SCHOOL OF OUR DIVINE
INFINITE BEING
Polytheistic Monism - Divine Theurgy - Oracle to the Gods
Joseph Smith and the LDS Church - Mormons,
X Mormons, we welcome you
If you are LDS (Mormon) and have found yourself at the door of our school, we would like to fully welcome you. I was traditionally trained in Mormon lore, as you, living just outside of Rexburg, ID most of my childhood, believing every word of my Sunday School teachers. To my shock, at the age of 14, everything that I was taught about belief came crashing down after my own independent study of other religious thought, and LDS history.
My lineage is from the beginnings of the LDS Church, my relatives were part of the very first Mormon migration from Switzerland to Nauvoo. My mother’s line was with the pioneers when they crossed the great plains into Utah. I personally would have been a 6th generation Mormon. My great great grandfather had 4 wives, so I am a product of the famed Mormon piligamy. My great grandmother, whom I met when I was 4, and she was 98, was one of the first female settlers born in the state of Wyoming, where much of my mother’s side of the family is from . My upbringing was not one of conversion, but of historical Mormon legacy. My childhood was filled with stories of my own relatives and their early struggles in the Mormon rise to power. My father was a convert from Chile and he met my mother while she was in Chile on her Mormon mission. They moved to my hometown just outside of Rexburg, ID and my father’s long standing business, 40 years in the area, was centered in Rexburg, which has the highest number of Mormons per capita at a stagering 96%. Everyone knew my father, he was very social and held high positions in the Church. My grandfather worked in the temple for all of my childhood. My current brother in law is the Stake president of our area and many of my family members are still Mormon. The largest higher education institution to me was the 2 year Mormon Ricks College, which is now the Mammoth BYU Idaho 4 year University. Everyone that runs my company currently are LDS. Young BYU College graduates that I have the greatest respect for. I know these young people working for me will work hard, not party, care for their families, and at every step keep God in their life. We speak of God often, and it being easy enough to use their vernacular, I encourage them to lead their lives by their personal relationship to the Creator.
Now let me be clear, there are endless reasons that the Mormon ethic is not a great choice for a true seeker. One that all religions suffer from is the, “belief in every word”, sickness, a sickness most religious systems have, that their standard doctrine demands. We address how we see the poetic revelation in our Central Doctrine and this is well worth having a read especially for the Mormon thinker. In my opinion, it is better to not be a member of the LDS Church, rather than be a member, but to say there isn’t an underlying spiritual opportunity within their teachings would simply be small thinking. Even when more investigative members see through the smoke screen, learn the history of their founder Joseph Smith, and learn about the disproven Hebrew presence of Israel in America, many people stay in the Church. When you hear detractors say it was all brainwashing and that is the end of it, I am here to tell you, in simple terms, that is just not alway the case. My parents, and theirs, whom I spent my entire childhood with, were very spiritually minded people.
I will give you a personal story and then I will move forward to my main point. At 17, after reading “Confessions” by Alesiter Crowley, and the book “Techniques of High Magick” by Francis King, I thought I was suddenly so far above the delusions of the Mormon Church that I had been liberated. Liberated from what I contended to be a completely and totally false dichotomy of existence, a grand lie in all its forms. My poor mother had to contend with me, I wanted to make points, demand proof, argue worth, and in my youthful ignorance, prove her and her entire legacy wrong. I was sitting in the basement one day when she was vacuuming and was arguing about the impossibility of getting into the Celestial Kingdom, the Mormon’s highest world where you become Gods and go on to create your own worlds. She stopped the vacuum, seeing this had to be at least the 20th time I challenged her openly. She looked me in the eye, a bit teared up, and she said to me, “There is nothing you could ever say that would change my personal relationship to God. Even if you were right and I was wrong, my relationship to God is beyond your opinions” . I had absolutely nothing to say to her. My arrogance had been shattered. Her resolve, the stable power in her certainly, was not an argument, it was a statement of irrefutability. After that day I seek to learn from her, where did her certainly come from? All my life her God, this LDS narrative of the total one reality, was at a depth with her that I could barely comprehend. To this day I often smile and wonder, will I ever?
