Early Mormonism and the Magic World View

Early Mormonism and the Magic World View

Revised and Enlarged

D. Michael Quinn

Signature Books Salt Lake City

©1998 Signature Books. All rights reserved.

Signature Books is a registered trademark of Signature Books, Inc.

Preface to the Revised Edition

Shortly after the first printing sold out, I was surprised that Early Mormonism and the Magic World View had become a boon to rare-book dealers. By the 1990s otherwise-poor college students were paying $100 for a bettered copy, while avid collectors shelled out $350 for a mint-condition. Having learned this directly from some of the buyers and sellers, I accepted blame for the supply-and-demand problem.¹ Despite brisk sales in 1987-88, I asked the publisher not to reprint until a revised version was ready.

However, I was otherwise preoccupied. There was intensive research/writing of an essay on religion in the American West, a study of current polygamist families, a historical analysis of Mormon women and priesthood, a book on same-sex dynamics in historical and cross-cultural perspective, encyclopedia entries, and two thick volumes describing the hierarchy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the 1830’s to 1990s. In the process I worked with editors at Yale University, at Norton, at University of Chicago Press, at University of Illinois Press, at Oxford University Press, and at Signature Books. Overlapping with those activities, I also served as consultant for televised documentaries. After publishing the last volume on the Mormon hierarchy in 1997, I was finally able to revisit the magic world.

Eleven years of escalating publishing costs created another problem. It was impossible to offer even a paperback edition at the 1987 price of the hardback. Therefore, as penance to long-suffering book-buyers, I have reduced my royalties so that this revised edition can be priced as low as possible.

In preparing this eleventh-anniversary revision, my first priority was to include the suggestions of helpful readers. Many disliked the first edition’s citation-format, which had allowed space to list all cited sources in a bibliography. This edition switches to endnotes, which required dropping a bibliography that had grown to nearly eighty pages due to added research.² As with my other books that lack a bibliography, the source-notes here are bibliographic.³ As advised, I have also streamlined stodgy prose and simplified the analysis where I could. Still, the complexity of some topics requires detailed analysis.

A second goal was to add new information. This revision includes previously overlooked documents and refers to selected sources published during the past eleven years. But readers should not expect the same comprehensiveness for recent publications as the book originally provided for pre-1987 imprints.

My third aim was to respond to critical reviewers. These responses occur from this Preface to the Afterword, often in endnotes and sometimes in the narrative itself. To demonstrate their point of view, I often quote my critics, and each quote reflects the context of their articles or book reviews.

A fourth purpose was to refine the book’s narrative. Helpful readers and critical reviewers have both noted areas needing attention. This edition corrects previous typographical errors, and I can only hope that multiple proof-reading has not overlooked new ones. The first edition had various statements I have revised, clarified, documented, or corrected. From an eleven-year perspective, I have also modified some interpretations.

Before re-reading the original Introduction for the first time in ten years, I had already decided to preserve its content as an intellectual artifact that readers could compare with my approach in the revised edition. However, in response to reviewers and publications since I987, I have added paragraphs and new citations. I have also refined some phrases for better clarity. Aside from those substantial additions to the Introduction, it maintains the content of the original.

I made those changes in full anticipation that LDS polemicists will attack the slightest variations between the first edition and this revision. A writer in the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) recently noted that "a detailed review of Quinn’s Early Mormonism awaits the second edition ..."⁴ Another polemicist even professed an inability to see any difference between (1) my revising for publication a final version of my own talk, and (2) the unacknowledged changes and retroactive editing of LDS manuscripts and already-published works by later editors at church headquarters. These later editors did not write the originals and often were not present for the events described by those documents. Of course, this polemical myopia occurs only when the polemicist disapproves of the speaker-author and approves of the retroactive editors.⁵ Since I’ve introduced the term, I must distinguish between polemicists and apologists.

Not every believer is an apologist, but apologists take special efforts to defend their cherished point of view-whether in religion, science, history, or some other belief/endeavor. It is not an insult to call someone an apologist (which I often do), nor is apologist an unconditional badge of honor.⁶Like drivers on a highway, some apologists are careful, some are careless, some unintentionally injure the innocent, some are Good Samaritans, and a few are sociopaths. Like drivers, even good apologists make errors in judgment and occasionally violate the rules. The same is true for those who don’t think they’re apologists.

In a tradition as old as debate, polemics is an extreme version of apologetics. Defending a point of view becomes less important than attacking one’s opponents. Aside from their verbal viciousness, polemicists often resort to any method to promote their argument. Polemics intentionally destroys the give-and-take of sincerely respectful disagreement. In the resulting polarization, all are pun­ ish’d.⁷ Moving beyond apologist persuasion, LDS polemicists furiously (and often fraudulently) attack any non-traditional view of Mormonism. They don’t mince words-they mince the truth.

Unofficially connected for years, Brigham Young University in October I997 announced that FARMS is an official unit of BYU. Daniel C. Peterson, current chairman of FARMS, expressed his first concern about official BYU affiliation: FARMS has often had a polemical edge and we are curious to see how or whether that will be accommodated, he said. The minute I write something offensive, we’ll see if I get a call.⁸

Polemical tactics have been fundamental to the self-definition of FARMS. After six years as book review editor for FARMS, Peterson acknowledged that LDS church members on our side have asked on a number of occasions why do you have to be so polemical, so argumentative? He responded: We did not pick this fight with the Church’s critics, but we will not withdraw from it. I can only regret that some may think less of us for that fact. Then as a religious echo of political McCarthyism’s innuendos about its critics, Peterson indicated that Mormons on our side should be careful about criticizing FARMS: Certain of our critics have emphasized our alleged ‘nastiness,’ I am convinced, as a way of distracting attention from our evidence and arguments.⁹ In the previous issue, Peterson had also written a thirty-eight-page defense of the periodical’s use of insults and "ad hominem (i.e., ‘against the man’) statements about authors whose books were being reviewed by FARMS.¹⁰ Peterson even boasted that some FARMS writers were born with the nastiness gene."¹¹

I realize that by criticizing LDS polemicists, I will be accused of engaging in polemics. This circular trap is inevitable because polemicists alternate between attacking their opponents and claiming victimization by their opponents. I have three responses to the above criticism. First, I have allowed my polemical critics to have their decade, not just their day. Second, I believe this eleventh-anniversary edition responds to these LDS polemicists with greater honesty and civility than they have given me. Third, I avoid what FARMS reviewer William J. Hamblin recently described as whining about the polemical tone of FARMS reviews. He said the real question was whose arguments are superior?—a self-description of polemics as personal competition.¹² While I have tried to avoid engaging in polemics, this study does note instances where polemical writings and arguments have been misleading, distorted, or dishonest. Polemicist is a dishonorable vocation, and I use the term only where I believe it applies.

