Mysteries of the King Follett Discourse

  

 
There are many estimations of Joseph Smith Junior, many of them unflattering, to say the least. Mormonism provokes extreme opinions, most of them hostile. The present author recalls characterizing the Latter Day Saints as a Christian sect to classes in Religious Studies years ago: invariably there would be students – Christians – who took great exception to this and were keen to denounce Mormonism not just as a heresy but as being entirely outside the Christian religion, properly defined, altogether.


There is some cogency to this, because the Latter Day Saints movement is indeed outside of the broadest definitions of Christian orthodoxy, specifically the Nicene Creed, but objections to Mormonism are often more visceral than theological, more irrational than reasoned. This has always been the case. Ever since Joseph Smith Junior – then just a boy – proclaimed his angelic visions amidst the seething ferment of American frontier restorationism in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the movement he founded has met entrenched and very often violent opposition. Early Mormon history is bloody and vexed; a combination of strange heterodoxy, extraordinary fervour and the lawlessness of the wild, wild West.

 

It can be difficult, therefore, to find objective, dispassionate yet sympathetic views on the subject, and most accounts of Prophet Smith are either hagiographical, where they are written by Mormons, or else are solely concerned with portraying him as a charlatan of the worst kind. The Mormons have their own carefully crafted literature, and outside of that there is a veritable industry devoted to exposing Mormonism as a hideous fabrication invented by Smith for his own nefarious purposes. The Book of Mormon – supposedly a revelation delivered to young Smith - receives particular attention from vociferous sceptics. It is hard to find non-LDS accounts and discussion that does not rehearse the same arguments against its authenticity that have been mounted since its first publication in 1830.

 

A welcome and perhaps surprising exception to this hopelessly polarized literature is to be found in the religious writings of the great American literary critic Harold Bloom. Professor Bloom – that great defender of the Occidental Canon – had a deep and penetrating appreciation of the place of the Latter Day Saints in American life, and he regarded Joseph Smith Junior as a remarkable, uniquely American figure. He made one observation about Smith, in particular. He noted that Smith’s sermon known as the King Follett Discourse – a funerary oration, given on April 7, 1844 – was one of the great speeches of American history, a sublime piece of American oratory, and an extraordinary religious document by any estimation. One does not need to be a Mormon to concede this. It may conflict with the common belittling accounts of Smith, but the fact is that, on the evidence of this sermon, he was no average scoundrel: he was clearly a man of eloquence, intelligence and deeply original religious instincts. We might also add that the sermon displays the very esoteric, even occult, roots of Mormonism like few other documents. Regardless of the degree to which mainstream Christians might find it repugnant, Joseph Smith was a man of esoteric spiritual sensibilities. 

 

The person of Elder King Follett is a reminder of just how vicious anti-Mormon sentiment has often been. A close companion of Smith, he was the last of the Mormons leaders who were tried and then freed after the first of the so-called Mormon Wars. At the time, the good people of Missouri had decided to expel the entire Mormon population from the state. The Governor, Boggs, had declared that Mormons – men, women and children – were to be shot on sight. The threat was diffused when Smith and Mormon elders surrendered to the authorities to be tried on charges of treason. The mercurial Smith somehow escaped, but others faced prosecution and were held in custody for a prolonged period. The Elder named King Follett was the last of Smith’s inner circle to be released after Governor Boggs mishandled the case and even alienated anti-Mormons with his persecuting zeal.

 

Meanwhile, Smith and the Saints – stripped of all their property - fled Missouri and, facing great hardship, established themselves in the town of Nauvoo, Illinois. Elder Follett survived the Mormon War but was killed in an accident when constructing a well. His family asked Joseph Smith Junior to speak at the funeral. The funeral was attended by an estimated 20,000 souls. Smith spoke for approximately two hours. His sermon is known as the King Follett Discourse and is one of the most notable of all Mormon documents, even though it is not actually included in the Mormon canon and is regarded, even among Mormons, as controversial. There have been times when the officials of the Church of Latter Day Saints have seemed to disown it, or certainly downplay it, and it has only been acknowledged and discussed openly in more recent times.