I say these things to honor the many Mormons, bound by the LDS narrative, that have been able to cultivate a deep personal relationship with God as my Mother did. We teach openly that one’s relationship to the Divine is personal, and this stands apart from any narrative that may point in its direction, no matter the framework of reference. My family was deep in prayer, cultivating a life of purity and putting God first in everything at home . My parents both had miraculous stories about the power of God, my father’s priesthood and personal revelation.Thus stated, would I ever re-enter their patronage and convert to Mormon once again? Never. There are plenty of reasons that we do not need to cover here as to why I wouldn’t personally. If you have spent much time with the literature of our school you would know mostly why as I foster a much different opinion about the world. It also most certainly has to do with their history. Myth Vision, a very popular podcast, covered the entire Mormon history over a series of videos that I suggest you take the time to watch https://www.tiny.cc/earlymormonhistory. I have watched all of them, and they tell a very complete story of Joseph Smith and the early Church. What I want to bring to you as the Mormon “defector” has to do with a perspective outside of LDS history directly. I want to speak to you of much older practices in occultism and Gnosis that Joseph Smith most certainly borrowed and then incorporated into his spiritual doctrine. Practices that underpin the power of revelation and personal prophecy. Tenants of the personal relationship of one to God that underpins LDS beliefs.
Many Mormons that leave the Church turn Atheist. Gaining a perspective that the LDS Church's doctrine is not “God's Highest” automatically sets defectors against the totalitarian position of “rightness” within every one of the other religions as well and they abandon their faith completely. The Catholics, Protestants, and every flavor of Christianity have their club, and their ways are the only truth, really? Just like the Church that lied to me, you are ready to just lie to me too? X mormons tend to see through the rest of what they end up deeming “make believe” fairly fast, and they re-balance, jumping in the materialist/Atheist camp almost by reflex.
I wasn’t one of these. Where I found my door was the opposite direction, in the study and practice of ceremonial magic, astrology and Tarot and eventually Theurgy. You can read more about my personal history in my Bio on this website. What was very curious to me, especially being male, holding their priesthood, I was already being prepared by Mormon Doctrine in certain ways for my Theurgic journey. Mormons teach that their priesthood gains a Man the ability to receive personal revelation directly from God . Here it wasn’t just prayer, but the reception of divine knowledge from the Creator of the Universe through visions, dreams and direct communication from the Holy Ghost. Every boy would grow up to go on a mission for the Church, guided by the power of personal revelation, then given a family where they would stand as the leader and divine revelator for their families. Mormons even have a Shaman figure that performs revelatory divination as the “Patriarch”. A Patriarch reveals the future, if you remain faithful, for your future life here on earth. In personal revelation man was to guide, not just themselves, but their families in divine revelation given to them directly from God. This was a form of divination and Gnosis that is a major part of LDS life, and this was borrowed by Joseph Smith from much older spiritual systems. This is a low resolution of what Gnosis can really be for the seeker. The LDS Church, in their version of things, water it down and have even stifled it due to their need to hold authority. You can learn about this here www.tiny.cc/ldsrevelation They talk about how personal revelation is a uniquely Mormon thing, which really is the one thing they get wrong in this podcast, but this is worth watching.
As my point is different in this short essay I would just like to point you to a wonderful article written by Lance S. Owens, “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah”. We have reproduced this article in its entirety here on our website for two reasons. First is it gives a very complete history of the Kabbalistic, Hermetic rise of Christian Mysticism during the Renaissance period up to the day of Joseph Smith. We touch lightly on these subjects concerning the Renaissance period in our Central Doctrine, but this is worth the study just for the history lesson. They miss one very important point, which is the fact that Kabbalistic ideas were an integration of Platonism and Hebrew liturgy in its beginnings. This is something well proven by current religious scholars, but for the most part, it is a wonderful way to learn about occult Europe and early American mysticism up to the rise of Joseph Smith and the LDS Church . The second is it shows where Joseph Smith, already proven to be a practitioner of ceremonial magic by other sources, integrated occult ideas of Kabbalah and Hermeticism into the LDS epoch. From this perspective this article is an investigation into the “Gnosis” of LDS practices. What I want to tell you is this. If what you profess to be true is that God answers your prayers and has given you personal revelation for yourself and your family, that relationship has no need of abandonment along with the rest of the obviously flawed LDS doctrine. These ideas are borrowed, and a more lucid and clear understanding, with both scientific and religious meaning, can be found within our school's central doctrine. Although this essay is certainly biased, Stephen Joseph Fleming did an exhaustive account of Joseph Smith’s parallels with Christian Platonic ideas. For those of you drawn to deeper scholarship this essay is well worth the review. www.tiny.cc/mormonplatonism Our point is Smith borrowed and plagiarized so many things, and the power of personal revelation, a true power, does not belong to him, his church or any one specific doctrine.
