I have an unquenchable curiosity. I am intrigued by all things mysterious and unknown. For this reason I chose to discuss the occult. To me the Pearl of Great Price from the LDS canon encapsulates the word occult very well. More specifically those mysterious "drawings" we all loved to look at growing up but never had any clue what they meant illustrate the concept occult very well. So lets debunk some (but not all, it wouldn't fall under "the occult umbrella" if we knew everything about it) of the mystery....
I would like to start by saying that my childhood perception was shattered when I found out a while ago that facsimile 1 is not a drawing or a beautiful picture or even an intricate design. I like the way Hugh Nibley speaks so much that I am just going to directly quote his words:
If the figures in Facsimile 2 were pictures, then we could all play the game of guessing what they mean. But they aren't pictures. Joseph Smith knew that. Notice what he says about them. He starts out saying, "Represents," "signifying the first creation," "stands next to," "called by the Egyptians," "made to represent," "answers to the Hebrew word," and so forth. These are representations, symbols, pure and simple. They're not pictures. But, of course, a symbol wouldn't have any significance unless it had some resemblance, some kind of a hint, to the thing it refers to. Hugh W. Nibley as quoted in Figure 6 of Facsimile 2
We learn from High Nibley that these mysterious drawings are not drawings, but symbols (that are pretty mysterious) to be interpreted.
We learn from High Nibley that these mysterious drawings are not drawings, but symbols (that are pretty mysterious) to be interpreted.
Now that we have established that this is far deeper than a mere drawing I would like to disclose that rather than try to explain every detail of every symbol (although if that is something you are interested in right now you can start your study by clicking here) I would just like to explain a little bit about the background of the facsimile. I hope to provide some context and hopefully follow this up later with a more in depth post going into some symbol explanation and a study of the language used in the facsimile itself.
What exactly is facsimile 2? (not what it means, but what is this unusual artifact?) According to the first modern LDS prophet Joseph Smith Jr. it was created to teach the non-Egyptian associates of Abraham concepts and ideas of astronomy. This papyrus was a "hypocephalus" which were placed under the head of a mummy to preserve its "heat of life". They also helped the deceased remember what to say and do in order to ensure safe passage through the various tests to reach the after life in peace. Books of Breathing were designed to accomplish the same purpose. According to this site Facsimile 2 was a hypocephalus to a person named Sheshonq.
The history of how Joseph Smith Jr. came into the possesion of the facsimile is sort of mysterious in of itself and definitely interesting. Antonio Lebolo discovered several papryi and eleven mummies in Thebes. He sold them to a man in New York city named Michael Chandler in 1833. Chandler then, over the next two years, toured the eastern states showcasing and selling some of the mummies. He brought them to Kirtland, Ohio where Chandler heard of Joseph Smith Jr. alleged divine translational abilities and he hoped to have Smith's advice and utilize his skills. In Joseph Smith Jr. own words:
I would like to close with a few thoughts of why this can be classified as having to do with the occult. As Dr. Peterson said in class the occult refers more to the mysterious, unknown or known only to a select group of people. This is exemplified within the explanation found as part of the facsimile in The Pearl of Great Price. Part of the explanation follows:
In this case I know that God has chosen, for His own divine and eternal purposes to keep this information from His children at this time. I believe God isn't trying to keep a secret form us but is rather trying to instruct us on this very sacred matter in the best way possible. He teaches us when we are ready he gives us line upon line, precept upon precept.
But what reasons would men have from keeping information from other men? My initial thought is for power or money.
the red and blue parts were restored by Joseph Smith during
translation to fill in the lacuna, or missing portions of a document
What exactly is facsimile 2? (not what it means, but what is this unusual artifact?) According to the first modern LDS prophet Joseph Smith Jr. it was created to teach the non-Egyptian associates of Abraham concepts and ideas of astronomy. This papyrus was a "hypocephalus" which were placed under the head of a mummy to preserve its "heat of life". They also helped the deceased remember what to say and do in order to ensure safe passage through the various tests to reach the after life in peace. Books of Breathing were designed to accomplish the same purpose. According to this site Facsimile 2 was a hypocephalus to a person named Sheshonq.