On the other hand, many LDS apologists and defenders avoid polemics, and simply limit research/inquiry within the boundaries of officially approved history. As a consequence, church leaders and well-intentioned apologists often avoid acknowledging the existence of evidence that moves even one step beyond the approved boundary. Because of these various cross-currents, most Mormons now find it easier to suppress their curiosity about the unapproved past.

As a historian of the Mormon past, I have never accepted those limits on inquiry or expression. I also decline to conceal uncomfortable evidence directly relevant to topics being discussed. Nor do I feel obligated to accommodate the rational limits of secular humanists. I go wherever the evidence seems to lead and present it in the best way I can. I’ve tried to be faithful to evidence and faithful to faith. Within those ground rules, I’ve always seen myself as a Mormon apologist.¹³

In that regard, this revision maintains my original Introduction’s view of the forged White Salamander letter.¹⁴ During the summer of 1986 I wrote a book-draft which excluded that document from my analysis because of serious questions then raised about its authenticity. In 1987 the published Introduction, narrative, and bibliography all described the White Salamander Letter as a definite forgery.¹⁵

However, nine years later apologist Rhett S. James published a claim about my alleged acceptance of Mark Hoffman’s [sic] fake White Salamander Letter in 1984.¹⁶In fact, even though the LDS church newspaper noted that the authenticity of the letter has not yet been established, Rhett James himself publicly endorsed the Salamander Letter in 1984. The Church News stated: ‘‘James said it was ‘highly likely’ that Harris would use the kind of language and symbolism purported to be contained in the Harris letter ... that it is the salamander imagery that intrigues him. James added: by the time of Martin Harris, the word salamander also meant angel."¹⁷ This is only one instance where polemicists have wrongly accused me of something they themselves have done.¹⁸

On the other hand, some reviewers criticized the 1987 Introduction’s statement of my beliefs about controversial subjects I analyzed-the metaphysical, the occult, and the particular claims of Christianity and of the LDS church. One reviewer found this personal testimony of religion to be disconcerting, while another regarded my views as remarkably generous to the occult.¹⁹

However, I know of no book review that criticizes scholars for indicating their disbelief in the occult, as preface to studies about magic beliefs and practices. With exception of BYU Studies, the FARM S Review of Books, and periodicals of fundamentalist schools like Bob Jones University, I know of no academic review that is critical of authors in religious history for acknowledging their disbelief in various faith claims. As long as authors affirm and demonstrate their effort at dispassionate and balanced analysis, most academics are not offended by an admission of agnosticism or atheism. But many academics feel embarrassed for a scholar who even briefly acknowledges belief in the metaphysical.

Beyond secular bias in the academic community, an author’s profession of faith is no protection against polemical attack. In 1987 one LDS polemicist (a New Testament specialist) dismissed my Introduction’s paragraph-long statement of belief as a minimal expression of faith. In 1994 another polemicist (a BYU historian of the Middle East) implied that this statement of belief was a pretense.²⁰

Nonetheless, I maintain that when books emphasize people’s claims for metaphysical reality, there should be a statement about whether the author believes such a dimension does exist or is even possible. For example, I agree with BYU administrator Noel B. Reynolds about the inherent problem of interpreting a claim of divine visions or angelic ministrations while making a priori assumptions that exclude any and all supernatural explanations.²¹ On the other hand, I also appreciated the prefatory statement of atheism in historian Louis Halle’s remarkable book Out of Chaos, which attempted a unified view of the universe and animate history. From my own perspective of belief in a divine overseer of organic evolution, I also admired Halle’s frequent statements that his atheism seemed inadequate to explain the statistically impossible coincidences that would be necessary for random origins of the cosmos and of life.²² I see an academic necessity to state one’s own frame of reference when writing about the metaphysical. For that, I make no apologies to secular humanists or to religious polemicists.

Following the example of Halle’s book, this revised edition occasionally interjects my own perspectives in the main narrative, instead of concealing personal comments in the notes. This includes matters of faith, apologetics, polemics, historical inquiry, and the occult. However, I also remember the caution of analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: I must not make a case for magic nor may I make fun of it. The depth of magic should be preserved.²³

At the publication of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, I was full professor and director of the graduate history program at BYU. I resigned within several months because of administrative pressures against my continuing to work on controversial topics. In 1993 LDS officials formally charged me with apostasy (heresy) for my historical writings, and I was excommunicated from the LDS church.²⁴ Nevertheless, as a seventh-generation member of the church I remain a DNA Mormon, and the 1987 Introduction still accurately describes my personal faith.²⁵

In fact, my employment at BYU in 1987 was the reason that the first edition qualified many of my statements of evidence and conclusion. As a result, one LDS polemicist commented at length on what he called the book’s weasel words.²⁶In the book-manuscript I submitted to the publisher, there were few instances of possibly, might, apparently, and similar qualifiers. However, the editors were deeply concerned that BYU would terminate my employment if the book did not make my statements very tentative. At the strenuous urging of my editors, I reluctantly accepted their multiple addition of subjunctives, qualifiers, and qualified-qualifiers, even though my analysis and views were not so tentative.

Prudence did not preserve my employment, nor did carefully qualified historical scholarship save me from being labeled as an apostate (heretic). This revised edition restores to Early Mormonism and the Magic World View the kind of emphasis and confidence I feel the evidence warrants. I thank the publisher and editors for giving me the opportunity to do so now.

This study examines beliefs and practices of magic and the occult (which my Introduction defines academically and the chapters illustrate historically). This includes the related disciplines of alchemy, astrology,²⁷ and medicine based on alchemical/astrological principles. In addition, the occult includes using ceremonies or objects to summon or repel otherworldly beings, the belief in witches (humans capable of summoning evil forces) and in remedies against them, the wearing of medallions or other objects for their inherent powers to bring about protection or good luck, the performance of ceremonies to find treasures, and the use of objects such as special stones and sticks to obtain information from an otherworldly source.