 

The textual history of the sermon is well-established, but there are several versions in circulation. It is known that no fewer than four individuals present that day recorded Prophet Smith’s words in writing. These men were: William Clayton, Thomas Bullock, Willard Richards, and Wilford Woodruff. Their written accounts broadly agree, but with a host of interesting variations. Mr Bullock’s account is generally regarded as the best in terms of providing a coherent running text. The others are then compared and contrasted to Bullock’s resulting in different syntheses or ‘amalgations’ that attempt to capture the true flavor of the original sermon. The text of Mr Richards is regarded as the least verbatim and the most sketchy in form. For a public address of that length, and dealing with sometimes obscure theological matters, it is a very well preserved historical document. A version of it was published a few months after the funeral, but the most common synthetic text was made by a Mr Jonathon Grimshaw some eleven years later in 1855. Grimshaw’s text is regarded as standard, but dissenting versions exist, and the shortcomings of the Grimshaw text are widely acknowledged. It is actually a text in flux, and one is free to reconstruct it any way one likes from the four original records.

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The purpose of this post is simply to place before readers this remarkable sermon and, equally, the remarkable scope and tenor of Joseph Smith Junior’s religious thinking. Sceptics, an unforgiving and puritanical breed, might do well to note his intelligence and also the apparent breadth of his knowledge; this might count against the narrative that just fourteen years earlier at the publication of the Book of Mormon, he was, so we are told, an illiterate, uneducated farm hand. Certainly, by the time of the King Follett Discourse he was a learned and articulate man comfortable with subtle and sophisticated ideas. 
 

Where he acquired many of his ideas, though, remains something of a mystery. Many key elements in Mormonism, such as the predilection to build Temples and conduct Temple rites, have no doubt been elaborated from the arcana of Freemasonry. The pioneers of Mormonism were Freemasons. It is not altogether inaccurate to describe Mormonism as a type of Christian Masonry. Elder Follet was a Freemason and was buried in a Masonic grave. Yet the King Follett Discourse suggests deeper sources. Here Smith seems to be familiar with some unknown but clearly Qabbalistic commentary on the Book of Genesis, including analysis of the Hebrew text, centred on the first word of the Torah: beresheith. This line of exegesis is typical of some non-Rabbinical schools of Jewish mysticism, but where Prophet Smith encountered this on the American frontier is uncertain. It has led to speculation as to who might have been his teacher. Some suspect that there must have been an unknown Qabbalist – some shadowy figure in the background - tutoring the Mormon Prophet. 

 

Similarly, some of the most arresting doctrines announced in the sermon – doctrines about which Mormon orthodoxy has since been uncomfortable – seem to have the same provenance. Qabbalistic exegesis, for example, often dwells on the symbolism of the body of God, presenting God the Father (and not just His incarnate Son) as a corporeal being of flesh and blood. Religious people today routinely think of the Judeo-Christian God as a type of Great Spirit, but the wider Abrahamic tradition knows other possibilities. The doctrine that God is corporeal reemerges not only in Jewish mysticism but in Wahhabi Islam, and in some of the perspectives of Shi’ite esotercism as well. It might perhaps have seemed a novel idea to those attending King Follett’s funeral, and it seems both weird and offensive to Trinitarian Christians, but it is actually a very ancient idea. How it became a fixture in the religious cosmos of Prophet Smith, whether through Masonic initiation or some other route, we do not know.

 

Further, and by extension, the notion that man is destined for deification – since God is a physical man, physical men may become gods – is not just something Smith pulled from his seer’s hat; it is a doctrine with a long but muted history in these religions. Somehow it reemerged in an American guise with restorationist vigour, sinking roots into the American soil, in Nauvoo, Ilinois.

 

The full text of the King Follett discourse is readily available online. Below is an abridged version highlighting some of its more doctrinally remarkable features. Professor Bloom was perfectly correct to draw attention to the sermon’s power and eloquence and its rightful place in American English, but more than any other Mormon document it reveals Joseph Smith Junior as a not inconsiderable but controversial figure in the history of Christian esotericism.

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THE KING FOLLETT DISCOURSE (ABRIDGED)

Beloved Saints!

I will call for the attention of this congregation while I address you on the subject of the dead. The decease of our beloved brother, Elder King Follett, who was crushed in a well by the falling of a tub of rock has more immediately led me to this subject. I have been requested to speak by his friends and relatives, but inasmuch as there are a great many in this congregation who live in this city as well as elsewhere, who have lost friends, I feel disposed to speak on the subject in general, and offer you my ideas, so far as I have ability, and so far as I shall be inspired by the Holy Spirit to dwell on this subject…

 

In the first place, I wish to go back to the beginning—to the morn of creation. There is the starting point for us to look, in order to understand and be fully acquainted with the mind, purposes and decrees of the Great Eloheim, who sits in yonder heavens as he did at the creation of the world. It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong we may go wrong, and it will be a hard matter to get right.

