It started out as a warning of what other people would do to you. Originally, as I understand it, the "other people" were the authorities, and the Great Secret was the identities of other members of the group as well as the passwords and secret handshakes. Some groups turned this on its head, to where the other members of the group were tasked with enforcing the code. Blood atonement and all that.
I don't think anybody ever expected temple Mormons to slash their own throats, but I could be wrong. I never cease to be amazed by what Mormons can get up to.
Suffer - tolerate. synonyms: tolerate, put up with, bear, stand, abide, endure;
Suffer my life TO BE TAKEN, not to take. The throat slashing represented how not who.
The problem lies in the fact that there was never any explanation given to any of us about any of the goings on in the temple. It was indeed all left to our own interpretation.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2014 11:14PM by wine country girl.
This is one of my the reasons I always felt so depressed in the temple. I had made this oath that I would suffer my life to be taken when I knew damn well I had lied to God. I was sure that if someone had a knife to my throat and said "tell me the password or you die," I would immediately start screaming "health in the navel, marrow in the bones..." I thought I must have been the only one who knew that because it never seemed to bother anyone else.
I was just a bit past 17 (read, I was 18), It scared the shit out of me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My parents, inlaws to be, aunts, uncles, and soon to be husband didn't seem to have a problem with it, why should I? After all, it was my wedding day. I was hundreds of miles from home. No place to go, nobody to call. If i'd of run, I would have paid dearly for the rest of my life. I did what I was told. I did realize i'd never known any mormons who'd slit their throats or had them slit. Either nobody talked, or nobody killed them if they did. I instantly decided the whole thing was a load of BS.
The original version of the "penalty" required the person to say, in effect, "If I should reveal the 1st/2nd token of the A/M priesthood, with its name, sign and penalty, I agree to have my throat slit" etc.
In the early 1930s the wording was changed to say, in effect, "Rather than reveal the [etc.] I would suffer my life to be taken."
Notice the fundamental difference. In the original version, the implication is that the person revealing the secrets would be punished by being killed. In the revised version, the person is saying that he would not reveal the secrets, even if the evil person wanting the secrets were to kill him.
Notice, too, that the original version is worded as a "penalty," a punishment for doing something wrong. The revised version is not a penalty, but a promise to endure death rather than reveal. That promise is not, technically, a "penalty." But it was still called that.
Have you ever wondered why there were only three penalties? (The 2nd token of the M Priesthood had no specific penalty.) It's because (in my opinion) the Masons had only three penalties, one for each degree of Masonry. Joseph didn't have enough imagination to think up another penalty.
That's an important distinction regarding "rather than do so...." I always understood it as a promise not to reveal the information even if threatened with death. That it was still called a penalty is just one more seeming absurdity (of many)that now appears to make sense.
Whatever it was supposed to mean, I think we can all agree that it was somehow both sophomoric and creepy, it only took them about 150 years to figure this out.
Yeah, since it's ripped off from masonry, it's a promise that the other masons can take you out (and not for coffee) for revealing secrets of the brotherhood.
Secret society? Hmmmm, I think there's a little something about that in the BoM. Funny how TSCC has so much stuff that sooooo directly contradictory...
1984 St George Temple...at the time, I took it as that I would be willing to have that done to me, but also my bowels slashed open, and something else?? - anyway, this is a true blue cult, so I suspect that if needed, the leaders could/would spin it anyway they want to at a moments notice to meet the needs of the cult..highly unlikely, but the fact that the ritual is ambiguous lead me to wonder if the ambiguity is on purpose.
Question: Is there a time when the GA's used temple language in recent history to motivate the morgbot masses?
Answer: Yes, Prop 8, and many of the obediant idiotic morgbots morgaged their homes to support.
Still can't quite wrap my head around that one....don't know if it ever got carried out here in S. Alberta....but I wouldn't doubt it happening in Raymond. Magrath or Cardston...some crazy m'fin' Mormons there.