Worldwide Religious News
How kabbala shaped Mormon faith
Tomer Persico ("Haaretz," October 3, 2012)
Mormonism is a subject of fascination to Americans and the rest of the
world. Its unusual sets of beliefs were widely discussed and studied long
before U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney strode onto the national stage.
Less well known and studied is the way the doctrine is shot through with
kabbalistic beliefs.
In a book from the early 1990s, "The American Religion," literary critic
Harold Bloom mourned the transformation of respectable American Protestantism
into a Gnostic dispensary of fundamentalism. To Bloom, the religion of
Europe’s Puritans had grown wild and unrestrained in the liberated soil of
America. This, he said, led to the flowering of all sorts of strange religious
movements, like Christian evangelism, various New Age movements and, of
course, Mormonism.
Bloom was particularly interested in Joseph Smith, the religion’s founding
prophet. He had created a truly “American religion,” writes Bloom, which
taught religious devotion to family, community and financial success.
In addition to being a talented and original theologian and a highly
charismatic figure, Joseph Smith was the source of many of the esoteric
theories
pervading the North American continent in the first half of the 19th
century. And, his theories were colored by the supernatural-theological
worldview
of the kabbala.
Citing the many points of similarity between Mormonism and kabbala, Bloom
posits the “more direct influence of the kabbala on Smith than what we know.
”
This would help explain the extreme divergences between Smith’s views and
those of the conventional Protestant denominations that were his jumping off
point.
God's wife
According to Smith’s theology, the God who controls our world was once a
human like us. He had a spouse and the two of them had corporeal bodies of
flesh and blood. God is a model for men on earth in that every Mormon is also
capable of becoming a deity of his own star along with his wife. This, of
course, implies that there are many gods who rule over many stars.
Smith held that his doctrine was the recounting of the esoteric knowledge
revealed to the first human, Adam, by the deity of our star. From Adam, God’
s wisdom was passed down through the generations, passing through Noah,
Abraham, Moses and the ancient Hebrew priests and finally, was revealed to
Smith's followers.
The purpose of the doctrine is to facilitate the realization of human
potential by transforming men into gods. This notion is not just foreign, but
in
fact, antithetical to the Puritan Christianity from which it emerged.
Puritanism saw man as a vessel full of guilt and disgrace. Born into sin,
the best this wretched creature could hope for was to claw his way toward
salvation through shamefaced submission to the Son of God. Man was
light-years away from being some sort of galactic deity.
What Smith was offering his followers was a stark alternative to the severe
and ascetic Christianity of Puritanism. He promised them the renewal of
prophecy, the building of paradise on Earth and ultimate personal
empowerment. As an added bonus, he threw polygamy into the deal.
Jesus' second coming, in America
Joseph Smith was born in 1805, the fifth of 11 children from an
impoverished family in Vermont. When he was 14, following a period of severe
mental
distress, Smith had his first vision where the deity himself assured him that
his sins had been forgiven. Along with this, God warned him not to join
any of the churches in the vicinity because they all distorted the true word
of the Bible.
In 1823, three years after his first vision, Smith fell to his knees again
and called out to God for guidance in the depths of another mental crisis.
This time the angel Moroni appeared before him and told him that he was the
last survivor of an ancient Hebrew civilization that arrived on the shores
of North America at the time of the destruction of the First Temple in
Jerusalem. These ancient Israelites did what Jews always do and fought amongst
themselves until one sub-group among them (henceforth known as the evil
ones) put to the sword the members of the other group (the good ones) and
annihilated them.
The evil ones, after being cursed by God, developed over time into the
different tribes of American Indians. All that was left of the good ones were
the tablets of gold upon which were engraved their history in the ancient
Egyptian language.
The angel Moroni directed Smith to the spot where these tablets were buried
and instructed him to dig them out of the ground. After Smith laid his
hands on the tablets he immediately began translating the ancient Egyptian
writing on them. The result was an impressively broad volume containing
hundreds of pages of narration that told the history of the bad ones and good
ones.
Perhaps even more importantly, this narrative also included the second
coming of Jesus Son of God to humanity – an event that occurred on American
soil before these very same ancient Hebrews who had reached America.
