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

by John L. Brooke

Mormon religious belief has long been a mystery to outsiders, either dismissed as anomalous to the American religious tradition or extolled as the most genuine creation of the American imagination. The Refiner's Fire presents a new and comprehensive understanding of the roots of Mormon religion, whose theology promises the faithful that they will become "gods" through the restoration of ancient mysteries and regain the divine powers of Adam lost in the fall from Paradise. Professor Brooke contends that the origins of Mormonism lie in the fusion of radical religion with occult ideas, and organizes his book around the two problems of demonstrating the survival of these ideas into the nineteenth century and explaining how they were manifested in Mormon doctrine. In the concluding chapter, the author provides an outline of how Mormonism since the 1850s gradually moved toward traditional Protestant Christianity. As well as religion, the book explores magic, witchcraft, alchemy, Freemasonry, counterfeiting, and state-formation. John L. Brooke is professor of history at Tufts University and the acclaimed author of The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 (CUP, 1989), which has won, among other prizes, the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award for Intellectual History and the National Historical Society Book Prize for American History.

Genres: Religion, History, Mormonism, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, American History

444 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 1994

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time I've read his book. I am glad I read it again because the last time I read it was over a decade ago and I had not researched church history as thoroughly at that point as I have now. I've done a whole lot of reading and research since then. I have read through much apocalyptic, mystical and sectarian literature since originally reading this and I am in a much better position now to gauge the merits of this work; and I fully concur with the author as to his overall thesis; i.e. that Mormonism is largely dependent on Hermetic tradition for much of it's theology. I am also in the process of going through the Mormon "scriptures" as well, so that I can also be well grounded in LDS theology/cosmology straight from the sources themselves.
The author begins his investigation with early Protestant sectarianism in order to show the under currents of what would lay the groundwork for Mormon cosmology. I would say that having read much of the sectarian literature from the 16th to the 18th centuries, Mormonism is even more of a departure from Christianity than much of what made up those sects ideologically. None of those sects (i.e. Quakers, Shakers, Ephratists, Swedenborgians, Philadelphians, Muggletonians, etc), as far as I am aware, made God only a human being, made matter eternal, and/or made all people potential gods in the making. This aspect of Mormon thought is such a serious departure from Christianity that nothing that is essentially Christian is really to be found here. These kinds of ideas are present in different forms in polytheistic and pagan thought, however. Hermeticism is more than a likely candidate for Joseph Smith's initial inspiration and later propagation of these notions. The most likely mediating source in my opinion is Swedenborg. Brooke does note Swedenborg's likely influence, but having read Swedenborg, I would give even more credit to Swedenborg than this author does. Protestant mystics like Boehme and Swedenborg were very much within the tradition of Hermeticism and Cabalism. Like Joseph Smith, Swedenborg also claimed that God was a man; albeit in Swedenborg this is a bit more ambiguous. Swedenborg apparently thought that God was a cosmic man in some more allegorical sense; Smith believed that God was a man literally. Almost certainly, Smith got this notion from Swedenborg originally. Smith attests to having read Swedenborg and agreeing with much of his thought. I am not aware of Swedenborg ever positing that men would become gods in the sense Smith did. Swedenborg was even more monotheistic than many other sectarians were at the time, even going so far as to deny the Trinity. Mormonism is really not monotheistic at all; it is wholly polytheistic. There is no one God, only an eternal succession of actual and would-be gods. In this aspect of Mormon thought, no precedent in Christian sectarianism can be found. These kinds of notions are found only in pagan thought. Buddhism and Hinduism are similar, but Hinduism has a supreme God, at least in theory. In Buddhism there are many gods, not just one, and any enlightened Buddha is a god, for all intents and purposes. Mormonism is similar to Buddhism in it's belief in the eternal succession of gods and the eternity of matter. It is very similar to Hinduism in it's ideas regarding polygamy and the role it plays in godhood. Certainly, the sexual aspects of the Kama Sutra does offer an interesting parallel; but in general, paganism always had a very particular reverence for the coital act and this played a huge role in the temple cult (another aspect of Mormonism). Undeniably, Smith's known polygamy and the importance he gave to copulation and reproduction, finds no precedent in Judaism and Christianity. Despite what Mormons may claim, the patriarchal polygamy was not religious in any way. Christ condemned polygamy along with adultery, so by Christ's very definition, Smith was an adulterer. Of course, really by any definition Smith was an adulterer because he had married women who were already married. It's incredibly odd that the Book Of Mormon condemns polygamy as an abomination, yet Smith practiced it and sanctioned it. In short, Hermeticism seems to have been the initial inspiration given it's theurgic bent, but there are other aspects of Mormonism that are simply pagan modes of religion.
I have read Mormons criticize this book as being overly speculative. That is really a straw man argument. The author does engage in speculation, but the speculation is based on historical fact. Facts such as: 1) Joseph Smith was into divination; 2) Smith was a Freemason; 3) Smith had read much material that was of a Hermetic bent. All of the above are historically verifiable from Smith's own words and attested by those who knew him. All of the above more than substantiates Smith's involvement in Hermetic, occult and pagan tradition. Freemasonry has been propagating Egyptian Hermeticism since it's formation; and that is easily substantiated. Swedenborg owed much to Hermetic thought; that is also easily substantiated. That Smith used seer stones and engaged in other forms of divination (things the Bible condemns, btw) is also easily substantiated.
To sum up, I wholly agree with the author's thesis, although, I might have explored further the role of Swedenborg and I might have explored contemporaneous channeled literature such as Jacob Lorber to give more context to overall religious trends of the time. There are odd parallels between Lorber's writings and the Pearl of Great Price.