The Introduction discusses problems of definition, yet it is useful to emphasize here two statements published after my research for this book’s first edition. In the sixteen-volume Encyclopedia of Religion, John Middleton wrote: It is not really feasible to consider ‘magic’ apart from ‘religion,’ with which it has often been contrasted ... Magic is usually defined subjectively rather than by any agreed-upon content. But there is wide consensus as to what this content is.²⁸ Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan also has written: Magic is used here as a neutral description for an authentic religious phenomenon, and its potential abuse no more destroys its validity than do similar possibilities elsewhere.²⁹

The complete picture of magic and the occult is far older and larger than this study can include. My focus is the Western tradition of the occult, especially Anglo-European occult writings and practices to the mid-nineteenth century. There is relatively brief discussion of the last 150 years. Despite my emphasis on America, this book excludes Native American shamanism, Mexican-American curanderismo, African-American voodoo, and Latin American-African Santeria.³⁰

The Anglo-European tradition of magic and reactions to it have been an overlay on the religious, intellectual, and cultural heritage of the United States and its people since colonial times. Up to the early national period, various occult beliefs and practices were so widespread that they appeared to be the experience of most Americans. That was certainly the assumption on which many authors and clergymen drew their own battle-lines against magic and the occult (see ch. 1).

Without statistical sampling and opinion polls, it is impossible to know the actual extent of occult beliefs and magic practices among Americans during any time period. Anti-occult rhetoric and media attention could simply be the paranoia of the vast majority against a perceived threat by a numerically insignificant minority. On the other hand, anti-occult rhetoric by early American opinion-makers (clergy, legislators, jurists, newspaper editors, book authors) may have been the embattled effort of an elite minority to convert a vastly larger populace that was sympathetic to the occult. I accept the latter view of the situation. At any rate, literary sources and material culture show that occult beliefs and folk magic had widespread manifestations among educated and religious Americans from colonial times to the eve of the twentieth century (see chs. 1-4, 7).

That requires explanation of this book’s frequent use of the term folk (which I do not limit to a particular social class, residential area, educational level, or time period).³¹ Instead, folk religion or popular religion is an alternative to the institutional religion of clergy, theologians, and churches.³² Folk medicine is the alternative to academically approved medicine of the highly schooled, of professional societies and establishments. Folk magic is the alternative to academic magic, which required scholarly knowledge of several languages and careful attention to centuries of written texts about magic. Neither folk magic nor academic magic has ever been monolithic.³³

Some authors contrast folk magic with intellectual magic, a term I avoid because of its implication that folk magic was ignorant or non-rational (views I reject).³⁴ Bruce J. Malina has observed that this idea of magic’s appeal to the ignorant and immoral is one of the ancient stereotypical descriptions common among both elites and non-elites.³⁵ To the contrary, as Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman has written: Not just the poor and ignorant but people at all levels had believed in magic and practiced its rituals, without sensing any contradiction with their Christian belief.³⁶

These non-institutional versus institutional meanings of religion are necessary for early American society. David D. Hall has made the crucial observation that the people who came to this region in the seventeenth century were not peasants but of ‘middling’ status. Most important, there was no literacy issue which divided popular religion from formal religion among Anglo-Europeans in the American colonies.³⁷ By contrast, when historians write of folk/popular religion, magic, and medicine in Europe, they almost always refer to the illiterate peasantry.

For example, in his important study of French society, Robert Muchembled described France as if it existed for 250 years in polarity between the illiterate, peasant masses versus a homogeneous Other. The culture of the popular masses is clearly distinct from the Christianity of the elites and from learned thought, he explained.³⁸ To counter such a comparison, I regard it as unexceptional to find vast social and cultural differences between the illiterate and the literate. In other words, the literacy factor (not peasantry as a social class) may have caused the vast distinctions of thought and culture in French society.

On the other hand, the interplay of religion and the occult in early America occurred among people who were predominantly literate and bourgeois.³⁹ That dynamic existed in a society where only 10-20 percent of Americans belonged to any church or religious organization until the 1850s. Thus, non-institutional folk religion was the experience for 80-90 percent of early Americans, yet literacy and social class were not the causes.⁴⁰

Europe’s middle classes and non-royal elites should be the comparative measure for Anglo-European Americans before the mid-nineteenth century. However, because early American popular religion resembled European peasant culture, many historians have avoided an obvious conclusion: the religion of illiterate European peasants was similar to the folk religion of literate society elsewhere. This undermines the alleged gulf separating the popular religion of European peasantry from the popular religion of European elites—a topic deserving further study by specialists in social history of that continent.⁴¹

In America to the present, folk religion, folk medicine, and folk magic can be found among some (certainly not all) of the illiterate poor, of the economically disadvantaged who are literate, of the college-educated and the social elite, of city dwellers and rural families, of the privileged and the unprivileged, of the unchurched and the members of churches. These American folk traditions have always involved accommodation with institutional religion, with established medicine, with the education establishment, and with academic magic.⁴²

American folk religion, folk medicine, and folk magic have also involved literary sources and oral traditions. Occult texts, occult folklore, and occult practices appealed to Harvard graduates as well as the barely literate of early America, to community leaders as well as the nondescript, to devout Christian believers as well as non-believers, to members of churches as well as unchurched believers in privatized, folk religion (see chs. 1-4, 7).

Along with this diversity, these non-monolithic social groups have manifested trends. Literary sources indicate that institutional religion, established medicine, and academic magic have been more common among the educated, among the economically advantaged, and among urban dwellers. Various studies show that folk religion, folk medicine, and folk magic have been more common among rural dwellers, among the less educated, and among the poor.⁴³ This holds generally true for Europe and America, but church membership in early American cities was even lower than in rural areas traditionally known for non-affiliation with churches.⁴⁴ Therefore, cities were also major locations of folk religion.

In a well-known story, camp meetings and ecstatic revivals changed the pattern of religion in America in a slow process from the early 1800s to 1850s. The unchurched became the churched.⁴⁵

There were ironies in this conversion of folk believers into church members and attenders. First, religious revivals redefined mainstream American Protestantism by incorporating the visionary experiences once rejected as magic (see ch. 1). Second, many of these church members remained crypto-occultists who quietly continued their favored practices of folk magic (see chs. 1-4, 7).

Third, despite all the contemporary and later perceptions that the Second Great Awakening (see ch. 1) transformed U.S. denominational membership, the revivals did not reverse the unchurched-churched proportion. In 1850 only 25-35 percent of Americans were church members, and the majority remained outside churches until the twentieth century. Revivals strengthened the churches, yet did not end the non-institutional character of religious life for the majority of Americans.⁴⁶

Fourth, implied or overt endorsements of the occult appeared in popular and academic media until the 1840s (see chs. 1-2). From the 1840s onward, writers enshrined the occult in fiction.⁴⁷ For example, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s 1842 novel Zanoni is an encyclopedia of ideas about the occult sciences.⁴⁸ Fifth, in the mid-nineteenth century various intellectuals and church members (particularly in America’s social elite) changed occultism into a new form—spiritualism.

