I read the "Morminism's Temple of Doom" by Bill Shoenobelen and the Tanners response to it, saying that he made up alot of things. At the end, they say that they still say that the occult is part of the temple ritual through masonry.

So which parts of the temple rites have occult parts?

All of them

Many of the words and rituals are close to identical. The symbols on the garments and veil are the tools masons use for laying stone.

Occult means hidden, secret, not divulged, mysterious. So everything in the temple is occult. Occult is not a synonym for Satanic.

Okay, so the Tanners are just saying it is mysterious?

Maybe, I don't know how they understand the work occult. They could mean it is not divulged to outsiders.

I suppose it's the Masonic parts. Joseph smith plagiarizes parts of the Masonic ceremony and added Christian/Mormon meanings to the ceremony. I would surmise the secret Masonic handshakes, signs, oaths and symbols a Mormon learns in order to gain entrance into heaven constitute the things that are "occult."

The endowment is online word for word. See the link below and read it and decide for yourself if you consider it occultic, if you don't fall asleep from boredom.

http://www.ldsendowment.org/proper.html

Thanks

Once you become occultured, you don't see anything weird there.

There is a lot of direct interaction with satan and if you pay attention, IMHO, there is some insinuation as tothe teachings in the temple to be the teachings of satan.

Care to elaborate? I remember this feeling when I was in sessions, but I couldn't grasp it and put it into works because that was "wrong." Now, even though I try to reconstruct it by reading the transcript, I can't get it.

Please keep in mind that every "occult" symbol is just as made-up as are the symbols of Freemasonry, Mormonism, or any other similar institution. There may or may not be a Satan. If there is one, he certainly has nothing to do with pentacles and tridents.

Historically, most "occult" symbols started life as benign symbols of some (usually) non-Christian religion. There weere thousands of them. At some point in time some gung-ho Christian boosters decided that "non-Christian" meant "Satanic", and overnight the symbols suddenly likewise became Satanic. Then is was OK to persecute and slaughter the adherents of those religions. See how it all works?


As far as Masonic symbols: There is no Freemasonry Central. Any lodge anywhere is 100% free to incorporate any set of symbols from any source that it darn well wants to. Many lodges in the past included plenty of members with backgrounds in Egyptology, Oriental history and the like, and the lodges decided to incorporate those extraneous concepts into their rites and temple architecture.

The take-home message is that there are no cosmic or supernatural origins for any symbol whatsoever. They are all human products, with prosaic roots and subsequent histories.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2014 04:46AM by slskipper.