 

There are but a very few beings in the world who understand rightly the character of God. The great majority of mankind do not comprehend anything, either that which is past, or that which is to come, as it respects their relationship to God. They do not know, neither do they understand the nature of that relationship; and consequently they know but little above the brute beast, or more than to eat, drink and sleep. This is all man knows about God and His existence, unless it is given by the inspiration of the Almighty.

 

If a man learns nothing more than to eat, drink and sleep, and does not comprehend any of the designs of God. A beast comprehends the same things. It eats, drinks, sleeps, and knows nothing more about God; yet it knows as much as we, unless we are able to comprehend by the inspiration of Almighty God. If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves. I want to go back to the beginning, and so lift your minds into more lofty spheres and a more exalted understanding than to what the human mind generally aspires.

 

I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own hearts, what kind of a being God is? Ask yourselves; turn your thoughts into your hearts, and say if any of you have seen, heard, or communed with Him? This is a question that may occupy your attention for a long time. I again repeat the question—What kind of being is God? Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen Him, heard Him, or communed with Him? Here is the question that will, peradventure, from this time henceforth occupy your attention. The scriptures inform us that “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3.)

 

If any man does not know God, and inquires what kind of a being He is—if he will search diligently his own heart—if the declaration of Jesus and the apostles be true, he will realize that he has not eternal life; for there can be eternal life on no other principle.

 

My first object is to find out the character of the only wise and true God, and what kind of a being He is; and if I am so fortunate as to be the man to comprehend God, and explain or convey the principles to your hearts, so that the Spirit seals them upon you, then let every man and woman henceforth sit in silence, put their hands on their mouths, and never lift their hands or voices, or say anything against the man of God or the servants of God again. But if I fail to do it, it becomes my duty to renounce all further pretensions to revelations and inspirations, or to be a prophet; and I should be like the rest of the world—a false teacher, be hailed as a friend, and no man would seek my life. But if all religious teachers were honest enough to renounce their pretensions to godliness when their ignorance of the knowledge of God is made manifest, they will all be as badly off as I am, at any rate; and you might just as well take the lives of other false teachers as that of mine. If any man is authorized to take away my life because he thinks and says I am a false teacher, then, upon the same principle, we should be justified in taking away the life of every false teacher, and where would be the end of blood? And who would not be the sufferer?

 

But meddle not with any man for his religion: all governments ought to permit every man to enjoy his religion unmolested. No man is authorized to take away life in consequence of difference of religion, which all laws and governments ought to tolerate and protect, right or wrong. Every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a false prophet, as well as a true prophet. If I show, verily, that I have the truth of God, and show that ninety-nine out of every hundred professing religious ministers are false teachers, having no authority, while they pretend to hold the keys of God’s kingdom on earth, and was to kill them because they are false teachers, it would deluge the whole world with blood…

 

 

I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man.

 

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.

 

In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

 

These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.

Eternal Life to Know God and Jesus Christ…

 

 

These are the first principles of consolation. How consoling to the mourners when they are called to part with a husband, wife, father, mother, child, or dear relative, to know that, although the earthly tabernacle is laid down and dissolved, they shall rise again to dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory, not to sorrow, suffer, or die any more, but they shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. What is it? To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a god, and ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before. What did Jesus do? Why, I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds came rolling into existence. My Father worked out His kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same; and when I get my kingdom, I shall present it to My Father, so that He may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt Him in glory. He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take His place, and thereby become exalted myself. So that Jesus treads in the tracks of His Father, and inherits what God did before; and God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of all His children…

 

When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel—you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It is not all to be comprehended in this world; it will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave. I suppose I am not allowed to go into an investigation of anything that is not contained in the Bible. If I do, I think there are so many over-wise men here that they would cry “treason” and put me to death. So I will go to the old Bible and turn commentator today.

 

I shall comment on the very first Hebrew word in the Bible; I will make a comment on the very first sentence of the history of creation in the Bible—Berosheit. I want to analyze the word. Baith—in, by, through, and everything else. Rosh—the head, Sheit—grammatical termination. When the inspired man wrote it, he did not put the baith there. An old Jew without any authority added the word; he thought it too bad to begin to talk about the head! It read first, “The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.” That is the true meaning of the words. Baurau signifies to bring forth. If you do not believe it, you do not believe the learned man of God. Learned men can teach you no more than what I have told you. Thus the head God brought forth the Gods in the grand council.