Despite denials by its advocates, the spiritualist fad in America from the 1840s until the early twentieth century was the occult transfigured. As early as the 1860s Mormon publications made that observation about spiritualism and about the persons who served as spiritualist mediums.⁴⁹ In place of the solitary incantations of a magus were the whisperings of a medium. In place of a circle drawn on the ground with a dagger inscribed in magic symbols (see ch. 3), there was a circle of joined hands. An expensively crafted crystal ball replaced the common peep stones and seer stones dug from the earth (see chs. 2, 7). Most spiritualists saw no conflict between participating in seances and worshipping in church or synagogue. A few spiritualists crossed over into direct involvement with the occult.⁵⁰

The views of Jewish scholar Moses Gaster about magic a century ago retain remarkable currency today. Magic has exercised the deepest influence upon mankind from remote antiquity unto our own days. It either formed part of the religion ... or lived an independent life side by side with the recognized religion. On the eve of the twentieth century Gaster observed: Wherever we go, however, and especially if we turn to the popular beliefs that rule the so-called civilized nations, we shall always and everywhere find a complete system of magical formulas and incantations.⁵¹ That was the perspective of 1896.

Millions of Americans living today have turned to systems of the occult from the Jewish Cabala,⁵² medieval Christian magic and Asian occultism, or to shamanism, curanderismo, voodoo, and Santeria. Millions more have used healing stones, magic crystals, amulets, talismans, or good-luck charms. Still other multitudes have paid hundreds of dollars each to attend channelling seminars led by a celebrity, or have increased their telephone bills by using 900-numbers to hear personal horoscopes. And tens of thousands of Americans today proclaim themselves as latter-day pagans, wiccans, or sorcerers.⁵³ In addition, a large percentage of athletes (teenage and adult) use various folk talismans for success in sports competition.⁵⁴ Much of this reflects the explanation for widespread use of amulets in the American fishing industry: If it works, use it.⁵⁵ Such pragmatism has always drawn people to the occult, who more often adopt the attitude: it might work.

The magic world view has tremendous appeal and will always influence Americans, even though its manifestations may be redefined. In his 1987 essay on Magic in Primitive Societies, Donald R. Hill acknowledged: Many anthropologists would argue that magic is part of the daily routines of people in modern, complex societies.⁵⁶ Gustav Jahoda explained: People, be they [African] Azande or Americans, can act under the influence of their magical beliefs in some contexts and in a rational-technical manner in others.⁵⁷ However, even Jahoda’s effort to be inclusive was marred by his judgment-filled use of rational as the alternative to magical. In 1997 Ariel Glucklich affirmed: Magic continues to exist and flourish even in a modern world dominated by technological solutions and scientific reassurances.⁵⁸

The folk of American folk magic continue to be rural and urban, churched and unchurched, affluent and poor, illiterate and college-educated, native-born and immigrant, WASP and ethnic American. This has been true throughout our society’s folklore, recorded history, and material culture. No population (or any segment of it) is seamless, but this book examines the early trends of rationality, religion, and the occult in America.

Concerning that effort, two critics gave me high praise. Stephen D. Ricks and Daniel C. Peterson (at the time, FARMS director and reviewer) wrote: Despite our manifold reservations, we must say that Quinn’s book is important and, in many ways, brilliant. No one interested in Mormon origins can overlook it.⁵⁹

Eleven years ago my Introduction expressed confidence that LDS believers did not need to fear including occult beliefs and magic practices in the history of Mormonism’s founders. In 1992 LDS church headquarters affirmed that view in its official Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which mentioned the influence of treasure-digging folk magic (see ch. 2) in five separate entries concerning Joseph Smith. These articles did not list my book in their source-notes, but one did cite an anti-Mormon minister’s article about this topic in a Protestant evangelical magazine.⁶⁰ Nevertheless, I was pleased to see this ripple-effect from the splash⁶¹ of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. As Richard L. Bushman recently wrote in a review for FARMS, the magical culture of nineteenth-century Yankees no longer seems foreign to the Latter-day Saint image of the Smith family.⁶² In that respect, Bushman is a conservative revisionist in the writing of Mormon history, which is my self-definition as well.

D. Michael Quinn

October 1998

1 Bret A. Eborn, Comprehensive Bibliography of Mormon Literature Including Some Review Information & Price History (Peoria, AZ: Eborn Books, 1997), 304, lists $100 as the highest price he knows of.

2 Stephen E. Robinson untitled review, BYU Studies 27 (Fall 1987): 88, The major strength of Quinn’s book is the incredible breadth of its research. The bibliography appended to the main text is no less than sixty-seven pages in length and lists a multitude of arcane and often inaccessible volumes, including even rare medieval manuscripts. This was the only favorable remark in a distorted review by an LDS polemicist. Other reviewers were both honest and helpful for this revision. Despite their other problems, malicious reviews often identify a book’s oversights, which I have corrected to the best of my ability. In that respect, I owe thanks to the most mean-spirited and polemical of my reviewers. Because some reviewers misrepresented the content of the first edition, various chapters of this revision respond directly to Robinson and others. For acknowledgement that Robinson is a polemical reviewer, see Daniel C. Peterson, Editor’s Introduction, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 4 (1992): ix, note 6; also my following discussion of polemics and polemicists.

