Radio Free Mormon: Magic and the Book of Mormon (We Need Dan Vogel's Help!)

[_Shulem]

Maybe he could line such a hat so that it appeared more normal till put to use when the lining could be removed.

I confess this is not beyond possiblity. But where did the text to read come from? That is always the primary necessary question.

That's the point of this whole exercise. Think in ways of how a novice magician might use a 19th century white stovepipe hat as a prop in order to pull off a trick through some method of sleight of hand -- which is something I thought RFM would be most qualified to come up with and now that we know Vogel was somewhat of a magician he might like to consider that too.

How was the hat a trick? A simple flap that opened? A false top? Something?

I don't know the answer. What I do know though is that the Book of Mormon is not a historical record. It's a novel made up by Joseph Smith and his friends. Somehow.

[_Simon Southerton]

The hat below is probably more representative of the type of hat he had. It was described as an old hat so it was probably a bit worn. One writer described it as "battered". The frame for these hats was made by casting cheesecloth soaked in shellac (transparent resin) on a hat shaped wooden block. The interior was lined with silk and the fur attached to the outside. This fur could easily be worn off by someone wanting more light to enter the hat. The frame and silk would have been reasonably translucent.

I'm not saying this is definately how the translation took place. Dan may be right. But I have not found Dan's arguments convincing and he clearly has formed the view that the translation was all based on Smith's memory. I think Huckelberry made a very good point. At least we agree on the most important fact. Joseph Smith was a conman and he knew he was tricking everyone.

Our polite disagreements pale into insignificance compared to the mental tussles that must be going on in Michael Quinn's head. I was reading Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View last night. He's done amazingly thorough research but its clear from the outset he is totally convinced Smith's use of magic was perfectly normal (if not predictable given the era), the seer stones had magical powers, the gold plates were real and the Book of Mormon is a true history. This probably explains why he wrote a scathing (and completely uninformed) one-page rebuke of an article I wrote for Sunstone. He is so emotionally and intellectually tied to his delusions that he will not tolerate anyone challenging them.

[_I have a question]

Did people actually watch him translate by putting his face into a hat, or is that just something Joseph explained to them he was doing as he was sat behind a curtain?

[_Shulem]

Did people actually watch him translate by putting his face into a hat, or is that just something Joseph explained to them he was doing as he was sat behind a curtain?

I'm not well read on the subject like Dan the Man is but my understanding is that all references pertaining to Smith's stone in the hat come from eyewitnesses or hearsay from those who knew eyewitnesses. I don't think Smith ever wrote about the actual experience of the stone in the hat.

[_huckelberry]

Simon Southerton, Thankyou for the further information about hats available at the time. I can see how a hat of this description might arrive at a state allowing light to come in. I must back further off my overreaching sureness that the hat would be dark.

I found Magic world view to be a fascinating book. I read it many years ago and my copy got lent away to disappear. I read it through Brodie lenses so find myself surprised by your report of Mr Quinn's emotions on the subject.

[_Dan Vogel]

RFM explicitly stated numerous times the hat was an essential part of Joseph Smith's magic trick. I don't disagree with that. The changeable stone (seer stone or U&T) was the misdirection. Where am I not understanding RFM's reasoning?

I’ve explained it twice. This is the last time. The magic box is essential for the magician to appear as if he can cut a person in half and then restore them. However, if he really had powers to do that, he wouldn’t need a box. RFM mentions this principle as part of his argument that the trick was in the hat. Have you bothered to go back and listen?

I'm not sure why you assume Joseph couldn't be hiding notes in his hat during his treasure digging days. Clearly, that's where he learned his tricks. Given he had his head in a hat for long periods, it's easy to imagine him one day realising "Hey, I can see in here. I could hide detailed notes on the layout of Hyrum Gullible's farm and wow them with my intimate knowledge of where their lost hammer is." You acknowledge he was a conman and he was conning farmers for years. It's not a huge leap to connect his treasure digging trick with his translation trick

This is all too fast and loose for me. He may have pretended to see treasure maps written in Spanish or Hebrew or hieroglyphics. But this doesn’t lead to a theory that he had to have notes in his hat as a treasure seer. You have a theory that Joseph Smith used this method to produce the Book of Mormon, then you argue that one cannot disprove he also did it as a treasure seer. My argument was that the hat and stone went together naturally, before there was a need to hide documents. You agreed with that observation. It doesn’t matter if he discovered another use later. My point was that the hat wasn’t like a magician’s box.