The history of how Joseph Smith Jr. came into the possesion of the facsimile is sort of mysterious in of itself and definitely interesting. Antonio Lebolo discovered several papryi and eleven mummies in Thebes. He sold them to a man in New York city named Michael Chandler in 1833. Chandler then, over the next two years, toured the eastern states showcasing and selling some of the mummies. He brought them to Kirtland, Ohio where Chandler heard of Joseph Smith Jr. alleged divine translational abilities and he hoped to have Smith's advice and utilize his skills. In Joseph Smith Jr. own words:
“On the 3rd of July, Michael H. Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit some Egyptian mummies. There were four human figures, together with some two or more rolls of papyrus covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices. As Mr. Chandler had been told I could translate them, he brought me some of the characters, and I gave him the interpretation." (Joseph Smith Jr. History of the Church, 2:235)
Joseph Smith and two others then purchased four mummies and at least five papyrus and began work translating and publishing their findings. This would eventually become the Book of Abraham part of the LDS canon of scripture named The Pearl of Great Price.
In this case I know that God has chosen, for His own divine and eternal purposes to keep this information from His children at this time. I believe God isn't trying to keep a secret form us but is rather trying to instruct us on this very sacred matter in the best way possible. He teaches us when we are ready he gives us line upon line, precept upon precept.
But what reasons would men have from keeping information from other men? My initial thought is for power or money.
I agree that the God keeps certain information from us for our own good, and may reveal it to us later if He feels it is necessary. I think that if information like this was given to people who were not ready then, yes, there would issues with being corrupt and power-hungry. It makes me think of when Joseph Smith gave 116 translated pages of the Book of Lehi in the Book of Mormon to Martin Harris, who then lost the pages to evil men.
ReplyDeleteI have always been intrigued by the one that says - if the world can figure out these numbers let it be. I always ask myself if that is language that is translatable in our time or if it is a writing system we don't know. I'm guessing nibley knew what they said. Haha. I wonder what it is about the unknown that piques our curiosity so much.
ReplyDeleteIn response to both of you I think God gives us knowledge in response to our questions. All great revelations came as answers to questions. It is not necessarily God wanting to keep knowledge from us, maybe we just haven't asked yet.
ReplyDeleteI am excited for the promised upcoming posts. The facsimiles really are some of the most fascinating parts of the scriptures (along with figuring out what John really saw in the book of revelation). And to answer you Mike, I would say the mysterious fascinates us because we have a desire to know and learn things, a natural curiosity to make the unknown, known. I think it is part of our divine inheritance, to be curious so that we will always have a passion for learning as part of our eternal progression.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that these associates of Abraham (or maybe their children) thought that what he taught them was important enough that they wanted to remember it in the afterlife, that they made it part of their hypocephalus. This seems like an example to me of what my grandma calls her "paper memory". She has to write everything down to remember it, and it seems that the Egyptians valued the memories they could keep with writing (or drawing). Imagine the rites of a completely oral culture: instead of having writing all over the tomb and around the body, they would have a ceremony where the person's life story was told over their body, where family reminds them of who they are and how to get to "heaven", or where the medicine man tells the religious stories so the departing soul can be reminded. But this would require living people to witness the death, to be the transmitters of knowledge after death, instead of the spirit being able to read his/her story off the tomb walls and sarcophagus. Just a possible and interesting thought exercise.
Very cool, Will! I think that one thing that studying the scriptures in general and the facsimiles in particular has taught me is that not all learning needs to be in the journey-destination format. I've accepted that I will never reach some point at which I completely understand everything in the facsimiles, or a point at which I decide that I know everything there is to know about the scriptures, and that I'm done. It's a pretty obvious concept to those of us who grow up studying the scriptures, I think, but at the same time, I feel like it is helpful for me to remind myself of that principle as it applies to every other type of learning in my life. I will never know all there is to know about econometrics or Arabic or playing the violin, and so it's not particularly helpful when I look at those things in the knowledge destination format.
ReplyDelete