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The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844

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Most reviewers of this text misunderstand it. The FARMS reviews and others on this site are clearly driven by an agenda to cover up the historical development of this 19th century new religious movement. In fact, Brooke's text seeks to investigate the depth to which early LDS history is indebted to modern interpretations of ancient and Renaissance Hermeticism and magic. Brooke successfully argues that the three-tiered Heaven, "pre-Creation existence of eternal spirits," and latent divinity of Man are all derived from a popular 19th century American hermetic milleu fused with apocalyptic Christian mysticism. We must not forget that the Gospel of John itself is an esoteric religious text. The development of Western esoteric and occult thought owes much to the Gospel of John as well as Hermetic thought born of Egyptian, Christian, and Jewish elements.

Brooke clearly shows that Smith was immersed in the treasure-divining culture of his time and place, as well as Masonic knowledge, visionary experiences, and other elements of a popular Hermetic framework. Contrary to some reviewers, Brooke displays an amazing knowledge of Mormon doctrine, faithfully backing up his assertions with credible citations of standard LDS theological sources.

Brooke does not claim that LDS is an "occult" religion. What he claims is that American popular hermeticism fused with an apocalyptic interpretation and command of scripture created the early foundations of Mormonism. Contemporary LDS institutions like FARMS are, like many religions, concerned with erasing their origins to maintain legitimacy. But excommunicating scholars and misinterpreting solid pieces of scholarship (perhaps deliberately) will not stand the test of rigorous historical investigation. To those who would let FARMS decide what is legitimate LDS scholarship and what is not, hear this: Religious institutions, like political and social ones, have a vested interest in projecting a certain image. Currently, the Mormon church is trying insert itself into the mainstream of activist Protestantism. But teaching that God was once a man who walked the soil, that earth is (or will be) a level of heaven, and that angels are essentially "recycled" humans, is essentially a hermetic, historically occult doctrine-- and no amount of political whitewashing will change that. There is nothing disrespectful about the presence of occultism in Mormon history---Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have absorbed heavy doses of hermetic and kabbalistic thought, and all have survived quite well.

Read this book. Read D. Michael Quinn as well. Read Bruce R. McConkie, Brian Copenhaver's "Hermetica," and the Gospel of John, and you will begin to be able to trace the religious development of Mormon ideas starting in antiquity.

Although it is a rare experience, every decade or so a book is published in Mormon history that stretches the bounds of imagination and understanding, and recasts the field of study in a different context. Fawn Brodie's 1945 biography, "No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith," Leonard Arrington's 1958 "Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints," Robert Flanders's 1965 "Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi," Leonard Arrington's and Davis Bitton's 1979 "The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints," and D. Michael Quinn's 1987, "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," are all in this category. They have become classics of Mormon studies, creatively reevaluating historical perceptions and affecting in a unique way the studies that followed. "The Refiner's Fire" may be in the same category.

"The Refiner's Fire" ranges broadly to place Joseph Smith and the rise of a new religious tradition squarely within a fresh context that incorporates many of the elements explored by students of Mormonism for the last four decades into a new historical synthesis. Brooke is concerned with Mormon origins, especially the elements that came together to make the Restoration movement such a powerful and compelling force in the 1830s and 1840s.

In a narrative that is much more persuasive than most when approached with an inquiring mind, Brooke argues that Mormon doctrine and cosmology originated neither in Puritan New England nor as a result of the Second Great Awakening that took place largely on the American frontier of the early nineteenth century. Instead, he places the church's ideological roots in Europe in the period of the sixteenth century Reformation, where a core element of religious dissenters questioned traditional Christian concepts and found solace in the hermetic occult.

The author contends that the connections between the occult and the sectarian ideal of restoration with Mormonism helped to forge an exceptionally attractive religious movement throughout the Western world. Integral to this was hermeticism, which claims that humanity could regain the lost and pure world of Adam through the development of a special relationship to God based on religious ritual and sacrifice. The belief in the occult, which had been exceptionally powerful in Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, had been manifested especially in non-Catholic religions, magic, witchcraft beliefs, Freemasonry, and a host of everyday activities that were accepted as part of the human experience. They ranged from a belief in the visitation of angels to the far more sinister casting of spells on enemies.

