated by sensory deprivation. There are other ways too...things like deep meditation, psychedelics, lucid dreaming, harmonics, and even the earth's electromagnetic frequencies have been known to cause what could be interpreted as encounters with "the other(s)"

if you're into this kind of stuff, you may find interested in this video i uploaded [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Winston_Smith wrote:I guess the question is for me if this bicameral mind was activated by these prophets, seers, shaman, medicine men, etc; and they entered into such visionary states were they actually communicating with entities foreign to this world/reality, an actual god or gods, or was it just an alternate construct of consciousness that served a purpose in prior time period only and has been shelved as 'not fit for purpose'?

well, I feel that the construct of consciousness is in itself an alternate world/reality...or can function as one if you knew the proper techniques

i'm not disappointed either way!

Preston wrote:
if you're into this kind of stuff, you may find interested in this video i uploaded [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I'll take a look.

As far as Joseph Smith seeing visions I don't know, I do know this:

Joseph Smith Jr.'s grandfather was Asael Smith.
JSJ's Brothers name was Hyrum Smith
JSJ's third wife was Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris
JSJ's 30th wife is Desdemona Wadsworth FULLMER

For those of you that don't know it is a common saying in high masonry that it is the builders job to perfect what was left imperfect.
The name Asael means "to do, make perfect."
Hyrum is another way of spelling Hiram. Hiram Abiff is a character who figures prominently in an allegorical play that is presented during the third degree of Craft Freemasonry.

Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris was married to William Morgan. Morgan was killed by masons for divulging secrets. Then Smith was killed?!?!

I'm sure the family had ties to forces greater than themselves.

Wow. You know, that reminds me. I do remember hearing that Mormonism has some sort of connection to Freemasonry. The details you just described are obviously part of the similarities. Are there any more connections that you know of?

also i might add, Smith also is another way of saying Cain...Cain's son was Enoch. the builder (mason) of the first city

Quite possibly related to various secret society movements, though I know not enough about Mormonism to comment. Terry Melanson of Conspiracy Archivehighly recommends the following book by John L. Brooke: The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology.

There's a decent review from the Institute for Religious Research here: The Refiner's Fire

The Mormons have the Melchizedek priesthood. They say they take the name so they don't use the word "God's" priesthood and blaspheme his name.
The word Melchizedek is broken down in Hebrew to two words.
Melch(Milcom)Moloch=Priest/King
Zedek(Zeus)=Jupiter(Zeus/Pitar)=God of Justice (black robes)
Melchizedek=My god is Justice
The ancient god of Justice of the Akkadian(Sumer) was Shamash(Sun)
Mormons have no idea of this history and generally don't start researching it until they believe in the doctrine itself so everything that fits to the doctrine is accepted and everything else is a lie.

I will let you know more as I decode it.
The Salt lake temple has sun,moon,star,saturn stones on the temple. Also the all seeing eye and the handshake symbol on the Navoo temple.
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The beehive
Also the blazing star of Lucifer.
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They say that many cultures have this symbol and that it doesn't mean lucifer to them, so it isn't a luciferian symbol.