 

I will transpose and simplify it in the English language. Oh, ye lawyers, ye doctors, and ye priests, who have persecuted me, I want to let you know that the Holy Ghost knows something as well as you do. The head God called together the Gods and sat in grand council to bring forth the world. The grand councilors sat at the head in yonder heavens and contemplated the creation of the worlds which were created at the time. When I say doctors and lawyers, I mean the doctors and lawyers of the scriptures. I have done so hitherto without explanation, to let the lawyers flutter and everybody laugh at them. Some learned doctors might take a notion to say the scriptures say thus and so; and we must believe the scriptures; they are not to be altered. But I am going to show you an error in them.

 

 

 

In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted [prepared] a plan to create the world and people it. When we begin to learn this way, we begin to learn the only true God, and what kind of a being we have got to worship. Having a knowledge of God, we begin to know how to approach Him, and how to ask so as to receive an answer.

 

When we understand the character of God, and know how to come to Him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us, and to tell us all about it. When we are ready to come to him, he is ready to come to us.

 

Now, I ask all who hear me, why the learned men who are preaching salvation, say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing? The reason is, that they are unlearned in the things of God, and have not the gift of the Holy Ghost; they account it blasphemy in any one to contradict their idea. If you tell them that God made the world out of something, they will call you a fool. But I am learned, and know more than all the world put together. The Holy Ghost does, anyhow, and he is within me, and comprehends more than all the world; and I will associate myself with him.

 

 

You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, “Doesn’t the Bible say he created the world?” And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end.

 

I have another subject to dwell upon, which is calculated to exalt man; but it is impossible for me to say much on this subject. I shall therefore just touch upon it, for time will not permit me to say all. It is associated with the subject of the resurrection of the dead—namely, the soul—the mind of man —the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so; and if you don’t believe me, it will not make the truth without effect. I will make a man appear a fool before I get through; if he does not believe it. I am going to tell of things more noble.

 

We say that God Himself is a self-existing being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. God made a tabernacle and put a spirit into it, and it became a living soul. (Refers to the Bible.) How does it read in the Hebrew? It does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says, “God made man out of the earth and put into him Adam’s spirit, and so became a living body.”

 

The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself. I know that my testimony is true; hence, when I talk to these mourners, what have they lost? Their relatives and friends are only separated from their bodies for a short season: their spirits which existed with God have left the tabernacle of clay only for a little moment, as it were; and they now exist in a place where they converse together the same as we do on the earth.

 

I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal with our Father in heaven.

 

I want to reason more on the spirit of man; for I am dwelling on the body and spirit of man—on the subject of the dead. I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it had no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man. As the Lord liveth, if it had a beginning, it will have an end. All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation, who say that the spirit of man had a beginning, prove that it must have an end; and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the housetops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.

 

Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age and there is no creation about it. All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement.

 

The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with Himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits.

 

This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you. They are given to me by the revelations of Jesus Christ; and I know that when I tell you these words of eternal life as they are given to me, you taste them, and I know that you believe them. You say honey is sweet, and so do I. I can also taste the spirit of eternal life. I know that it is good; and when I tell you of these things which were given me by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you are bound to receive them as sweet, and rejoice more and more…

 

 

I want to talk more of the relation of man to God. I will open your eyes in relation to the dead. All things whatsoever God in his infinite wisdom has seen fit and proper to reveal to us, while we are dwelling in mortality, in regard to our mortal bodies, are revealed to us in the abstract, and independent of affinity of this mortal tabernacle, but are revealed to our spirits precisely as though we had no bodies at all; and those revelations which will save our spirits will save our bodies. God reveals them to us in view of no eternal dissolution of the body, or tabernacle. Hence the responsibility, the awful responsibility, that rests upon us in relation to our dead; for all the spirits who have not obeyed the Gospel in the flesh must either obey it in the spirit or be damned. Solemn thought!—dreadful thought! Is there nothing to be done?—no preparation—no salvation for our fathers and friends who have died without having had the opportunity to obey the decrees of the Son of Man? Would to God that I had forty days and nights in which to tell you all! I would let you know that I am not a “fallen prophet.”

