Early Mormonism and the Magic World View [Paperback]

D. Michael Quinn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998

In this ground-breaking book, D. Michael Quinn masterfully reconstructs an earlier age, finding ample evidence for folk magic in nineteenth-century New England, as he does in Mormon founder Joseph Smith's upbringing. Quinn discovers that Smith's world was inhabited by supernatural creatures whose existence could be both symbolic and real. He explains that the Smith family's treasure digging was not unusual for the times and is vital to understanding how early Mormons interpreted developments in their history in ways that differ from modern perceptions. Quinn's impressive research provides a much-needed background for the environment that produced Mormonism. This thoroughly researched examination into occult traditions surrounding Smith, his family, and other founding Mormons cannot be understated. Among the practices no longer a part of Mormonism are the use of divining rods for revelation, astrology to determine the best times to conceive children and plant crops, the study of skull contours to understand personality traits, magic formulae utilized to discover lost property, and the wearing of protective talismans. Ninety-four photographs and illustrations accompany the text.

Editorial Reviews

Review

D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is an extremely important book. Quinn, a practicing, believing, Latter-day Saint and former professor of history at Brigham Young University, convincingly demonstrates that magic had a strong influence on the course and development of Mormonism as founded by Joseph Smith. At first glance Quinn's disclosure of Mormonism's early reliance on magic might appear to lend support to contemporary critics who view Latter-day Saints in a negative light. Indeed, there is a present-day tendency to view the practice and use of magic as being at variance with, and antagonistic to, conventional Christian beliefs. However, in the early nineteenth century a significant number of Americans embraced the occult while at the same time considering themselves devout, practicing Christians. Thus, Joseph Smith and his followers, like many other people of that period, utilized observations in determining their daily behavior. Quinn, moreover, goes one step further in presenting convincing evidence that Smith, in defining and setting out many of Mormonism's important and often distinctive doctrines and practices, utilized elements from his "folk magic world view." Besides presenting a strong and generally convincing case for the pervasive influence of magic on early Mormonism, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is important for other reasons. It represents a "case study" of religious influence "from the bottom up" in that it presents folk magic as a phenomenon of the "majority" of common, average Americans, despite being rejected by most rationally educated mainline clergy. The book also illuminates an important and heretofore unexplored side of Joseph Smith's complex, often elusive personality, thus enabling students of early Mormon history to understand Mormonism's founder in greater depth. Despite its overwhelming strengths, Quinn's book has a few problems. Notwithstanding these relatively minor difficulties, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is a seminal study, one of the most significant books yet written on Joseph Smith and early Mormon origins. It commands the attention of all students of Mormon history in particular and American religious history in general. --Pacific Historical Review, Newell G. Bringhurst

D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is likely to stir more debate in Mormon scholarly circles than any book published for some time. Unlike some researchers who have used Joseph Smith's magico-religious practices to discredit both Smith and the church he founded, Quinn views the Mormon prophet sympathetically. He explains his actions in terms of the world that produced him and argues that from the cultural perspective of Smith's New England, one could have been both a practitioner of magic a possessor of occult parchments, amulets, and astrological guides and at the same time a righteous individual capable of establishing the Kingdom of God. In seeking a magical base for Smith's acts, Quinn is correct in stating that Smith dug for buried treasure and used seer stones and divining rods to help in the search, and that he used some of these same devices in translating the Book of Mormon from golden plates he discovered near his home. But when he connects most major deeds in Smith's life (from digging treasure to conceiving children to establishing theological practices and rituals) with prevailing magical practices and beliefs, Quinn moves beyond his evidence and gives readers an intriguing, but unsubstantiated, picture of Mormonism's founder. Quinn builds much of his case on associations that are seldom proved and on parallel evidence that lies beyond proof. Typically, he will recount an occult belief that the Jewish Qabbalah was transferred patrilineally from generation to generation, for example and then will show that a book detailing this belief was advertised for sale in Smith's Palmyra from 1804 to 1828 and consequently could have been available to Smith as he developed the concept of the patrilineal trasmission of priesthood authority. But Quinn never proves that ideas found in books available at the time actually moved from these books into Joseph Smith's head. Because B follows A, B is simply assumed to have been caused by A. Or Quinn will compare an action in Smith's life, like spirit incantation, to similar practices in other times and places and then, ignoring cultural differences, will explain the former in terms of the latter. This approach is possible because Quinn subscribes to a notion of folklore that professional folklorists abandoned long ago that the "folk," the people who engaged in magical practices in Smith's time, were unsophisticated, unlettered country people who shared a world view with people like themselves across the ages. From this perspective, Quinn can explain why Smith wore an amulet by showing why people far removed from him in time, place, and culture also wore amulets an approach that went out of style with James Frazer's The Golden Bough. We know today that there is no monolithic "folk" and that there was none during Smith's time; there have been only different folks, different clusters of people united by similar interests and constantly generating and reshaping folklore as they respond to the circumstances of their environments. There can, therefore, be no monolithic world view on magic. Similar practices can have quite different meanings, and researchers cannot explain one practice in terms of another until they have first set each in its proper cultural and historical background and inferred meaning from context. Quinn's book is an important work. It will be the starting point for any future studies of magic and the origins of Mormonism. Its richly documented pages tease the fancy and suggest numerous directions for research. But its basic argument, built on a foundation of unproven associations and parallel evidence and relying on an untenable notion of the folk, must remain in doubt. --Western Historical Quarterly, William A. Wilson