Much of this acceptance of the supernatural as an everyday occurrence was lost in the rationality of the "Enlightenment" of the seventeenth century, and our present secular belief system is largely predicated on those ideas. It did not have to be that way, as this book makes clear. Joseph Smith challenged that rational system in fundamental ways when he contended that God was not "knowable" through reason, but only through the supernatural. His "First Vision" was central to that challenge--as was his translation of the Book of Mormon--and his continued reliance on nonrational knowledge thereafter incorporated a fundamental occult tradition into the movement he founded. Brooke brings together an analysis of Mormonism's occult origins in folk magic with its later expression in unique theological ideals.

"The Refiner's Fire" is an important study that will not be comfortable reading for some within the Latter-day Saint tradition. But it should be read, even though its celebration of a radical, supernatural, nonrational, religious tradition of European hermetic purity and danger will be discomforting to those who wish the modern Latter-day Saint church to be a mainstream religious institution. Joseph Smith's assertions more than 170 years ago about angelic visitations, prophetic ministry, Zionic community-building, and a restoration of the gospel in its ancient purity was a unique and powerful message in the emergent United States. "The Refiner's Fire" helps to explain some of that power, for Smith's efforts hit at the center of humanity's desire to know something that is ultimately unknowable through secular rationality.

The Refiner's fire is well researched and original. Mr. Brooke's analysis of Mormon cosmology is challenging and thought provoking. However, this book is not perfect. The (historical) links to hermeticism are sometimes a bit tenuous. But the forms are there. On the whole this book is well worth the read. It's good to read a book that doesn't support traditional conceptions of Mormon origins and at the same time is not anti-Mormon.

If you don't believe me. . . maybe this appeal to authority :) will help. The Refiner's Fire has received several awards: The Bancroft Prize in American History - Columbia University, the Book Prize of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, and the New England Historical Association's Annual Book Award - Am. Hist. Assn.

This book starts where most LDS "exposes" end. Accepting as documented the Masonic and occult links of the temple rites, and the occult practices of Joseph Smith, Brooke asks instead what was the psychology that drove Joseph Smith, and what was the psychology in pre-colonial, colonial, and early independent America that his words should fall on such receptive ears? How did it happen that hermeticism, already gone and past in Europe, should appear so resoundingly 200 years later across the Atlantic? It breaks through the rewritten history of early America as purely Christian, to show how earlier events such as the Salem witch trials were symptoms of a magical world view prevalent among major parts of the population. Brooke connects all this with post-Reformation hermeticism. And in so doing, he proposes the evolution of Joseph Smith and his religion in distinct phases. In many ways, the story is a 19th century donnybrook very similar to the modern one imagined by Umberto Eco in "Foucalt's Pendulum."

When he wrote this book, John L. Brooke set forth an interesting challenge that he, the author, had to meet. He had to establish that: 1) the Mormon cosmology that Joseph Smith developed was closely linked to ancient hermetic thought; 2) Joseph Smith and his earliest followers were fairly familiar with these ideas; 3) there existed in the Burned Over District a large reservoir of potential Mormon converts who were also familiar with these ideas and would be receptive enough to them to join Smith's new movement.

I don't know of any other book in American intellectual history in which finding "the smoking gun" has involved making so many connections between the life of the mind and life on the ground. Take, for example, the important work of Bernard Bailyn and his disciples in establishing the intellectual origins of the American Revolution and, more generally, American political thought. Documentation of the English dissenting tradition in American political thought which many generations of American historians had either interpreted differently, or had just plain ignored, was not hard to find or place in the lips and minds of many of the key political figures of the time. The novelty in the work of Bailyn and his students wasn't in documenting what people knew or said and where these ideas came from, but rather in explaining how the colonists used old world ideas and rhetoric to justify not only developing entirely new political institutions, but also finally divorcing themselves, forcefully, from the old world to do it.

So, how do I think Brooke did?

The weakest link in this book is the first. I am not convinced that the early Mormon cosmology was intellectually close to medieval hermetic thought. Why: simply because, as an average reader, I don't know very much about either and there are not enough secondary sources on the topic for him to make this connection without writing the definitive work himself. On the other hand, I was - if not 100% convinced - both receptive to and persuaded by his efforts to put Smith, his closest followers, and a large number of potential converts in both the intellectual and geographic space occupied by what Brooke says were hermetic ideas in the early 1800s. Indeed, I remember in my own youth in southern New Hampshire in the 1950s being introduced to the practice of divining for water and hearing rumors from my stepfather and mother about the secret ceremonies of our Rosicrucian neighbors, while living in a house where much of the Federalist era stencilling depicted icons and creatures of hermetic origin. So, I guess I was also receptive to this theory. In fact, where I came from it was hard to tell Universalism apart from Congregationalism because the two churches looked exactly alike and were located right across the street from each other.