 

What promises are made in relation to the subject of the salvation of the dead? and what kind of characters are those who can be saved, although their bodies are mouldering and decaying in the grave? When His commandments teach us, it is in view of eternity; for we are looked upon by God as though we were in eternity; God dwells in eternity, and does not view things as we do.

 

The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. The apostle says, “They without us cannot be made perfect”; for it is necessary that the sealing power should be in our hands to seal our children and our dead for the fulness of the dispensation of times—a dispensation to meet the promises made by Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world for the salvation of man…

 

 

I have a declaration to make as to the provisions which God hath made to suit the conditions of man—made from before the foundation of the world. What has Jesus said? All sins, and all blasphemies, and every transgression, except one, that man can be guilty of, may be forgiven; and there is a salvation for all men, either in this world or the world to come, who have not committed the unpardonable sin, there being a provision either in this world or the world of spirits. Hence God hath made a provision that every spirit in the eternal world can be ferreted out and saved unless he has committed that unpardonable sin which cannot be remitted to him either in this world or the world of spirits. God has wrought out a salvation for all men, unless they have committed a certain sin; and every man who has a friend in the eternal world can save him, unless he has committed the unpardonable sin. And so you can see how far you can be a savior.

 

A man cannot commit the unpardonable sin after the dissolution of the body, and there is a way possible for escape. Knowledge saves a man; and in the world of spirits no man can be exalted but by knowledge. So long as a man will not give heed to the commandments, he must abide without salvation. If a man has knowledge, he can be saved; although, if he has been guilty of great sins, he will be punished for them. But when he consents to obey the gospel, whether here or in the world of spirits, he is saved.

 

A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man…

 

 

All sins shall be forgiven, except the sin against the Holy Ghost; for Jesus will save all except the sons of perdition. What must a man do to commit the unpardonable sin? He must receive the Holy Ghost, have the heavens opened unto him, and know God, and then sin against him. After a man has sinned against the Holy Ghost, there is no repentance for him. He has got to say that the sun does not shine while he sees it; he has got to deny Jesus Christ when the heavens have been opened unto him, and to deny the plan of salvation with his eyes open to the truth of it; and from that time he begins to be an enemy. This is the case with many apostates of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

When a man begins to be an enemy to this work, he hunts me, he seeks to kill me, and never ceases to thirst for my blood. He gets the spirit of the devil—the same spirit that sins against the Holy Ghost. You cannot save such persons; you cannot bring them to repentance; they make open war, like the devil, and awful is the consequence.

 

I advise all of you to be careful what you do, or you may by-and-by find out that you have been deceived. Stay yourselves; do not give way; don’t make any hasty moves, you may be saved. If a spirit of bitterness is in you, don’t be in haste. You may say, that man is a sinner. Well, if he repents, he shall be forgiven. Be cautious: await. When you find a spirit that wants bloodshed,—murder, the same is not of God, but is of the devil. Out of the abundance of the heart of man the mouth speaketh.

 

The best men bring forth the best works. The man who tells you words of life is the man who can save you. I warn you against all evil characters who sin against the Holy Ghost; for there is no redemption for them in this world nor in the world to come.

 

I could go back and trace every object of interest concerning the relationship of man to God, if I had time. I can enter into the mysteries; I can enter largely into the eternal worlds; for Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2.)

You mourners have occasion to rejoice, speaking of the death of Elder King Follett; for your husband and father is gone to wait until the resurrection of the dead—until the perfection of the remainder; for at the resurrection your friend will rise in perfect felicity and go to celestial glory, while many must wait myriads of years before they can receive the like blessings; and your expectations and hopes are far above what man can conceive; for why has God revealed it to us?

 

 

I have intended my remarks for all, both rich and poor, bond and free, great and small. I have no enmity against any man. I love you all; but I hate some of your deeds. I am your best friend, and if persons miss their mark it is their own fault. If I reprove a man, and he hates me, he is a fool; for I love all men, especially these my brethren and sisters.

 

I rejoice in hearing the testimony of my aged friends. You don’t know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don’t blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace.

 

I cannot lie down until all my work is finished. I never think any evil, nor do anything to the harm of my fellow-man. When I am called by the trump of the archangel and weighed in the balance, you will all know me then. I add no more.

God bless you all. Amen.