This was “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” as was proclaimed in the
sub-heading of the Mormon's holy book. Clinging to his holy book, Smith went
out to acquire believers. He succeeded well beyond his expectations.
In order to understand the secret of Smith's success – and the success of
his bible – it is worth taking a step a back and gaining a bird's-eye view
of the above-mentioned occurrences and placing them in their proper context.
This period was the peak of the Second Awakening in the United States, a
period of religious revival during which many Americans joined various
Protestant denominations. Around Smith, the religious muses were ubiquitous,
with new prophets popping up seemingly from under every tree.
Not far from the home of Smith, Jemima Wilkinson exhorted sexual abstinence
and fidelity to the Ten Commandments. Handsome Lake, a Native American
prophet, preached fiercely against alcohol, witchcraft, gambling, violence
against women and homosexuality. There was Joseph Dylkes, who announced that
he was the Messiah who had come to rebuild Jerusalem; George Rapp, who
established a community of religious hermits and announced the approach of the
Second Coming of Jesus; Bernhard Muller, who dubbed himself the "Lion of
Judah" and declared himself the messiah; William Miller who founded the
largest messianic movement in U.S. history and declared that Jesus would
return
to this world by March 1844; John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the early
socialist Oneida Community, who preached about sex without ejaculation as
means
of achieving spiritual elevation; and of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who
left his position as a reverend of the Unitarian Church and commanded, “Cast
behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with the Deity!”
He was a clear precursor of New Age spirituality.
An age of prophets
The age was ripe for prophets and their followers, and Smith was no
exception. His was an attempt to create a new society in which sexuality served
as an important source of spirituality. He preached neither sexual abstinence
nor sex without ejaculation, but polygamy. Instead of a faint promise of
the future coming of the messiah, Smith's prophecy was a megalomaniac
attempt to establish the Kingdom of Heaven in the present, on Earth.
Where did Smith derive his inspiration? He was undoubtedly an exceptional
person, with a vivid imagination and enormous creativity. But every creative
spirit needs raw material. Smith found his in the esoteric literature of
his era, which led him to the kabbala.
As a curious teenager, Joseph Smith was able to read a fair share of
Western esoteric literature at his neighbor's homes or in different public
libraries.
The esoteric literature of the period included the legacy of the
Renaissance, Hermetism, the kabbala, Neoplatonism, alchemy, astrology and
Magianism.
Hermitism was an esoteric practice based on ancient texts that were
apparently written by a god/king/prophet/ master sorcerer named Hermes
Trismegistus. This Hermes was, apparently, a contemporary of Moses and revealed
to
humanity the secrets of the universe at the exact same time that Moses gave
the Torah to the Israelites. The historical source for the more ancient parts
of the hermetic corpus is found in the early centuries of the Common Era,
in Greco-Egyptian Alexandria, and therefore contains a mixture of Greek and
Egyptian myths.
In contrast to many Western tracts, the Hermetica emphasized the greatness
of man and the ability for the complete synthesis of spirit and matter.
Based on this doctrine, the soul is a refined type of matter, and therefore
this materialist and sordid life is not a thing unto itself; there is even
the possibility of achieving divinity without separating from life.
"You are the light and the life, as God the Father from which man was
born," states Hermes, echoing similarities with Mormon theology.
Kabbala for Christians
With respect to the kabbala mentioned here, this wasn't the same Kabbala
diligently pored over by the students of the Vilna Gaon or the Lubavitch
Rebbe Shneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad Hasidism, during this time
period, but rather the kabbala translated into the vernacular for a Christian
readership. In the eyes of the Christians who were interested in it, the
kabbala was thought to be the secret Torah that Moses gave to Joshua, and from
him to the elders of Israel, and from them to the prophets. But unlike
traditional rabbinic Judaism, the Christians believed that the kabbala was
also given to the Israelite priests. The inclusion of the ancient Israelite
priests was likely due to every story about the Temple in Jerusalem being
seen by Christians as having some esoteric and mystical value (this was also
true for the Freemasons, another movement that flowered around the same
time). The Christian kabbala included different translations of the Hebrew
texts into vernacular with additional commentary that presented it as a
universal bible that in practice was philosophically Perennialist (meaning,
that
it stands at the base of all human knowledge).