I have already pointed to one shortcoming in the book. There are two others: Brooke gives the impression that functionalist theory is at least passé or at most at odds with his own interpretation. However, I don't think there is anything at all at odds with his approach and that of the functionalists who have portrayed the intellectual ferment of the period as the intellectual byproduct of rapid social change and economic turmoil in the Burned Over District. Brooke has just taken the functionalist perspective and skilfully brought it down to the world of people, places and things. So, I would have liked to have seen a bit more emphasis on weaving the functionalist perspective into the larger part of the book's tapestry. The third problem: why doesn't he just admit that Fawn Brodie's interpretation of Smith's action is not at all inconsistent with his own perspective? In fact, had he combined the functionalist approach, Brodie's penetrating psych history with his own thesis; I would have found the book more satisfying and balanced.

In summary: it's an important book in US intellectual history for what he is trying to do. The execution has some limitations, but I think this book will turn out to be a new methodological model for the field. Finally, please understand: I'm an economist, not a historian and an Episcopalian, not a Mormon.

This well written and well documented book is a revealing look at the roots and genesis of the distinctive theology and cosmology of the LDS church. Brooke argues very well that LDS theology/cosmology has deep roots in the Western tradition, traceable back to the Hermetic tradition of the Classical world. Brooke shows an excellent correspondence between Mormon theology/cosmology and a combination of Hermetic ideas, alchemical ideas associated with the Hermetic tradition, milleniarianism derived from late Medieval mysticism, utopianism and perfectionism associated with radical sects of Reformation, and possibly aspects of folk magic traditions. This is more than a demonstration of correlations. Brooke does very well in showing the specific historical influences in colonial and early Republican America that contributed to the formation of Mormon theology/cosmology. These include the heritage of radical English sects, mystic traditions from German sects that were influential in the middle Atlantic colonies, and the 18th century revival of Freemasonry. Tracing some of these traditions through the families of early Mormon leaders, and in particular, the heritage and experiences of Joseph Smith, Brooke provides a concrete and persuasive reconstruction of how this set of idea came together to form the distinctive LDS theology/cosmology.

This book is valuable not only becuse of its insight into the history of the distinctively American phenomenon of Mormonism, but also because it shows the heterogenous nature of religious experience and ferment in colonial and early Republican America. The attractions of Mormonism, with its repudiation of original sin, its generous promise of eternal life to most, and the prospect of acquiring godly attributes in the afterlife, are depicted very well. Brooke also does very well in showing how Smith's ideas evolved from the time of his initial revelations to the time of his death. The concluding chapter is a nice history of how the LDS church had to modify some of the features of Smith's vision to survive in the more conventional Protestant dominated society of 19th and early 20th century America.

Conservative Mormons dislike this interesting book because Brooke attempts to trace the origins of some LDS doctrines back to 17th century mysticism or even farther. But just because Mormon theology has a history doesn't mean that it's man-made. Brooke's pedigree of LDS beliefs is really traces or remnants of ancient doctrines that were rediscovered by Joseph Smith (and as Harold Bloom points out, Smith had no initial knowledge of Kabbalah or other esoteric traditions.) In any case, Brooke convincingly demonstrates it didn't start with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. For a more believing perspective on the same subject, see D. Michael Quinn's "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View."

The author wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, "If I share some of the agnostic skepticsm of Fawn Brodie... I am perhaps more willing to accept the personal sincereity of Joseph Smith's prophetic claim... Quite obviously, this is not a traditional Mormon history, for I am not a Mormon historian... Thus in many places this book has more the character of a synthesis than an original piece of research."

He wrote, "This book argues that Joseph Smith went through two critical transformations. He began his engagement with the supernatural as a village conjurer but transformed himself into a prophet of the 'Word,' announcing the opening of a new dispensation. Then, moving beyond his role as prophet and revelator, Smith transformed himself and the Mormon priesthood into Christian-hermetic magi, a role previously manifested in the medieval alchemist, the Renaissance hermetic philosopher, and the perfectionist sectarians of the Radical Reformation." (Pg. 4)