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As an aside, the present author wants to note that over many years teaching in universities he encountered many Mormon students and without exception they were polite, decent, sincere, honest, diligent, intelligent, open and curious, each of them a testament to the virtuous culture of the Latter Day Saints. 

 

Harper McAlpine Black

 

 

Rix Nicholas - Spirit of the Bush

 Hilda Rix Nicholas, dressed as the 'Spirit of the Bush'

 

Hilda Rix Nicholas – the “Spirit of the Bush” - was a significant Australian orientalist painter. Born in the historic goldmining city of Ballarat in 1881, she traveled to Europe and then to Tangier and Morocco in 1912. Later exhibiting her work in Paris, was made of member of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

 

One would think that these are solid orientalist credentials, but in our times, of course, she is politically problematic. In this age of post-colonial identity politics there is the desire to promote and celebrate her, just for being a woman, but then… oh dear, she was involved in the dastardly colonialist ‘Othering’ of oppressed victims of Empire. How can this incongruity be reconciled? 

 

This is where an army of sociologists enter the scene and explain that, actually, she was not an orientalist at all – not really. Rather, she was a “counter-orientalist” posing as an orientalist, and rather than being instances of orientalist exploitation her work actually undermines orientalist ideology in subtle ways and is therefore safe to hang in public galleries.

 

This is the same army of sociologists who move in to rehabilitate non-European artists who – inexplicably - also have every appearance of being orientalists involved in the orientalist project. As oppressed minorities, this cannot possibly be correct, and so the scholars must explain how these orientalists were not orientalists at all. Not really.

 

 

We live in an age when artists of the past are either celebrated, denigrated or just ignored according to these extraneous criteria. This sort of historical puritanism is now at pandemic proportions. It is really a way of denigrating the past by judging it according to our own perceived moral superiority. Once whole swathes of the past have been exposed as morally repugnant we are relieved of any duty to study or appreciate them with sympathy and understanding ever again.

 

Critics must work especially hard to rescue women artists from the ethical ignomy of the orientalist project. Readers are invited to investigate this themselves. Select any female orientalist artist and witness the contortions academics, journalists and people in the art establishment go through to prove that they – the women artists – were actually “counter-orientalists” whose work subverted the evil colonialist narrative. This is not true of their husbands, teachers or companions: just the women. There is a long list of supposed “counter-orientalist” female artists who, somehow, just by virtue of being female – and despite every appearance to the contrary - were able to see through the cunning disguises of imperialist oppression, reemerging today as unsung post-colonial feminist heroines.

 

This is rife. Visit any art museum and scan the introductory literature prepared for tourists and visitors. It will explain, following the obligatory quote from Edward Said, how this or that female orientalist was not really an orientalist but was in fact subtly undermining colonialist ideology. This then clears the path to exalt her as a woman whose work has been neglected by a male-dominated art world. This rehabilitation literature is a genre in itself.

 

But in fact, there is not the slightest evidence that Hilda Rix Nocholas was anything but an Australian orientalist painter who worked within, and subscribed to, the norms of orientalist art. There are, of course, always good and bad orientalist artists, and other legitimate distinctions to be made, but the distinction between evil (i.e. ‘real’) orientalists and pretend ones (counter-orientalists) is entirely spurious. Hilda Rix Nicholas was a very good orientalist artist, working in a conservative style, and that fact requires no apology.

 

It is a pity that the female orientalist painters are subject to this grubby intellectual revisionism. It makes it hard for us to appreciate them in their context, and worse, it means we tend to see them and their work through a political lens that distorts our view in almost pervasive ways. To consider orientalist art from outside of that prevailing critical framework now requires a conscious disengagement from nearly everything being taught and propagated in our cultural institutions.

 

Given this, the humble and undorned purpose of this current page is to present this Australian woman’s work without any mealy-mouthed post-colonial apologia. She was an orientalist. And also a painter of Australian life. And a good one. There is no discernible difference between the great sensitivity with which she painted subjects in Tangier and the same sensitivity with which she painted her Australian subjects. It is the same sensitivity we find in so many orientalist painters, men and women. We do not need to rescue them from infamy or twist and turn to make them conform to our prejudices. Their work speaks for itself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harper McAlpine Black 

 

 

 

 

The industrial metabolism

A few years ago the author of these pages was sitting in a Chinese tea shop in Malaysia sipping fermented pu’er and discussing the woes of the world with a bright young Russian man. It was the Russian’s view that the single greatest problem civilization faces is not ‘climate change’ or rising sea levels or rogue meteorites or even pandemics from wetmarkets in China, or any of those fashionable doomsday scenarios, but rather a silent, pervasive disease that is already in epidemic proportions but is hardly acknowledged let alone addressed. He had a vested interest in this, and was in Malaysia on related business.