Few things provoke interest in a topic more than intrigue and violence. Attention to early Mormonism peaked in recent years with the discovery of letters attributed to Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, and Martin Harris, an early convert and benefactor, which apparently portray them as practitioners of folk magic, and with the subsequent claim that the letters were forged. These discoveries provide the backdrop for Michael Quinn's book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Quinn attempts to come to terms with the importance of magic and the occult in Mormonism's formative years. Rather than deny the overwhelming evidence that Smith and other early Mormons practiced magic, the author points out that such activities have permeated religion since biblical times. He argues that in early 19th-century America the use of seer stones, divining rods and amulets, and an interest in manifestations such as theophanies and treasure visions, were common. Thus he presents Smith as a man of his times rather than as an overt prophet or idolater. Quinn, who is a member of Brigham Young University's history department, demonstrates an impressive scholarship characteristic of his Yale training. His explorations into the practices of magic and the occult in the Judeo-Christian tradition are wide-ranging. He not only investigates such obvious topics as the manner in which the Book of Mormon plates were translated but offers elaborate analyses of the uses of numerology and astrology, and a painstaking effort to establish ties between the Smith family and seers in western New York. Quinn fills important gaps left by scholars such as Jan Shipps and Laurence Moore. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View is least satisfactory in its attempt to demarcate magic and the occult from mainstream religion. Are such phenomena as theophanies, angelic visitations and dreams and the use of oil for healing really folk magic, as Quinn seems to suggest? If they are, can similar elements in traditional Christianity be said to be genuine? More focused definitions of magic and the occult than those taken from Webster might have provided sharper discrimination. Quinn's citation form simply giving the author and the year of the books he used is ill-suited to historical research; traditional footnotes would have greatly improved the book. Nevertheless, this book has considerable merit, and will be valuable for anyone who desires to situate early Mormonism in the broader context of 19th-century American religion. --Christian Century, F. Michael Perko

From the Publisher

D. Michael Quinn was born in 1944 in Pasadena, California. He studied English and philosophy at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah—interrupted by a two-year LDS proselytizing mission to England (1963-65)—and graduated in 1968. Then followed three years of military service in Germany as a counter-intelligence agent.

When he returned from Europe in 1971, Quinn began a master's program in history at the University of Utah and half-time employment at the LDS Church Historian's Office. He received his M.A. in 1973, then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to continue his studies in history at Yale University. While a graduate student Quinn published in Brigham Young University Studies, the Journal of Mormon History, New York History, the Pacific Historical Review, and Utah Historical Quarterly. When he received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1976, his dissertation on the Mormon hierarchy as an elite power structure won the Frederick W. Beinecke and George W. Egleston awards.

That same year Quinn began twelve years of employment as a member of BYU's history faculty. He received post-doctoral training in quantitative history at the Newbery Library in Chicago in 1982, and the next year served as associate director of BYU's Vienna study-abroad program. In 1984 he received full professorship; two years later he became director of the graduate program in history. In 1986 Quinn received his most cherished award: Outstanding Teacher by vote of BYU's graduating history majors.