[Clair · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at various esoteric threads intersecting and present in Joseph Smith's environment, including hermeticism, freemasonry, magic, alchemy, radical and restoration Christianity, and more. According to Brooke, some of these elements were incorporated into priesthood, authority, doctrine, and various temple practices to (in part) purify and deify Mormons. This continued through Joseph Smith's life and continued when the saints moved west.

Brigham Young began a doctrinal shift after the Mormon reformation, Mountain Meadows massacre and treaty with Johnston's army in the 1850s, ending the period of Mormon isolationism. The shift began when he stopped teaching of an alchemical, deified Adam (I.E. Adam-God). Other steps in the shift from hermeticism included John Taylor's book "Mediation and Atonement" which elevated the status of the atonement above salvation via priesthood; Woodruff ended polygamy; Joseph F. Smith routinized aspects of charisma, removing much of the free-wheeling, spontaneous & mystical aspects of early Mormonism; and Heber J. Grant virtually abandoned the deification ritual of the 2nd anointing which guaranteed recipients Godhood.

Brooke says the shedding of hermetic aspects of Mormonism continue today as Mormonism continues to assimilate into modern day conservative Christianity.

[Brett · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you like history that revolves around phrases like, "It is possible that..." you might love this book. It is about Mormonism and hermanetics, and the magic world view of the founding of the Church. Aside from its obvious doctrinal faults--which I give Brooke some leway on being as he's not a Mormon--the book is largely based upon historical speculation. But hey, all history is basically speculation, so who am I to begrudge Brooke his particular interpretation?

[Bria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose the wrong book on Mormonism to read. This one suggests an explanation of how Mormon mythology is descended from hermetic mysticism and alchemic practices. I should have read one that explains the unusually high incidence of weirdo names among Mormons. (e.g. Wandle Mace, Philastus Hurlburt, Lodowick Muggleton)

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. However, I would not recommend it to any LDS member who wishes to stick to "faithful history" as this book is written from the perspective of a researcher and not an apologist. With that said, I found the book to be fascinating as it quite thoroughly outlined the changing religious, cultural and economic environment that ultimately prepared the world for the Restoration.

[Joe Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unfortunate approach to Mormonism, though the beginning can't be faulted for its history of the penetration into Colonial America of European gnosticism.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colonial and early-republic New England and New York become a whole lot weirder — or weirder in a different way — in this book from that most fascinating and fraught subfield, the history of popular (read- not produced by and for academics or other specialists) ideas. Historian John Brooke argues that far from the staid Puritan monoculture we’re used to, the early northeast was rife with assorted oddball sects and people pursuing a Protestant variation on hermetic or occult practices. Massholes who read this book won’t be able to think about Hopkinton, MA or a few other places now known as mere sleepy bedroom communities again, after reading about how they were hotbeds of “perfectionists” or alchemy, in resistance to the mainline Puritan power center in Boston. Hopkinton!