I think you are exaggerating the risks. These people had implicit faith in him. If he had brief notes concealed in his hat at the beginning of the day he probably only needed to shuffle their order maybe 4 or 5 times a day. If his hat wasn't on the table it would have been on his head. They took regular breaks for lunch, morning and afternoon tea (legal then), a walk, the loo etc. In my view you are underestimating his skill as a conman.

Yet, this would be a significant risk if this was the method he relied on. The average dictation was about eight first edition Book of Mormon pages per day.

What I meant was that he could have had brief notes that he used as a guide for his narrative for much of the Book of Mormon. He could have changed them a few times each day

I see this as an unnecessary hypothesis. How helpful could notes be, especially when he didn’t know Jesus was going to appear in America until late in the dictation? This shows he was making it up as he went. I have suggested that Joseph Smith worked out the translation in his mind, and then dictated what he worked out. There’s no need to have notes. Your theory has made the solution unnecessarily more complex.

To me this introduces an avoidable risk. From my recollection the Isaiah quotes are not identical to the Bible verses. People could have wondered how he could have come up with these supposedly inspired changes without the aid of his seer stone. If he didn't need the seer stone then they might suspect he was tricking them.

I have suggested that the wholesale borrowing from the KJV was done in the open similar to what he later did for his Bible revision, which has the same kind of variant readings. He could have read the Isaiah passages making changes along the way, or he could have written changes in a Bible and then had someone read them while he was away in Palmyra arranging for the printing in June 1829.

OK. I will be clearer. Martin Harris was afraid to stick his head in the hat to look at the stone. That was the act Joseph Smith warned him about. Everyone knew what the stone looked like because they all saw it. I would not be surprised if they had all handled it. But they were clearly instructed not to stick their face into the hat and look at the stone. Again, this clearly implies Smith didn't want them to discover they could actually see with their head in his hat

You don’t know that Joseph Smith didn’t want them to look at the stone in the hat for that reason. Nor do you know what kind of white top hat it was. The reasons I gave make more sense.

I thought RFM was fairly clear. He said he could have used "manuscript notes" in the bottom of the hat.

He wasn’t clear about how much Joseph Smith relied on this method, although he implied Joseph Smith couldn’t perform without it. Nor did he say how these notes could have helped, or why written notes were necessary.

I agree that he knew his Bible very well and could have memorised large parts of it. He also could easily have concealed notes in the bottom of his hat to help create the Book of Mormon. The bottom line is he was a conman. He was treasure-digging to make money for little effort. It seems to me that a conman is far more likely to take the easy route to creating the Book of Mormon.

I would argue that Joseph Smith was both a con man and a religious fanatic who already knew his Bible.

I think the fact that it was an "old white stovepipe hat" is significant for a number of reasons.
It's easy to imagine a conman coming up with all kinds of ways to allow enough light into the hat. He would have been aiming for just enough light to allow him to read after taking a little while for his eyes to adjust but not enough light to allow someone to notice the trick straight after putting their head in his hat. If it was old and made of beaver fur it could have been worn thin in parts to allow enough light through. Since he had his head in the hat for long periods, he needed the hat to breath. He could have made small holes to allow air movement like they do with many hats these days. These could have been obscured by the fur.
Its also interesting that he chose a stovepipe hat, which was taller than regular top hats of the period. Its extremely hard to focus the eyes in a short hat, but it gets easier as the hat gets taller.

This just seems too convenient and ad hoc to me.