 

He ran a company, he explained, that fitted prosthetic limbs to amputees, and then explained that Malaysia was one place where business was booming. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, Malaysians, like South East Asians in general, are completely reckless on their motorcycles, and every year the number of road fatalities and maimings is rising expedentially. Malaysian motorcyclists lose arms and legs at an alarming rate.

 

But the second reason is far more dramatic. Diabetes. Type Two. The incidence of the disease, especially among ethnic Malays, was, he said, rapidly approaching catastrophic levels. That was the word he used – “catastrophic”. He expected the number of amputations from diabetes to double in Malaysia every few years. The disease was spiraling out of control and there was, he noted, almost no coherent official response to the problem at all. He had all the statistics at hand; frightening, but in terms of his business model, fantastically lucrative.

 

But diabetes, he further explained, is just the half of it. The true disease is much broader and diabetes is only one instance of it. He was an expert on all this. It was his business to be fully apprised about all this. The ailment, he explained, is usually called ‘metabolic syndrome’ and has wide manifestations with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, inflammatory diseases and cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s all part of the same spectrum. It is rampant. Over half of Americans are somewhere on that spectrum with chronic metabolic disorders. The human and economic costs, both currently and projected, are truly astronomical. All modern societies are prone to it, newly modernized societies like Malaysia included, or even especially. It is THE disease, said the Russian, of industrialized modernity.

 

Although, not always so. He knew the history. It is a new plague, in fact, he said. It really only started reaching plague proportions after the Second World War. Incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cognitive decline were relatively uncommon prior to that. It was the same in Russia, he said. People died younger in the old days, certainly, but of different things and for different reasons. He cited the long medical records kept by many prisons in the USA. In the 1890s only 2% of the prison population in Texas was clinically obese. In 1990 it was 36%.

 

By his definition ‘metabolic syndrome’ was a chronic disruption of the metabolic system and especially the hormones that run the whole thing. It’s a problem with the body's fuel system. Metabolism is all about how the body uses fuel. In diabetes, he explained, the body can no longer supply fuel to the extremities, the hands and feet, fingers and toes. The only option, in the end, is to chop them off before they go gangrenous. Before that, a broken fuel system is going to have dire consequences throughout the body, heart and brain included.

 

Evidence of metabolic dysfunction – such as irregular insulin levels – can often be seen in young adults or even teenagers or children. It is the beginning of a life long malady that has diabolical consequences.  

 

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The rise of ‘metabolic syndrome’ is perfectly evident in the changing physique of people over the last century. It is striking in old photographs, is it not, how lean and slim everybody appears? Consider the abundant depictions of all manner of people in extant Edwardian photography, for example. For sure, there are older folk who are plump and jolly, but on the whole people appear to carry little weight.

 

More than that, though, if we look closely, their bodies are quite a different shape. Flesh and fat and musculature has an entirely different distribution over the body which makes us see the skelketal structures of the body quite differently. They almost look like different creatures. This is part of the nostalgic aura of photographs from that period, a hundred years ago. They were not only different times with different fashions; it is almost like they were populated by a different type of human being.

 

This is markedly true – and can be measured - in photographs of places like Japan in its early modernity, because the people populating those photographs are notably shorter than in contemporary Japanese society. People have grown taller - on average over six inches (over eight inches in Korea.) The rapid shift from the feudal to the industrial mode dramatically changed the physical structure of people. The whole morphology, the distribution of flesh and fat and muscle has changed. It is not just a matter of weight and height. It is a matter of shape. This is markedly so in Europeans and Americans. There have been dramatic changes in actual morphology. 

 

 

Even slim people today tend to be slim in a different way and have a different physique to the slim people of the past. Even among the lean and healthy today you simply do not encounter the Edwardian physique. This is not just a matter of different cuts and lines in garments either. We can see it very plainly in the abundant nude photography of the period as much as in the clothed.

 

Most often these changes are attributed to changes in diet. Some people want to draw attention to other factors, but the evidence points to diet being the key. The physiology and morphology of people changed post-War due to changes in diet, in the main. While malnutrition, starvation and famine became less common, the rise of metabolic disorders at the same time - industrial diseases - would seem to have the same roots.