Furthermore, Brooke argues, it was this gestalt of hermetic and perfectionist Protestantism that formed the foundation stone for the theology of Mormonism. Joseph Smith and those around him were steeped in the sort of folk-hermeticism Brooke describes as endemic to the back-country northeast at the time. Brooke depicts these as adapted reiterations of Renaissance-era hermetic concepts and practices: the perfectability of man through gnosis and ritual practice; the belief in secret knowledge of the nature of the cosmos passed down by groups of initiates; assorted proto-scientific practices in medicine, metallurgy, etc.

All of these beliefs, especially when adapted to early American circumstances, hold out the great promise of power in this world, more than contentment in the afterlife. The great innovation of the religions originated in America, be it Mormonism, Scientology, various positive-thinking cults, or at least some of the off-shoots of the Nation of Islam, is offering to unlock what amounts to super-powers for use in this life. Joseph Smith both claimed them for himself — he had a “seeing stone” with which to find buried treasure, and of course, he was the only one who could read the golden tablets — and offered them to his followers. Immersed, as Brooke argues, in a culture of this sort of folk-magic and often driven to equal parts despair by debt and failure and wild hope by the promise of (white, settler) America, the people of the frontier parts of the Northeast were “a prepared people,” ready to hear and follow his message. Among other things, this is a great study in the construction of belief systems almost completely outside of the scope of certified idea-mongers in academia, philosophy, or elsewhere.

More than a scam — or along with being a scam, or anyway creating a scamogenic environment — there was a philosophical through-line here. Much of it involves the rejection of both original sin and of the separation of spirit and matter. Challenging these concepts entailed an attack on much of the religious order that undergird society in Europe and America at the time. It implied antinomianism and the rejection of religious hierarchies (though, often enough, the establishment of new ones), along with whatever kind of occult superpowers people could acquire if they could gain the gnosis of the Primal Adam or whatever.

The rejection of the separation of spirit and matter lays at the heart of some of Mormonism’s more eccentric beliefs, like the idea of multiple ascending material heavens, through which good Mormons ascend like so many wagon trains westward, peopling them with demi-gods (one of the reasons, along with sheer horniness on Smith’s part, why they got into multiple marriages- all the more demi-god/angel babies for space-heaven). It’s not hard to see why all of this would appeal to people ripped from a cold, often authoritarian culture of establishment Protestantism, in New England or Britain or Germany, and starting anew out in the back of beyond, defined by equal parts opportunity and danger.

These sorts of history are fascinating but also frustrating. Establishing the chain of influence is hard enough with professional pedants who leave voluminous paper trails. It’s much harder with extramural people who left fragmentary record, often using obscure or shifting terms (not that that’s so rare in academics!). Brooke makes some leaps and I think overreaches in terms of how much he links Renaissance hermiticism with the folk beliefs of early New England and, in turn, Mormon theology. My sense of it is that the links in the chain are much looser than that. Perhaps it’s more there was a grab-bag (to use the annoying academic term, “reticule,” which means the exact same thing as grab-bag) than a chain of influence. The bag only had so many things in it for an enterprising young sect-leader and/or scam artist to pick, and a lot of the contents of the bag were handed down, originally, from the hermetics (via many hands who also added stuff, took stuff out, did their own weird modifications, etc). I really can’t say how accurate this is. But it mostly colors inside the lines of historical practice (it won the Bancroft, fwiw). And moreover, it’s just cool, and that has to count for something. ****’

https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems there is no way NOT to write a dense history of Mormonism's formation. There are almost too many sources to analyze, too many characters to include. But I think Brooke does a better job than D. Michael Quinn ("Early Mormonism and the Magic World View") in making the story comprehensible and streamlined. Where Quinn seeks to recreate every strand of magic practiced in Joseph Smith's lifetime, Brooke zeroes in on the tradition of Hermeticism, or the belief that through magic humans could regain the lost powers of Adam, control divine energy, and be like gods. Like Quinn, Brooke reveals extraordinary parallels between Smith's writings and American occult traditions, but Brooke finds precise proof connecting this Hermetic strand of the occult to Smith. Quinn sometimes would show the parallels, but couldn't trace a direct correlation. There's a good amount in this book on Masons and alchemy, specifically how these practices stemmed from Renaissance-era and older Hermetic concepts. Brooke has some observations that beg for further analysis (did Emma Smith really try to poison her husband Joseph?!?), but overall this is an important and enlightening contribution to the literature on America's religions.