[_Physics Guy]

RFM's point is a good one, that the hat is suspicious as an unnecessary element added to the translation process, but I think Dan Vogel also has a good counterpoint that the hat might just have been there as part of Smith's established seer stone routine. So the hat doesn't stick out quite as much as a gimmick added specifically for the translation trick. I still think that a hat is an obvious gimmick for any kind of scrying performance and a suspicious part of Smith's translation schtick. Whether Smith might have made practical use of the hat in his trick is a good question to ask.

As to the risk of notes in the hat being discovered, I don't think the way to weigh risk is to compare having notes in the hat to having no notes at all. If one follows that approach then the obviously least risky strategy is to be a genuine prophet who doesn't need notes. If Smith needed notes, though, then that wasn't an option and the question is how he could best have used notes. If he had notes he would have had to hide them somewhere; if he needed to consult notes then he would have had to find some surreptitious way of looking at them. Putting them in the hat while he was supposed to be scrying could well have been the least risky option of all strategies for using notes.

How helpful could notes be, especially when he didn’t know Jesus was going to appear in America until late in the dictation? This shows he was making it up as he went. I have suggested that Joseph Smith worked out the translation in his mind, and then dictated what he worked out. There’s no need to have notes. Your theory has made the solution unnecessarily more complex.

I admit that I don't know the Book of Mormon well but it seems to me that there's a false dichotomy here. There isn't a binary choice between either having a detailed outline from the start of the story or else not using notes at all. Relying on notes to keep an improvised story from going too far off the rails doesn't preclude continuing to revise the story's outline over the course of dictation.

Using notes adds risk and effort, and requires skill on Smith's part. Relying entirely on improvisation and memory avoids those risks and that effort, and does not need that skill, but it requires unusual skills in improvisation and memory, as well as the effort of keeping a story straight from pure memory, and it adds the risk of screwing up the story in some irrecoverable way. Which set of risks and troubles was Smith most keen to avoid? Which skills did he have?

I don't think we can tell. I agree that pulling off the Book of Mormon without notes would have been far from impossible, but using notes in the hat undetected would have been possible, too. So I wouldn't bet my life on this hat trick theory but I think that it's a good suggestion to add to the list of ways by which Smith could have "brought forth" the Book of Mormon.

[_Shulem]

QUESTION:

How did Joseph really find that lost pin in the grass?

By real magic or by some other means? Real magic doesn't require a box or a hat but in this case it appears it does?

It seems to me that Smith proved his ability to perform a miraculous act and Martin Harris vouched for it. Time to repent and go back to church, boys, that includes you, Dan! You too, grindael! You know the hat is true. Joseph found that pin in the grass by divine means, did he not? Prove he didn't.

[_MonkeyNumber9]

QUESTION:

How did Joseph really find that lost pin in the grass?

By real magic or by some other means? Real magic doesn't require a box or a hat but in this case it appears it does?

As someone earlier in this thread postulated, Joseph could have found the lost pin early on (before taking off his hat to run his show) and covertly palmed it. Then, face in hat, quarter-from-behind-the-ear style, miraculously reached out and "found" it in the grass right under Harris' nose. Because: magician.

[_Shulem]

As someone earlier in this thread postulated, Joseph could have found the lost pin early on (before taking off his hat to run his show) and covertly palmed it. Then, face in hat, quarter-from-behind-the-ear style, miraculously reached out and "found" it in the grass right under Harris' nose. Because: magician.

Yeah, I guess, I hear ya. Was it real magic or just an illusion? Dan points out the either-or of the situation:

These proofs separate Smith from the group of self-deluded treasure seers, for they were either true demonstrations of his seeric gift or evidence of his talent for deception. In any event, Harris was persuaded by Smith’s demonstration.

Smith was talented. He pulled that pin trick either by sleight of hand or peeking through his trick hat. It's one or the other.

One thing is for sure, Joseph Smith was a conman -- a liar, a swindling cheat, and a child molester. He got exactly what he deserved at Carthage. The man swindled, stole other men's wives, rocked 14 year old cradles, and destroyed a printing press.