3 Mormon historian B. Carmon Hardy commented that every [source] notation also amounts to a near-exhaustive bibliographic essay, in his review of my first volume about the Mormon hierarchy (Origins of Power) in Pacific Historical Review 65 (Feb. 1996): 150. Likewise, in a letter to me on 19 January 1998 concerning the second volume of that study, Yale’s former acting-president Howard R. Lamar writes: "The footnotes themselves in Extensions of Power—231 pages, will be an indispensable research tool for scholars well into the twenty-first century." However, in Sunstone 20 (Nov. 1997): 73, LDS sociologist Armand

L. Mauss wrote: One of his [Quinn’s] trademarks is exhaustive documentation, but there is such a thing as overkill.

In contrast, my technique of providing readers with bibliographic source-notes has been the subject of stridently negative comments by polemical reviewers for BYU’s Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. BYU historian William J. Hamblin, ’Everything Is Everything’: Was Joseph Smith Influenced by Kabbalah?, FARMS Review of Books: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 8 (1996), no. 2:258, 258n21, denounced the source-notes in my Mormon Hierarchy’s first volume for its particularly egregious examples of bibliography padding. For its polemical review of the second volume, FARMS had a Salt Lake City marriage therapist write that my book cites too many sources for any reader to double-check even a fraction of them—not to mention checking them all. Therefore, Duane Boyce, A Betrayal of Trust, FARMS Review of Books: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 9 (1997), no. 2:163, advised we can set the book aside and do something else with our time—say, to begin with, reread the book of Helaman in the Book of Mormon. In their A Response to D. Michael Quinn’s Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History, FARMS Review of Books: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 10 (1998): no. 1:149, George L. Mitton and Rhett S. James write: ‘The volume of Quinn’s notes gives the appearance of scholarly depth, but they are often bloated, filled with mere fluff and misrepresentation."

4 Hamblin, Everything is Everything, 253n7. Up to 1994 official publications used the abbreviation of F.A.R.M.S. As of 1995, its Review of Books adopted the abbreviation FARMS in the index and on the back cover. For convenience, I follow the current form of abbreviation even when referring to this organization’s publications or authors prior to 1995.

5 Gary F. Novak untitled review, in Review of Book s on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 5 (1993): 233, 233n3. In contrast to an author’s revising her/his own manuscript talk for publication, the retroactively edited texts in Mormon history have caused serious problems in establishing chronology, understanding doctrinal development, and determining participant knowledge of certain issues at a particular time. For those problems in just one standard LDS source, see Dean C. Jessee, The Writing of Joseph Smith’s History, BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971): 439-473; Jessee, The Reliability of Joseph Smith’s History, Journal of Mormon History 3 (1976): 23-46; Jessee, Authorship of the History of Joseph Smith: A Review Essay, BYU Studies 21 (Winter 1981): 101-22; Jessee, Priceless Words and Fallible Memories: Joseph Smith as Seen in the Effort to Preserve His Discourses, BYU Studies 31 (Spring 1991): 19-40. For a several-page list of sources that discuss this problem of retroactive changes in the original texts of LDS revelations and historical documents, see D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1994), 272n25. This cited acknowledgements of these problems as expressed from 1955 to the present in BYU theses and dissertations, LDS church magazines, Deseret Book Company publications, official publications by BYU’s Religious Instruction, BYU Studies, and the 1992 Encyclopedia of Mormonism, the latter being a source written by oversight of LDS apostles (see following note 60). Contrary to Novak’s polemical insinuation, anti-Mormons and so-called critics are not the only ones who have written about the confusion caused by changes at LDS headquarters in historical texts and manuscript revelations of early Mormonism.

6 John Gee, La Trahison des Clercs: On the Language and Translation of the Book of Mormon, Review of Book s on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 6 (1994), no. 1:114-19, gave a polemical (yet useful) overview of the debate about the term apologist, involving FARMS and some equally polemical writers from Signature Books. I obviously can’t claim to be above the fray, but I resent polemical tactics by any author.

7 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act V, scene iii, line 294.

8 Group Trying to Prove LDS Works Joins With BYU, Salt Lake Tribune, 8 Nov. 1997, B-1.

9 Peterson, Editor’s Introduction: Of Polemics, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 6 (1994), no. 2:v, vii.

10 Peterson, Text and Context, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 6 (1994), no. 1:524-62 (for briefly quoted phrases on 536, emphasis in original). Immediately after referring to a complaint from the director of publishing at Signature Books, Peterson began a five-page set of quotations (537-41) about the warped and immoral lives and homosexuality of earlier American authors and publishers. Peterson ended this litany with the obviously sarcastic disclaimer (541) that I am not charging any particular individual, at Signature or anywhere else, with sexual immorality.

11 Daniel C. Peterson, Editor’s Introduction: Triptych (Inspired by Hieronymous Bosch), FARMS Review of Books: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 8 (1996), no. l:xxxvii, note 98, if we have occasionally been guilty of levity at the expense of some of our critics, this has been because they tempted us with irresistible targets. It isn’t our fault. Like most other Americans in the late twentieth century, we are victims. A few of us, indeed, may have been born that way, with the nastiness gene-which is triggered by arrant humbuggery.

12 William J. Hamblin, The Latest Straw Man, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: Foundation for Ancient Research & Mormon Studies 4 (1995), no. 2:87; However, Hamblin and other FARMS polemicists should remember Jacob Neusner’s comment that in the community of scholarship on Judaism, I have enjoyed the grudging, perverse confirmation of my views that has come from ostracism and character assassination. See Neusner, No Monopoly, Sunstone 17 (Dec. 1994): 3-5.

13 Although I did not identify myself as an apologist in this books first edition, two reviewers specifically discussed that question. Robinson untitled review (1987), 88, stated: Quinn is clearly no LDS apologist. There is not a single page of the main text that would appear to be motivated by loyalty to the LDS church or its doctrines or to be apologetic of the Church’s interests. In contrast, Benson Whittle untitled review, BYU Studies 27 (Fall 1987): 108, noted that one begins very early to discern an apologetic stance in this work, but with a peculiar twist: the author is not defending the faith to the infidel; instead, he is defending the history of a heretical prophet-founder, and his associates, to his own coreligionists, so that they may not be ashamed of their origins to the point of falsifying their history. From my perspective, Robinson’s assessment was wrong and Whittle’s was right.

Every time FARMS reviewers quote me in support of a faith-promoting position, the FARMS format requires putting the statement in a footnote and attaching a disclaimer. For example, Hamblin, Everything Is Everything, 257n20, quoted me in support of a faithful view, yet reassured his readers that [Quinn is] hardly a Latter-day Saint ‘apologist.‘ Likewise, Daniel C. Peterson, Yet More Abuse of B. H. Roberts, FARM S Review of Books: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 9 (1997), no. 1:80n24, prefaced a reference to one of my faith-promoting views: D. Michael Quinn, who can scarcely be dismissed as an apologist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leaders ...

14 From the time I first learned about the White Salamander Letter in 1984, I consistently deferred to the judgment of specialists in handwriting, paper, and other tests for document authenticity. After experts of national and international reputation initially endorsed the letter’s authenticity as an 1830 document, I accepted their conclusions. For months I waited for the findings of others who had been appointed to research the background and meaning of this strange document. Early in 1985 I tired of waiting, began my own research, and discovered early America’s magic world view. Before I gave my first public presentation on the subject in August 1985, I regarded the religiously occult context of early America and early Mormonism as far more interesting than the Salmander Letter. That August lecture was a preview of my emphasis in this book.