[Barbara Carder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a complex read as Brooke is a meticulous researcher. All footnoted and evidence-based writing, so much so that I kept wondering why. I have been pondering the origins of LDS/Mormonism as I am writing a book centered in the Wayne County/Palmyra area of NYS where Joseph Smith Jr. had his initial experiences. I've come to think that this book builds on the groundbreaking research by Fawn McKay Brodie (1915-1981) 'No Man Knows My History' (1945). She was an incredible writer, one of the first female professors of history at UCLA; also wrote 'Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History' (1974), a work of psychobiography. Brooke should be commended for his work as it opens the door to the credulity and eccentricities of 19th century Americans which he traces back and beyond the Puritans and other dissenting sects to Hermetic thinking which basically pulls the 'divine' down [heretical apostasy for the Calvinism of most of the the 18th century American protestant religious sects but not Quakerism]. This whole entire thing is essential reading for anyone involved in understanding American history, early American religion and the role of hoaxes and other extreme belief systems. You don't have to be a professional historian to appreciate this kind of writing.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main achievement of the book is to show the continuity between the religious turmoil of the beginning of Christianity, through the religious reform movements of the 14th and 15th century, and on past the founding of the Mormon church into the 20th century. His narrative is a helpful tile in the larger mosaic of the almost epic struggle between organized religion and the personal and local religious needs of the practicing individuals. This is esp true along the dimensions of prophecy and miracle works.

Brooke gives a decent summary of the rise of Gnosticism during the Reformation and a map to some of the detailed paths that these interpretations took to make it from the Old into the New World.

Brooke tries very hard to elucidate how such a plethora of Gnostic concerns ended up in the Book of Mormon and the Mormon tradition. Such an endeavor is by definition a tour de force, and Brooke works very very hard on making the details stick. The enumeration of the individual strands and strata of Hermetic thinking floating around in the area becomes exhausting at times but cumulatively hammers home the point of how desperately these people were trying to align their world experiences with their religious convictions.

The curse of the matter is that his argumentation would require doctrinal distinctions to be drawn from Biblical phrases that have been reprocessed and reprocessed. In the end, the imagery of the Burnt-Over District extends to the text itself. To show that any particular quote studded with Biblical terminology and verbiage is actually indicative of Gnosis instead of mainstream Christianity is at times impossible to pull off.

Brooke is most successful in the decidedly Masonic bend that Smith Jr's thinking takes in the late 1840s in Nauvoo, but less so during the founding years of Mormonism. Brooke is additionally hampered by the fact that he occasionally trips over the continuity projections of the organized religious institutions: in the end the Genesis account of creation is too short to settle whether a creatio ex nihilo (the mainstream interpretation) or a creatio ex materia (the Gnostic interpretation) is being narrated.

In the end, Brooke cannot vault over the high bar of intellectual history that showing influence is difficult if people do not make explicit references to their sources. I found no better evidence for Smith Jr having read Swedenborg by the 1830s than I had previously. The 1840s Masonic turn is much better documented and thus easier to detect.

Brooke does a nice job, on par with ex-Mormon Vogel, in working out some of the changing thinking of Smith Jr in the context of the processing of the religious materials, distinguishing stages and contradictions between the Book of Mormon itself, the revelations that followed, and the Masonic influx at Nauvoo.

The theme of counterfeiting and forgery, and their role in Colonial and Post-Independent America receives a lot of detail. Its alchemical roots are a little suspicious, and seem to be more to belong into the realm of the social marginalization of the practitioners that required action, both in terms of self-interpretation (the religious strand) as well as economic self-help (the forging).