While at BYU Quinn served on the board of editors for three scholarly journals and on the program committee for the Western History Association. He gave formal papers at annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA), the Mormon History Association (MHA), the Organization of American Historians, Sunstone Theological Symposium, Western History Association, the World Conference on Records, and by invitation to a conference jointly sponsored by the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and the Laboratoire de Recherche sur L'Imaginaire Americain (University of Paris). He received best article awards from the Dialogue Foundation, the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA), and MHA. His last article as a BYU faculty member appeared in New Views of Mormon History: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington (University of Utah Press, 1987).

His first book, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years (Brigham Young University Press, 1983), received the best book award from MHA. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature Books, 1987) received best book awards from MHA and JWHA, as well as the Grace Arrington Award for Historical Excellence. However, due to disputes with BYU administrators over academic freedom, Quinn resigned his tenured position at BYU in 1988. Since then he has worked as an independent scholar.

After resigning from BYU he received long-term fellowships from the Huntington Library in southern California (twice), the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), and Indiana University-Purdue University, as well as a major honorarium from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has edited The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past (Signature Books, 1992) and published essays in Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (Norton, 1992), Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History (Signature Books, 1992), Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (Signature Books, 1992), Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (University of Chicago Press, 1993), the New Encyclopedia of the American West (Yale University Press, 1998), and American National Biography (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

In May 1994 he received the T. Edgar Lyon Award for Excellence from MHA. He has subsequently completed four books: The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994); Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (University of Illinois Press, 1996), which received the 1997 AHA award for best book by an independent scholar; The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Signature Books, 1997); and the revised Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature Books, 1998), which is twice the size of the original edition. He has begun preliminary work on a social history of late-twentieth-century sexuality.

Quinn has served in the 1990s as a historical consultant for four Public Broadcasting Service documentaries: Joe Hill, A Matter of Principle, The Mormon Rebellion, and Utah: The Struggle for Statehood, and for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's L'Etat Mormon (The Mormon State). He has been a guest lecturer at the Graduate School of Claremont Colleges and at four Utah universities. In addition, he has been the keynote speaker at meetings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, the Chicago Humanities Symposium, the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Washington State Historical Society. In 1998 he served on an NEH panel for selecting recipients of year-long fellowships.

Quinn has been featured in Christianity Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lingua Franca, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Publishers Weekly, Time, and the Washington Post. In 1997 a biographical sketch and discussion of his writing techniques appeared in Contemporary Authors.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 730 pages
• Publisher: Signature Books; Rev Sub edition (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560850892
• ISBN-13: 978-1560850892
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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102 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tedious but Important, May 24, 2000

By 

Missing in Action (Idaho Falls, Idaho USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Paperback)

I am not a historian, nor an academic, so I did not read Quinn's book looking for impecable research, and I dared not get lost in the details. And unlike many of his academic readers and critics, I will only read this book once. But that was enough. In fact, what Quinn takes the most heat for, his extensive, even obsessive research, was more of a burden for me than enlightening. I appreciate the fact that he has done a great deal of research, but I assume that any credible author has. What makes this book important is not the fact that fully 50% of the pages are dedicated to footnotes. It's important because it throws necessary light on the possibility that the traditional paradigm and interpretation of "authorized" (read: "doctored" or at least "censored") LDS Church history is not necessarily the way things came into being.

This book is threatening to traditionalist Mormons. It takes sacred mythology that surrounds the lives of the founding members of the LDS church and turns it on its ear, but not for the sake of "breaking it," merely for the sake of seeing it in a manner which may be more consistent with what it really was, rather than what we want it to be. Quinn reminds us that so much of history is lost, even when we have the records, because history is so very much more than facts...it is more about context, interpretation, meaning to the contemporaries, all of which pertains to the world view of the day...which world view necessarily is different than the world view a few generations later. Because our world view today is so far removed from the Magic World View of colonial America, it is nearly impossible for us to make sense of magic images and stories that come to us from history; so we ignore them. Quinn brings it all to life (although at times in a very tedious manner) and helps us put on the lenses that allow us to see what the world might look like when one lives in a culture that is friendly toward, if not steeped in, a magic world view.