Smith’s interest in the Hermetica and the kabbala alone are enough to shed
light on the sentence found at the beginning of the Mormon cannon, in the
Book of Nephi, the first volume of the Book of Mormon. After the first verse
in which the narrator presents himself, the second verse states: “I will
make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning
of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.” The Jews were a muse to
Joseph Smith. The use of “the language of the Egyptians” ties the Book of
Mormon to the Hermetica.
The comprehensive research of Michael Quinn -- a historian of the Mormon
religion and follower himself whose research findings led him to be kicked
out of the Mormon church -- paints a portrait of Smith as a fairly committed
esotericist, despite his eclectic and autodidactic education. The world of
the young Mormon prophet included astrology, Magianism, the preparations of
talismans, trading in holy relics, remote viewing and especially,
prophetic visions.
Quinn demonstrates different links between Smith's prophecies and the book,
“Traditions of the Jews," written by the anti-Semite Johann Andreas
Eisenmenger that was translated from German into English in the 18th century.
It
appears that this book taught Smith that the Hebrew word for God (elohim)
is actually written in plural form, an understanding that aided the
development of his anti-monotheistic theology, which explicitly acknowledges a
plurality of gods.
Other books in Smith's environment hybridized the kabbalistic meaning of “
original man” (the first emanation of the divinity after its contraction)
and the biblical meaning of “Adam” (as the first human, in the Garden of
Eden). This compound meaning was passed onto Smith, apparently leading him to
view the first human as a being with godly powers, and Adam's descendants –
that is, today's humans -- as having a latent potential for godhood.
A Jewish convert to Mormonism
Above and beyond the books Smith read, it appears that much of his
education on the secret Jewish Bible was acquired from a Jew named Alexander
Neibaur, who arrived on the shores of the U.S. from London and converted to
the
faith of the Mormon prophet. As Moshe Idel writes in his book “Olam
Ha'malakhim” (“World of Angels”), we have in our hands a list of Neibaur's
books,
which include several important works of kabbala. The encounter between
these two figures occurred in 1841, and between 1842 and 1843 the official
Mormon newspaper published articles on kabbala, some of them written by the
Jewish convert, mentioning, for example, the book “The Sohar” (referring to “
The Zohar,” widely considered to be the most important book of kabbala.)
It seems Smith learned from Neibaur to take the first verse of the Bible, “
At first God was created” and to interpret it in one of his last teachings
as the invitations issued by the chief god to the other gods to a supreme
council in which the creation of man and the transfer of the secrets of
eternal life to him and his descendants were discussed.
Smith had one purpose, to renew the Israelite nation of yore. For this
purpose, prophecy was renewed, priestly orders were established, and temples
(not churches) were built. Even the polygamy of the Patriarchs was renewed.
Smith wanted to build "Zion" on American soil. Smith spoke of a new society,
where people would share their property, and were faithful to the true
Bible coming from the lips of their leader. The same leader, Smith, pretended
to rule this utopia as a “prophet, priest and king” entrusted by God to be
responsible for the fate of his subjects.
In 1844, after they were chased out and expelled from Missouri, tens of
thousands of Mormons moved on to Illinois. There, Smith established the city
of Nauvoo, which grew rapidly and soon numbered more than 10,000
inhabitants, approximately the size of Chicago at the time. Smith himself was
the
city's mayor, and when the harassment of the Mormons began again he announced
his candidacy for the U.S.presidency. in elections scheduled that year. His
secret plan was to annul the separation of church and state after his
election and to establish a kingdom of priests, with himself at its head.
Several months later, he was killed in a lynching.
In his book, Harold Bloom writes that “If there is already in place any
authentic version of the American Religion then, as Tolstoy surmised, it must
be Mormonism, whose future as yet may prove decisive for the nation, and
for more than this nation alone.”
Bloom perceived with his sharp senses that the esoteric path to godhood (or
at least to economic success) in our days added up to much more of an
ethos than penance for Original Sin.
--
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