When asked about the Salamander Letter during this period, I only affirmed that its content was consistent with everything I had found and was learning about pre-1830 beliefs in folk magic and the occult. That was the only expertise I could claim, and that is what I told interested Mormons, media reporters, and police officers (who became interested after the infamous package-bombings in Salt Lake City during October 1985). In 1986 George Throckmorton invented a new forensic test of ink which indicated that the Salamander letter was a modern forgery. Aside from contradicting previous authentications by non-LDS forensic experts, the credibility of this Mormon’s announcement in May 1986 was initially clouded by the fact that Throckmorton had publicly expressed disbelief in the Salamander Letter’s authenticity before he examined the document. Its content was what Throckmorton initially disliked and disbelieved. Eventually Mark W. Hofmann admitted the forgery as part of a plea-bargain to avoid the death penalty for his committing the bombing-murders. See discussion and source-notes in Introduction; also D. Michael Quinn to Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts, 9 May 1988 (to point out some misquotes or misrepresentations in the book that involve me), fd 8, box 29, Linda Sillitoe’s Salamander Collection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

15 Quinn’s preliminary manuscript, 92n, fd 10, box 6, Sillitoe’s Salamander Collection; D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987), ix, 127n5, 258, 283. Robinson untitled review (1987), 94, speculated that as Quinn approached publication, the Hofmann materials were pulled out from under him, leaving a huge salamander-shaped hole in the center of his theory. Aside from its mixed metaphors, Robinson’s review is demonstrably wrong. However, it did not occur to me to put a separate listing for forgery in the index heading after salamander(s) in the first edition. I have learned that some of my critics read nothing more than the index heading of salamander(s) and concluded that this book accepted the Salamander Letter. For the benefit of those who may only look at the index, I have added the term forgery.

16 Rhett Stephens James, Gay Attitudes in LDS History Unsupported, Standard­ Examiner (Ogden, UT), 27 Mar. 1996, A-10; also his similar statement (without the reference to Hofmann) in Historian’s Portrayal of Early Mormons Distorted, Herald Journal (Logan, UT), 10 Mar. 1996, 6.

17 Harris Letter Could Be Further Witness, Deseret News Church News, 9 Sept. 1984, 11 (for lack of forensic authentication), 13 (for quotes by Rhett S. James and para­ phrases of his statements). That is not the only example of Rhett James speaking authoritatively about documents of which he has no direct knowledge. Historians, Herald Journal (Logan, UT), 14 Dec. 1997, 11, quoted him as follows: ‘Many of Compton’s sources are hearsay and not primary sources,’ James said. ‘Rumor, gossip and speculation do not make good history.’ Rhett James made those statements about the book’s sources before he had read one page of Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997). Prior to this article, the publisher had not sent James an advance copy; and the book was not in any bookstore until after the publication of his statements. This Logan article was in regard to an Associated Press story on Compton’s book which appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune a few days earlier.

18 Because Rhett S. James later condemned the alleged 1830 Harris letter as a forgery, he has apparently forgotten the supportive remarks he made to the LDS church’s newspaper in 1984. In 1998 his co-authored Response to D. Michael Quinn’s Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History, 202n150, claimed: At the time, Rhett S. James cautioned that the Mark Hofmann ‘Salamander Letter’ was a fraud, but Quinn accepted it as genuine and apparently had to make hasty changes in the book when Hofmann confessed his forgery. In addition to his selective memory about his own early endorsement of the Salamander Letter, James invented an endorsement I never gave.

While it was Rhett James who publicly endorsed the White Salamander Letter before he examined it and before any forensic expert commented on the authenticity of the document’s paper, ink, and handwriting, this book’s first edition did discuss the meaning of salamanders in occult philosophy. Contrary to the polemical claim of Rhett James in 1996, that 1987 discussion (pages 127-33, 153) never used the term white salamander in the main text. That phrase appeared only once in a footnote (1987, page 128n5): The public release of the so-called white salamander letter, or 1830 Martin Harris letter (known to be a forgery), in 1985 caused both Mormon laymembers and scholars ... The document’s forger later stated ... The present edition’s chapter 5 also discusses the meaning of the salamander in occult philosophy and the possible connection of that philosophy with early Mormonism.

19 Newell G. Bringhurst untitled review, Pacific Historical Review 58 (Aug. 1989): 379; Sterling M. McMurrin untitled review, Utah Historical Quarterly 56 (Spring 1988): 200; also William A. Wilson untitled review, BYU Studies 27 (Fall 1987): 96.

20 Robinson untitled review (1987), 88. In a review of a book with which I had no connection whatever, William J. Hamblin referred in the text to Latter-day Saint dissenters who demand that the Church accept their personal interpretations of Latter-day Saint history, practice, and doctrine as ‘the Truth.’ After defining this as spiritual blackmail, Hamblin identified me as an example in the source note. Near the conclusion of this eighty-page review, Hamblin noted that the dissenters and revisionists—who claim to be telling us ‘the Truth’ about the Church are actually guilty of deceitfully masking of one’s true beliefs by implicit but unacknowledged redefining of the language of faith. In fairness to Hamblin, it is possible that I have misread his intention to include me that accusation. Even if that was his unstated purpose, he did not have the added advantage of reading the clearest declaration I can make that my affirmations of faith are not word games. See Hamblin, An Apologist for the Critics: Brent Lee Metcalfe’s Assumptions and Methodologies, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 6 (1994), no. 1:460-61, 461n51, 520n193; compare with D. Michael Quinn, Pillars of My Faith: The Rest Is History, Sunstone 18 (Dec. 1995): 50.

21 Noel B. Reynolds, The Logical Structure of the Authorship Debate, in Reynolds, ed., Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 97, which concluded: There is no point in discussing the evidence or arguments for or against the Joseph Smith account unless the discussants at least accept the possibility of its truth.

22 Louis Joseph Halle, Out of Chaos (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).

23 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951, ed. James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), 116.

24 BYU’s title for this departmental position was graduate coordinator, which translates in conventional university terminology as the department’s director of graduate studies or director of its graduate program. This is similar to BYU’s other substitutions for conventional academic terms: continuing status instead of tenure, professional development leave instead of sabbatical leave.