As other reviewers have pointed out, there are times when Quinn is frustrating. I echo many of the remarks made below by other reviewers, and add one more. Among Quinns favorite subjects to beat to death is the issue of whether or not Joseph Smith had access to rare, out of print occult titles. He spends page after page proving that various books were on sale in Smith's neighborhood, or at a bookstore near by, or in a friend's possession, or advertised in a newspaper, etc. He beats this drum practically throughout the entire book, and still, in my opinion, misses the most important point. Whether or not Joseph Smith actually read all of these books, if they were important to the general understanding of his occult interests, they were influential to the entire cutlure of which he was a part, and contributed to the shared paradigm of all of those in his day with like interests and similar beliefs. He could be profoundly influenced by books that he never read, or was not even aware of, just as our culture is profoundly influenced by the Bible or Shakespeare, even though so many have never actually read them. Pieces, quotes, and ideas float throughout the culture, often without our ever even realizing their source. So it could easily have been with regard to Smith and his understanding and awareness of magic topics, images, relics, etc.

My only real criticism of the book is that it bogs down in tedious details, when I believe that the paradigm, the big picture, is what matters most. Since this is the definitive work on the subject (to date...I expect others will follow), I would encourage anyone to read it, but you have to be patient. More importantly, you will only enjoy this book if you are seeking a broader understanding of the context of Mormonism and Mormon thought. If you are not one to question "authorized" Church history, if you are unwilling to wonder if there is more to Joseph Smith than what he has told us, then I have some helpful advice..."don't go there." Seekers of historical truth, those who recognize that history matters in context, will appreciate this book for the powerful piece that it is.

58 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perspective on the beginning of "The Church", January 8, 2006

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Active Latter-Day Texan (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Paperback)

In this book, Quinn captures the world view of Joseph Smith and many other early church leaders. Even if you don't believe every one of the vast number of coincidences, statements by those who knew Joseph, including former prophets and counselors, everyone must admit objectively that much of this is true. Joseph Smith believed in folk magic, which makes him like many people who lived during his time. He practiced it, and it played a part in the formation of the church. Even Bushman in his book "Rough Stone Rolling" admits this.

As Boyd K. Packer has said on the subject of church history, "not everything that is true is useful." This is certainly true for this book. Reading the book, and understanding early history, will put the church in a perspective that is not in accordance with the revised or edited history we are so often presented with, and want to believe in. Historical facts which are true, but left unsaid, are damaging because when discovered, they are testimony damaging.

So what objective truths show that Quinn is correct about early Mormonism and the magic world view?

1. Joseph used "seer stones" or "peep-stones" well before the urim and thumim came along, and he hunted for treasure. It was not a reluctant one time venture, it was a part of who he was, and involved most of his family. He a number of different stones, and used them while translating the Book of Mormon.

2. His treasure hunting included many rituals out of occult books, and this was common during his time. This is confirmed by many statements of early church leaders including Brigham Young, Porter Rockwall, Martin Harris, etc.

3. Oliver Cowdry used divining rods, and believed he could receive revelation through them, as did Joseph's father.

4. The Smiths had visions, and dreams, and believed in interpreting them. These pre-dated the formation of the church.

5. The early church was almost Pentecostal in a sense. People spoke in tongues, had visions, believed in regular interaction with spirits on the other-side, and had a world-view that was mystic. This continued until the first generation of mormons died in Utah. Many of the early saints had revival like meetings, including while crossing the plains.

These objective facts do not mean the Joseph was not a prophet, anymore than his many polygamous marriages, which is also not divulged by the church, mean he was not a prophet. Truth is truth, and hiding it is only more damaging to members who discover these things bare, never having heard of them before.

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Check Your Prejudices At The Door, January 12, 2001

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R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Paperback)

In this revised 2nd edition, Quinn emphasizes several times that, in comparing Mormon theology with traditions of Christian mysticism, "parallels are not proof." This modest disclaimer seems to indicate that his book is a *theory*; one possible interpretive framework that is suggestive and necessarily incomplete. If read in this spirit, Quinn's book is edifying and even entertaining. In particular, chapters 5 and 6 are a tour-de-force literary analysis of the LDS canon that make the deconstructors, post-modernists, and new historicists of the academy look like little wimps. Quinn's boldness reminds one of Harold Bloom (whose great book "The American Religion" leaned heavily on the first edition of this book.) "There are more things in heaven and earth..." (When I was a student at Brigham Young University I took three classes from Dr. Quinn while he was a professor there. As a person I didn't care for him all that much; I found him coldly aloof and curtly dismissive of opinions that differed from his. But he was a teacher of great depth, subtlety, and insight; very charismatic in the classroom. I believe I learned the most from him out of all of my teachers at BYU.)