Many people don’t leave the Church, as we have explained, for the same reason my mother would never leave. It doesn’t matter what the Church commands, what the books say, nor what the actual truth is about their megalithic business they call a religion. God is with you, the power of revelation is a true power, unlike many of their Christian counterparts, amongst the LDS, this power belongs to you and not just the prophets of the Bible. Mormons are allowed a personal Gnosis, the power to unify with God in visions of light and dreams of prophecy . There are many that stay because of this true relationship to God, the true nature of Gnosis in their lives and their real experiences with the power of revelation. Many stay because there are few opportunities where this kind of direct revelatory opportunity is given, as other faiths strip the human of these rights. Rites that are actually Theurgic and ceremonial in their nature. There are so many other reasons those that awaken to the truth of Mormon history and practices do not leave the Church as well. Pure pressure, loneliness, fear of abandonment, keeping families together, ridicule, not losing community etc, but be clear for my mother and those like her, it is because through Mormonism they found God.
In Owens's essay he argues for the Gnostic elements in Mormonism and their obvious kabbalistic and occult origins. Especially for those that were fully convinced believers, this power, often enough, touched and influenced their lives profoundly. And if it gives any of you defectors any peace of mind, these ideas were most assuredly borrowed from Smith’s exposure to Kabbalah, Hermeticism and ceremonial magic. They don’t belong to the Melchezidek priesthood and they most certainly do not belong to the restored gospel of the LDS Church . Being alive and turning your heart and mind towards the totality state of existence in any of its forms offers this truth. I can not emphasize enough the importance of reviewing Owen’s essay, so as you come to terms with Mormon history, you also don’t abandon that which was real, which was the LDS commandment to live by personal revelation is a state of harmony with the most high.
A great place to start is with our friend and the Protagonist of the outer order of our school, Timothy Desmond in his 14 hour online course. You can find that here www.PsycheandSingularity.com When you first break from a religious mindset of “our way or the highway”, “we have the truth and you don’t”, learning from such an incredible scholar such as Timothy, who adds in modern day Philosophy, Psychology and Physics, will give you a true reason to continue your belief with a more honest view of the totality state of existence. We also suggest you spend some time in our Central Doctrine here on our website where we give you the opportunity to learn about the science and Theurgic practices of our school. Atheism is a choice, in our opinion an incorrect one, although the most natural course for a defecting LDS believer. Allow us to give you an anchor backed by the latest breakthroughs in cutting edge science, and true scholarship before you throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Watch this Myth Vision podcast so you can come to terms with the true history of the LDS Church https://www.tiny.cc/earlymormonhistory . If you were Mormon like I was my whole life you owe it to yourself to watch the entire thing. Then for certain read Owen's full article. You have been initiated into the Gnostic relationship with the totality state of existence, given its revelatory purpose in visions of light and through prophetic dreams. There is no reason to abandon this side of your training, this was never Joseph Smith’s to begin with, and this is personal, beyond anything written, between you and the Creator. This, my friends, is real.
Two Mormon Doctrines that do not belong to the LDS
Church, more borrowing once again
I want to point out two very specific doctrines from the Mormon Church that have their origin in the teachings of the father of Theurgy, the 3rd Century C.E. Neoplatonist Iamblichus. Understanding this ancient perspective, borrowed by Smith, from the Kaballistic schools, who borrowed it directly from the Platonists, will be very important for some of you reading this. Like the power of revelation, these concepts have a strong intuition to their rightness. In our Central Doctrine we explain the physics of these concepts and once you are done here it may be useful for you to reference them there. These truths have been completely laid plain through our teachings on quantum mechanics and string theory.
