by dude h homeslice ix » Wed May 10, 2006 4:15 pm
<br><br>I have had over a dozen various missionaries in my home over the past few years. Some are nicer than others, some more open minded. I have chosen to engage with these guys, research things on the internet to generate questions and put the questions to them. It has been enlightening, I can say that! I have also been to the local LDS church twice. And yes, I checked: “When I Hie to Kolob” is not in the hymn book!<br><br>I am fascinated by their religion. By the balls, the sheer balls it took to pull a whole new denomination of Christianity out of the proverbial hat. By the direction the church was headed when Smith died. Fascinated by the space angle (thanks for the battlestar galactica ref by the way), which could have made it the first space-based religion of the 19th-20th century.<br><br>So I gave the missionaries copies of the “Americas Hermetic Prophet” essay; the response of the pair was interesting. The leader, who was almost a sort of hippie-bohemian type underneath his mask, really took to it and was fascinated by it, though I had to explain what words like “Hermetic” mean…The other fairly dismissed it as a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>’deep doctrine’-cum-hit piece</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> and wasn’t interested. I also have brought up Freemasonry to all the missionaries, gauging their reaction to the fact that their prophet and rituals had Masonic influences too great to be dismissed.<br><br>The amazing thing is how little the foot soldiers know about the hermeticism, the folk magick, the Masonic foundations of their religion. And that despite the glaring errors in translation, the utter forgeries, the complete fabrications, the wall to wall debunking...LDS remains one of the fastest growing religious movements in the US and around the world.<br><br>The good news: I received a copy of the “Big Book of Mormon,” including the “Doctrine and Covenants” and “Pearl of Great Price,” for free (of course) by these guys. Its some weird stuff, that’s for sure.<br><br>What if, once the Mormons become the dominant Christian faith in the US, they finally reveal the “deep doctrine” aspects of it, and take it back onto the magical trajectory Smith was on before he died? Those would be some interesting times…<br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>