The book requires the largest dose of good will from its readers when it goes into excruciating detail of the transformations, the transmissions and the transportation of the Gnostic speculations. Because the detailed lines are often too sketchy, they mainly contributed to the feeling of the vast spread of the phenomenon.
But personally, I have found the details of Gnostic speculation dull and stupefying since my Sophomore year in religious studies, when I first worked on Rosicrucians and their like in the context of a paper on Edwardian magus Aleister Crowley.

So forcing their readers to dig through all the twist and turns even for developments that cannot even be plausibly tied to the Mormon argument seemed a bit lazy on the part of Brooke and his editors and cost them a star.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

John L. Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 is “a selective reinterpretation of the founding story of Mormonism from 1796 to the 1850s in light of a reexamination of the relationships between religion and the occult in the early modern North Atlantic.” Written in response to news and events surrounding the Salamander letter forgery and subsequent Salt Lake City bombings by Mark Hoffman in May 1985, John L. Brooke felt compelled to investigate why the history of popular magic, treasure-hunting, and ancient alchemical symbolism in Mormonism was so little studied and understood. With his particular project defined, Brooks admits that this book “is not necessarily a well-rounded approach to early Mormonism” but rather it “explains the exotic features of the inner logic of Mormon theology” as it existed in secrecy before 1844 before gradually devolving into obscurity as the Church progressed and modernized. In demonstrating the link between Mormonism and hermeticism—“both propose a distinct relationship between the visible and invisible worlds”—Brooks counters “the interpretation advanced by Whitney Cross and David Brion Davis that rooted Mormonism in the culture of early New England.” While he does agree with a thesis of cultural continuity for Mormonism, as opposed to Tolstoy’s view that it was “the quintessential �American religion, forged on the frontier without any debt to the Old World,” Brooks doesn’t see the primary link to New England Puritanism but rather to the Radical Reformation of Europe. It seems that Brooks is correct to move the scope beyond antebellum America to explain the development of Mormon theology, but overall his argument underemphasizes the fact that this American context continually tempered and negotiated the other influences he is favoring here.

Brooks organizes his study into three parts: “Part I: A Prepared People” talks about the broad relationship in early America between religious belief and occult belief; “Part II: Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger” focuses on Freemasonry and counterfeiting as they influenced Mormonism; and “Part III: The Mormon Dispensation” traces the transition of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. “from conjurer to restorationist.” Brooks continually stresses his point that “the hermetic-restorationist dialectic of purity and danger—of divining, Freemasonry, and counterfeiting…formatively [shaped] the story of Mormon origins.” While this is an exhaustive work attempting to demonstrate the parallels between seventeenth century European hermeticism and nineteenth century American Mormonism, Brooks has a difficult time proving a definitive connection. His arguments are given to language such as “may have” on more occasions than not. He admits this shortcoming “given the slippery and combustible qualities of the multiple hermetic dangers and purities running through Mormon history” and thus settles for demonstrating an implicit—rather than explicit—connection. It is an interesting work offering a potential explanation of the mysteries of Mormonism, but it seems to fall short of being either the most essential or the most convincing approach to explaining Mormon history and theology.

[Kailey Caldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfamiliar with the historical accuracy of this one but interesting as hell - I LOVE the weird cosmology of mormonism may it never get less weird I'm so serious

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

this month i'm readin' up on the mormons - how about those weird underwear? this is a longer-view look at the radical reformation tradition & the history of medieval occult ideas which prepared the way for joseph smith's assinine ideas. it sort of makes the mormons more interesting than they are. brooke hitches his wagon to the great english history tradition of christopher hill and e.p. thompson.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a new understanding to the reader about magic and its correlation with religion; that they cannot really be separated. If you believe in turning water into wine and talking snakes and donkeys, then you believe in magic. The kind of magic described in the pages of this book may use incantations as the Smith family did, but magic is magic is magic.

[Peter Buckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply one of the best works of american intellectual histor y ever written. Whatever Mormons might think of it's accurate theological observations its reach of sources is breathtaking and inspiring to anyone in the field

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book that documents the hermetic roots of Mormonism including Masonry, folk magic, treasure divination, polyandry, counterfeiting, etc. Early church history is a fascinating combination of these elements.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, thought-provoking book on the nature of a particular religious heritage...

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book for my World Religions course. I was excited to learn about different religions, and I find Mormonism interesting. However, I did not like the way this book was written.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating history of Mormon origins.