The World Is His Campus, Sunstone 12 (Jan. 1988): 45; Quinn, On Being a Mormon Historian (And Its Aftermath), in George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 69-111; Apostasy Investigation Launched Against Historian, Salt Lake Tribune, 13 Feb. 1993, A-6, A-7; Michael Quinn Investigated for Apostasy, Sunstone 16 (Mar. 1993): 69; Six Facing Censure Accuse Mormon Church of Purge, Los Angeles Times, 18 Sept. 1993, B-5; Mormons Penalize Dissident Members: 6 Who Criticized Leaders or Debated Doctrine Await Sanctions by Church, New York Times, 19 Sept. 1993, 31; Tempo Di Purghe Tra i Mormoni, Correriere Della Serra (Milan), 21 Sept. 1993, 9; As Mormon Church Grows, So Does Dissent From Feminists and Scholars, New York Times, 2 Oct. 1993, 7; The September Six: On Trial For Their Religious Beliefs, The Event (Salt Lake City), 1 Oct. 1993, 1, 3-4; Elders Banishing Dissidents In Struggle Over Mormon Practices, Washington Post, 26 Nov. 1993, A-3; By the Book: Mormon Leaders Have Doggedly Fought Recent Attempts To Reinterpret Official Church History and Liberalize Its Doctrine, Vancouver Sun, 4 Dec. 1993, D-13; Mormon Church Ousts Dissidents, Los Angeles Times, 30 Dec. 1993, E-2; September Six collection, 1993, Department of Special Collections and Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Lavina Fielding Anderson, The September Six, in George D. Smith, ed., Religion, Feminism, and Freedom of Conscience: A Mormon/Humanist Dialogue (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books; Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 3; Mormon Church Excommunicates Five Scholars Over Their Books, Publishers Weekly 241 (25 Apr. 1994): 12.

25 Excommunicated Mormon Offers Statement of Faith, Daily Herald (Provo, UT), 20 Aug. 1994, A-3; Those Disciplined Watch Their Families Feel Pressure, Salt Lake Tribune, 16 Sept. 1995, D-2; Quinn, Pillars of My Faith: The Rest Is History, Sunstone 18 (Dec. 1995): 50-57.

26 Robinson untitled review (1987), 92.

27 Whittle untitled review (1987), 107, complained: Throughout the work, Quinn erroneously considers astrology a branch of magic instead of a separate, archaic science, once the astronomy of its day. The error is Whittle’s. For example, John Lankford, ed., History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 44, used astral magic to describe astrology, whose status was similar to that of examination of the entrails of sacrifices and the interpretation of dreams and thunderstorms; it was the most developed system of divination, both in potential breadth of application and in complexity for the student. Also see the reference to astrological magic in Ioan Petru Culianu, Magic in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, in Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 16 vols. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1987), 9:99.

28 John Middleton, Theories of Magic, in Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religion, 9:82; also my Introduction.

29 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), 138. Unlike Crossan, I regard the miracles of Jesus literally, including his resurrection. BYU religion professor Richard L. Anderson has written: Crossan’s work is a highly subjective example of the form-critical ‘biography’ of Jesus. Its literary chronology, mixing historical and apocryphal materials, is a nightmare of unjustifiable dates, accompanied by invincible guesswork on the oral growth of stories about Jesus. Conservative scholarship gives Crossan a failing grade. See Review of Books on the Book of Mormon: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies 6 (1994), no. 1:386. Although I respect Anderson as a New Testament specialist and my former bishop, my reading of scholarly literature in a wide variety of disciplines persuades me that Crossan’s view of magic is accurate.

30 For these other American traditions of the occult, see Octavio Ignacio Romano V., Charismatic Medicine, Folk-Healing, and Folk-Sainthood, American Anthropologist 67 (Oct. 1965): 1151-73; Lowell John Bean, California Indian Shamanism and Folk Curing, Joe S. Graham, "The Role of the Curandero in the Mexican American Folk Medicine System in West Texas, and Bruce Jackson, The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine," in Wayland D. Hand, ed., American Folk Medicine: A Symposium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 109-23, 175-89, 259-72; Mary Elizabeth Shutler, Disease and Curing in a Yaqui Community, in Edward H. Spicer, ed., Ethnic Medicine in the Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 169-237; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 13-15, 25-27, 34-35; Robert T. Trotter II and Juan Antonia Chavira, Curanderismo: Mexican American Folk Healing (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981); Edgar E. Siskin, Washo Shamans and Peyotists: Religious Conflict in an American Indian Tribe (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983); James H. Howard and Willie Lena, Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicines, Magic, and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984); Jules J. Wanderer and George Revera, Jr., Black Magic Beliefs and White Magic Practices: The Common Structure of Intimacy, Tradition, and Power, Social Science Journal 23 (1986), no. 4:419-30; Karl H. Schlesier, The Wolves of Heaven: Cheyenne Shamanism, Ceremonies, and Prehistoric Origins (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Bobby Joe Neeley, Contemporary Afro-American Voodooism (Black Religion): The Retention and Adaption of the Ancient African-Egyptian Mystery System, Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1988; Joseph M. Murphy, Santeria: An African Religion in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988); Deward E. Walker, Jr., ed., Witchcraft and Sorcery of the American Native Peoples (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1989); Migine Gonzales-Wippler, Santeria, the Religion: A Legacy of Faith, Rites, and Magic (New York: Harmony, 1989); Ron Bodin, Voodoo: Past and Present (Layfayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1990); James Haskins, Voodoo & Hoodoo: Their Tradition and Craft As Revealed by Active Practitioners (Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1990); Yvonne Patricia Chireau, Conjuring: An Analysis of African­ American Folk Beliefs and Practices, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1994; M. Drake Patten, African-American Spiritual Beliefs: An Archaeological Testimony from the Slave Quarter, in Peter Benes, ed., Wonders of the Invisible World, 1600-1900: The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings, 1992 (Boston: Boston University, 1995), 44-52; Laennec Hurban, Voodoo: Search For the Spirit, trans. Lory Frankel (New York: Discoveries/Harry N. Abrams, 1995); Murphy, Santeria and Vodou in the United States, in Timothy Miller, ed., America’s Alternative Religions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 291-96.