First, in the Mormon liturgy there is the concept of exaltation, this grand reward that occurs after death if you have fulfilled a Mormon existence to its fullest intentions. In this mode of experience the body has been transfigured into the spiritual body of perfection, becoming a God, acting in the way that God acts creating your own world. This is a watered down version of what was originally taught in the Platonism of Iamblichus during the 3rd Century C.E.
"All spirit is matter but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by pure eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter".
D&C 131:7-8
Mormons, like the Iamblican Neoplatonists, believe that the body and the spirit were a unified whole, and that the flesh, the world of generative life, was not separated, but a necessary condition of the unified being. Just as Smith taught, the Theurgists believed in the fully embodied soul , fully descended into the matter of flesh, and through performing Theurgic rights it was the body that was the gateway to the exaltation of the human spirit.
“Theurgy, as it appears in the ancient evidence, attempts to bring the divine and mortal together, uniting the divine power with the human worshiper. This process of unification involves connecting elements of the cosmos at every level of being, from the lowest dregs of inanimate matter through the animal and human living creatures and up to the various kinds of divinities, including the very highest”.
Radcliffe Edmonds the 3rd, The Illuminations of Theurgy: Philosophy and Magic
“First God and King, God and principle of god, who derived self-begotten as a monad from the one… it is from this god, the father of essence, and principle of intelligences, that matter is created”.
Iamblichus
“lamblichus’s portrayal of matter here is clearly positive …in the Iambhlican world sensible matter represented no subtraction of intelligible power because it was derived directly from the highest intelligible being, the aoristas duas (forms of Plato)… To be in the body in a divine manner was to be out of the body i.e., (free of the material restraints), and lamblichus maintained that this paradox was integral to every Theurgic experience”.
“Without the goodness of a material world connected to the gods, lamblichus, as a Platonist, could not have encouraged rituals that invoke the powers of the physical cosmos. If matter was the cause of evil and human suffering as many argued, a Platonic theurgy would have been inconceivable… Using Neopythagorean theories, which he presented as the "old ways" of the Egyptians, lamblichus argued that matter derived from a divine principle and that the physical cosmos was directly generated by the gods”.
“… if the soul does not undergo a complete change in embodiment, and if it does not, in fact, truly become embodied, then the manifestation of the divine as kosmos would have little or no role in the soul's paideia… In effect, the doctrine of the undescended soul split the cosmos into two opposed worlds, and if the physical world was upside down, and not the soul, then the performance of sacrifices and rituals to assimilate oneself to its orders would be worse than useless; they would be positivity harmful”.
Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus
The Iamblican Platonic Theurgy incorporated many of the mystery traditions of Egypt. Within their temples was taught a Platonic liturgy blended with Egyptian principles. In the 1st Century and moving forward to Iamblichus’s time in the 3rd Century this was a thriving system of belief, termed today as Hermeticism. This is the same Hermetic liturgy that was referenced in its roots by Lance S. Owens article, “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah”. Here you have a quote from their scripture that echoes these Smith and Iamblican principles of the material world being immortal and eternal.
“And of the matter stored beneath it, the Father made of it a universal body, and packing it together made it spherical, wrapping it round the life a sphere which is immortal in itself, and that doth make materiality eternal.”
CORPUS HERMETICUM VIII. (IX.)
Besides the fact that these ideas originated in Platonism to begin with, there is one critical difference between Smith’s borrowed monistic vision of the material and spiritual worlds being “one” and that of Iamblichus. The exaltation, the perfection of the seeker, the devotee, was accomplished through Theurgic rights in the here and now. When Smith speaks of creating a Universe, what he delivered was a very critical concept that through Mormonism is simply misunderstood. We are a Cosmos, our spiritual mission, towards an exaltation, was to align ourselves with the Dēmiurgós, the creator of the Universe and perform our own personal “demiurgy”, aligned with the Divine Will, here, now, while we are alive.
This brings us to the second doctrine of the Mormons I want to make a point of. Even as a practicing Mormon, this idea of performing your own personal “demiurgy”, aligned with the will of the Creator of the Universe, is very possible. This is due to another concept borrowed by Smith from Platonism and one also found in Hindu philosophy concerning the role that the Dēmiurgós played. Smith gave this role to Jehovah, as the creator of the Universe, saying the exact thing that Iamblichus stated of his nature to that of the Dēmiurgós and Hindus give to the role of Brahma, the creator of worlds.