He writes in conclusion, "Contemporary Mormonism's most fundamental inheritance from its origins is essentially optimistic view of the human condition. Espousing concepts ultimately derived, I have argued, from the optimistic gnosis of the hermetic tradition---the Egyptian Genesis of precreated beings, a godlike Adam, and a fortunate Fall---most modern Mormons continue to believe that human nature is essentially good, that humans carry a seed of divinity and thus of free will, and that, although faith is necessary, it is not sufficient; good works will have their reward. The individual, potentially divine, bears the responsibility for his or her fate. Since the turn of the century the Mormon church has turned this emphasis on human works and endeavor into a central feature of the religion but has hedged it with an increasingly authoritation structure... Mormon free will and optimism about human nature are severely constrained within the bureaucratic, corporate structure of the modern church." (Pg. 295-296)

Leaping way beyond Quinn's, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1987), Brooke finds striking parallels between Mormon theology and teachings (such as temple ritual, polygamous marriage, deification, a salvifical priesthood and the coequality of spirit and matter), with those of ancient traditions of alchemy and hermeticism. Disagreeing with Davis, Shipp and many others, Brooke does not see Mormonism as an American institution, with its inherent baggage (racism, anti-Catholic sentiment, etc.); but as a restoration of the ideas of the Radical Reformation. Brooke is not alone nor the first to notice hermetic parallels (see Bloom's, The American Religion (1992) and Owens, "Joseph Smith and Kabbalah" (Dialogue, 1994) for recent studies); but he carries it much further by the study of 53 families involved with the founding of Mormonism, showing these family histories to have strong ties with hermetic ideas rather than with Puritanism (see Davis', "The New England Origins of Mormonism" (1953)) thus, making those new converts a peculiarly prepared people for Mormon conversion. Although an ambitious, important (it won the Bancroft and other awards) and erudite cultural study that provides a wealth of background information on hermeticism and its crossing the Atlantic to Early America, it completely falls short in connecting any of those teachings or practices to Smith or Young. The volume is interesting and significant for the parallels and history that it illuminates, but cannot be recommended as a history or an accurate interpretation of the roots of Mormon doctrine.

Note: I made some Mormon reader angry over my reviews of books written by Mormons out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews.

Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks.

Anyone interested in how Joseph Smith could have become a prophet should first read about the life of Joanna Southcott. Her story proves that believers will continue to believe regardless of contrary evidence; in fact, for the believer, the contrary evidence will be seen as the greatest evidence of all.

The following is quoted from Brook's well-researched history (the first part a summary on the back cover). It's a real eye opener, and in many aspects, Southcott's claims are mockingly similar to those of Joseph Smith. Southcott's "sealings" will leap from the page for anyone familiar with Mormonism (also her testimonies).

"Born in 1750 to a Devon farmer, and growing in a typical rural environment of the time, Joanna Southcott's life was changed in 1792 when she heard the `still, small voice' that would inform and guide her for the next two decades. Her claims that it was the word of God speaking through her were rejected by church leaders, yet her prophecies of the Second Coming and her `sealing' of believers against harm brought her tens of thousands of followers. Some of her writings, she was told by her inner voice, were to be kept secret and revealed only when requested by the twenty-four Church of England Bishops at a time of great danger--hence the existence of her famous Box." (A box of "sealed" prophecies!)

"Central to Joanna's Southcott's writings is the fight between good and evil in the world, which, as in the Revelation of St. John, is to culminate in a terrible battle leading to a great victory for Christ of the Devil."

"The whole nation looked on in 1814 when Joanna--at age of sixty--announced the forthcoming birth of `Shiloh,' which she saw as the second coming of Jesus. The pregnancy was affirmed by leading doctors, but Joanna died and no trace of Shiloh could be found."

Her writing career began this way: She went out and bought "pens, ink and paper and made a start. Writing had never come easy to her. There had always been complaints about its illegibility, but she would not let that put her off" (p. 53).

She wrote 65 books and pamphlets, including "A True Picture of the World."

She even had an "Affidavit signed by the Seven Stars in 1802, confirming that they had found Joanna Southcott's powers of prophecy to be genuine" (p. 110).

One of her followers was Robert Dowland. Dowland went to her meeting and, "Soon afterward he began to communicate with a spirit who confirmed his new faith in verse and, despite the fact that Dowland was barely literate, the words were dictated as fast as he could write them down" (p. 182):

`Come, see Joanna, see the saint arise!
Burst earthly prison, soar about the skies,
To that bright world where joys immortal grow,
And life's unfathom'd pleasures ever flow;
There rob'd in white, she'll join the heav'nly train:
She'll share the glory of the sealed race,
And bask, and triumph, in the God of Grace.'

And guess what? Southcott still has followers today.