31 This extended explanation is necessary because a well-known LDS folklorist repeatedly criticized the first edition of this book for my alleged assumptions that the ‘folk’ were unsophisticated, unlettered, country people, little touched by the refining influences of civilization and that there was a monolithic, unchanging group of people called the ‘folk.’ See his untitled review in BYU Studies (Fall 1987): 99-101; William A. Wilson untitled review, Western Historical Quarterly 20 (Aug. 1989): 343; Wilson, The Study of Mormon Folklore: An Uncertain Mirror for Truth, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 22 (Winter 1989): 96. Claiming that he read the book twice (1987: 96), Wilson somehow overlooked its discussions of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale graduates who practiced various forms of folk magic, its references to well-educated country people, its mention of rural bookstores that sold thousands of academic books in various fields, its discussion of the sophisticated holdings in the rural library of Joseph Smith’s hometown, and its examples of farmers who opposed folk magic.

In view of his claim that he read my book twice, Wilson’s astonishing misreadings appear to be intentional misrepresentation. In fact, Wilson employed these systematic distortions of the book’s content as the basis for using the meaning of folk as a polemical ploy to entirely dismiss Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Thus, Wilson untitled review (1987), 97, stated: I remain unconvinced by the bulk of the argument—primarily because it rests on possible connections that are suggested but seldom proved and on parallel evidence that often lies beyond proof, and because Quinn argues from a concept of folklore that is both antiquated and misleading. Wilson untitled review (1989), 343, claimed: But its basic argument, built on a foundation of unproven associations and parallel evidence and relying on an untenable notion of the folk, must remain in doubt. Wilson, Study of Mormon Folklore, 96, stated: This concept of ‘the folk,’ which, unfortunately, some historians writing about Joseph Smith’s magical practices still adhere to, is both outdated and misleading, and any research conclusions based on it should be accepted with great caution, if at all. In my view, such an approach in three reviews aimed at Utah-Mormon readers amounts to Wilson’s religiously polemical campaign, not scholarly discourse.

32 Karen Louise Jolly, Magic, Miracle, and Popular Practice in the Early Medieval West: Anglo-Saxon England, in Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, eds., Religion, Science, and Magic In Concert and In Conflict (New York Oxford University Press, 1989), 177, preferred the terms formal religion and popular religion; also Don Yoder, Discovering American Folklife: Studies in Ethnic, Religious, and Regional Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1990), 70-71 (on the tensions between ‘high’ or official religion and folk religion even in American academic journals), 76-82 (on differing applications of folk religion in cultures outside the United States). Douglas J. Davies has observed that the Anglican clergy used the term folk-religion to describe this lower order of religiosity. That represents the bias of the clergy, not my intent in using this term. Non-institutional religion is not inferior to institutional religion. See his Magic and Mormon Religion, in Davies, ed., Mormon Identities in Transition (London: Cassell, 1996), 144.

33 As it does now, my 1987 Introduction emphasized the diversity and disagreements among those subscribing generally to the magic world view, yet Wilson untitled review (1987): 101, and Wilson untitled review (1989): 343 claimed that the book argued for a monolithic magic worldview. See previous note 31 for the polemical distortions in Wilson’s approach.

34 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 228; Culianu, Magic in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, in Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religion, 9:98. For a different reason, I also avoid the term learned magic, as in Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), xii. Assuming that readers would pronounce the term as learn-ed, Peters used learned magic throughout his book to refer to educated people’s magic. Despite his intention, readers can likewise understand his term to mean magic which has been learned. That unintended meaning works equally well in many passages where Peters used learned magic. Since illiterate people can learn magic through verbal instruction and through observing rituals, learned magic is ambiguous and fails to fulfill the intent for which Peters used the phrase. To avoid confusion, learned magic must always be juxtaposed with a reference to common people’s magic or be linked with a reference to the method of occult learning.

35 Bruce J. Malina, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels (London: Routledge, 1996), 102; compare George Luck, trans. and ed., Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 9, who observed: Not only the lower classes, the ignorant and uneducated, believed in it [magic], but [also] the ‘intellectuals.’

36 Richard L. Bushman, Treasure-seeking Then and Now, Sunstone 11 (Sept. 1987): 5.

37 David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 5, 7.

38 Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400-1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 13, also 92.

39 This statement and book, of course, have an Anglo-European focus which excludes the American population of native tribes throughout the expanding nation, Hispanics and Latinos (particularly in the Far Southwest after 1848), free blacks before 1865, African­ American slaves before 1865, and African-Americans since 1865.

40 Even careful estimates vary. Edwin Scott Gaustad’s Introduction to his The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), xiii, estimated 5-10 percent of Americans were church members in 1810, which increased to 25 percent by 1850. In a multiple regression analysis of census data, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark’s Turning Pews into People: Estimating Church Membership in Nineteenth-Century America, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25 (June 1986): 187, had consistently higher estimates (18.2 percent in 1810 to 34.8 percent in 1850); also Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 16. Jon Butler, Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1700, American Historical Review 84 (Apr. 1979): 318, gave a range of 10-15 percent. Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 191-93, 206-207, 283-85, gave detailed religious demography during the period by denomination and region.

41 Stuart Clark, French Historians and Early Modern Popular Culture, Past & Present 100 (Aug. 1983): 63-66, 70-73, criticized Muchembled and other French historians for their elitist and rationalist bias against the beliefs and practices of the peasantry. He did not raise the cross-cultural perspective I give here.

42 As a larger application of the interpretative positions by Daniel Lawrence O’Keefe, Stolen Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic (1982; New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 158, and by Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 7.

43 Rather than provide duplicate citations for this matter, I invite readers to consult this study’s lengthy citations of studies about folk religion, folk medicine, and folk magic.

44 Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 283.

45 Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith, 219-24, 257-88 is the best retelling of that process, because he puts it within the context of folk religion’s earlier domain.

46 Finke and Stark, Turning Pews into People, 187, 189; Finke and Stark, Churching of America, 16, which shows that not until 1906 did 51 percent of Americans have church membership; Gaustad, Rise of Adventism, xiii. Again, Gaustad gives the lower estimates.

47 Joseph L. Blau, ‘The Diffusion of the Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in English Literature," Review of Religion 6 (Jan. 1942): 167; Martha Banta, Henry James and the Occult: The Great Extension (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972); Viola Sachs, The Game of Creation: The Primeval Unlettered Language of Moby Dick, or, The Whale (Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de L’Homme, 1982); Sachs, The Occult Language and Scripture of the New World, Social Science Information 23 (1984), no. 1:129-41; Itala Vivan, The Scar in the Letter: An Eye Into the Occult in Hawthorne’s Text, Social Science Information 23 (1984), no. 1:155-93; various essays in Luanne Frank, ed., Literature and the Occult: Essays in Comparative Literature (Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, 1977), in Peter B. Messent, ed.,