“The God Dēmiurgós, is not the creator of matter, but when he receives it, as eternal, he molds it into forms and organizes it according to numerical ratios.”
Iamblichus
The very same concept was borrowed by Smith from Platonism through Kabbalistic predicates. The Mormons say that Jehova fashioned and created the Universe, just as the Platonists say of the Dēmiurgós. It is possible that this concept was borrowed by Smith from the Christian Gnostics, as they also equated the Dēmiurgós with Jehova, but Smith’s definitions are closer to that of Iamblichus. Mormons say that matter was already created, but not uniform, and that Jehova used it to fashion the world, just exactly, as you can see from the quote above, Iamblichus says of the Dēmiurgós. Just as Jehova, the Dēmiurgós was an emanation of the “One”, sent to create the worlds.
“The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence, or ever ‘the morning stars sang together’ for joy; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ‘now.’”
Joseph Smith - History of the Church, 4:597
This concept of the past, present and future being in one eternal “now” is the very heart of the School of Our Divine Infinite Being’s Theurgic rites. We unite with the Dēmiurgós, and become an agent of his Divine Will. In doing so we are raised up to the realm of the Gods, in this case, as a Mormon, united with Jehova, the Creator of the Universe, where we experience the past, present and the future, reaching ever higher unity as we progress through life. This occurs here and now, through Theurgic ritual, and living by the will of the Creator. See this comment on the essence of Theurgic Divination written by the scholar Gregory Shaw.
“The foreknowledge (prognosis) given in divination was not knowledge of particular events. It was, rather, an immediate knowing, “possessing a primary way (protos), things that happen serially in time. “Like the noēsis of the gods, this primary knowing was unreflected and therefore was not “knowledge” in a discursive sense. It lifted the soul from a particular knowing to the level of the gods where all events, past and future, were simultaneously contained. Theurgic prognosis was literally a pro + gnosis, an ascent to the archē of knowing and thus to that which precedes knowing. Yet as the archē of knowledge, prognōsis contained all its species, so the information received in divination, although accurate, was merely incidental to the soul’s ascent to the archē.”
Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus
A final but very important word - on Demonic
Powers and Mormonism
One subject that must be addressed with the LDS and their defectors is more readily covered in our Central Doctrine concerning demons and experience. I want to make a few points here and then direct the aspirant to our Central Doctrine for their full exposition. A fairly common theme, and one that Mormons seem to engage potentially just a bit less than the Catholics themselves, is the terror and dealings with disembodied demonic entities . Much like the exorcism of the Catholic Church, Mormons, through the power of the priesthood, dispel demons, and more often than outsiders realize. If you have been within a Mormon family like I was, you may even have personal stories. I have a few, my father being the exorcist himself, and I personally dealt with occurrences in my personal environment that, at the time, I was convinced were evil demonic forces.
We teach the seeker that these disembodied spirits are a distortion of the true psychodynamic experience, that very well may be evidenced in the environment, but are a condition of an inverted disconnected soul. This is not a light evaluation, but one that has ancient roots in the original practices of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, the father of Theurgy. In our Central Doctrine we address this aspect of experience and for someone of LDS background, one that would wish to continue their spiritual evolution, coming to terms with these forces are of the highest necessity. The fear of sinister, powerful and monstrous demonic forces are a figment of a shadow imagination that must be dispelled if one is to embrace the realms of Theurgic rights . Theurgy is the working with divine archetypes and their conscious agency. And this means their spiritual existence, which in finality, is the working with spirits. This realm of pluralistic wonder remains closed to those that fear some dark force ready to annihilate their existence, leaping from the dark corner of the room. Please take the time to read through our Central Doctrine, and let us give you some history and relevant information on this subject of demonic forces. As you will read, the Christian and Hebrew doctrines were riddled with these ideas, as everyone knows, all the way to the grand demon himself, the Devil. This was carried through both standard Christianity and the occult practices of Europe alike and affected Joseph Smith and the LDS Church just as the rest from all sides of the accepted spiritual sciences of the time. When we go back to Greece, before the destruction of the Pagan world of practice, the daimōnic told a very different story.