 

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The exact cause of metabolic syndrome however, is a matter of vexed debate. Indeed, in many forms it is one of the great debates of our time. The scope of the problem is poorly understood, and its causes and cures are a matter of contention, beyond a consensus that diet is the key. In part, it is surely a matter of quantity. People eat more. They are not subject to the pre-modern plight of having an unreliable food supply. Thus they grow taller and fuller. And if they eat in excess, they grow fat. Simple. The problem is abundance. This is the calorie theory of modern nutrition. Industrial agriculture and mass production has been too successful. There is something to be said for this as an outlook. Prosperity is a curse, or at least it is bittersweet. There’s always a worm in paradise. You conquer famine, but you create an epidemic of diabetes.

 

However, the ingredients, proportions and combinations of foods in the post-War diet have changed markedly as well. The noble but quantity-driven quest to feed the starving masses and eliminate famines inadvertently filled the modern diet with processed industrial foods and denatured pseudo-foods rather than fresh and unprocessed ones. This is where many want to lay most of the blame. But even then, where precisely? Vitamin depletion? Salt? Preservatives? Pesticides? Genetic modification? What part of the industrial process is the problem?

 

These sorts of questions grow in urgency as the scourge of ‘metabolic syndrome’ advances. The approach to it, alas, is piecemeal and chaotic. For a start, we tend to treat obesity, diabetes, heart disease and all the rest as separate diseases rather than as a spectrum. Metabolic syndrome is a slow-moving train wreck. And part of the problem, surely, is the appallingly inadequate state of the science of human nutrition. As someone complained, “They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t tell me if coconut oil is a superfood or a heart poison.” That, actually, is the case. One study says butter is good; another says it will kill you. The nutritional sciences are in a quite shameful state of profound confusion.

 

Consequently, there is a growing crisis of confidence in the established nutritional models and, even further, many of the most basic assumptions of those models. Indeed, the crisis in confidence provoked by this epidemic is well-nigh civilizational in scale. Hence the Russian’s calculation of “catastrophic”. This epidemic has set people to question the very foundations of civilization itself, notably agriculture and the domestication of grains. It is no small crisis. It extends to the heart of things. It provides the context for many significant and especially corrosive and disruptive trends in the contemporary world. It is an agent of revolution and disruption on a fundamental scale.

 

It is certainly true that the so-called SAD diet (Standard American Diet), with guidelines and parameters set by an establishment of scientific experts (such as the American FDA), coincides chronologically with the explosion of these metabolic disorders. There is no escaping the fact that the post-War dietary models have correlated exactly with an epidemic of metabolic diseases. But you know what they say about correlation and causation. Is the paradigm the problem, or is it that people are a bit tardy in following the government’s nutritional guidelines and neglect to eat enough fiber?

 

Particular criticism in recent times has drawn attention to the low-fat fetish that has characterized the standard model since at least the late 1950s. How is it that people in previous eras ate bacon and butter and lard and ice cream but were slim with low incidence of metabolic problems? Fat is fuel. If metabolic disorders are fuel problems, one notable change is that one type of human fuel, fat, has been systematically demonized and often eliminated from foods. Belatedly, there is recognition now that there may be ‘good fats’ and that they may perhaps be important.

 

And perhaps it is significant that a whole new range of fats in the form of cooking oils have become ubiquitous? Blended vegetable oil – an industrial confection – has replaced butter and other traditional fats. It must now be fifty or sixty years since commercial cakes and pies and confections and other prepared foods were made with butter. Soy oil. Canola. Sunflower oil. These are new. They leaked through the whole food chain while the medical and public health authorities demonized the fats our ancestors ate. There is a growing body of opinion suspecting that this was a colossal mistake.

 

The connection between dietary fats and obesity, however, remains a stubborn orthodoxy. Yet, on the evidence, the war on fat has been as ineffective and as counter-productive as the war on drugs throughout much the same period. The war on fat, we should remember, was not aimed at reducing obesity. It is unfortunate that the word ‘fat’ is used for a macronutrient and as a synonym for being overweight. There was no obesity epidemic at the time the war on fat began. It was a plank of the cholesterol theory that took hold after President Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955. People grew fat after low-fat became the norm.

 

Fuels being the issue, this has led some people – in fact a whole subculture of people – to reexamine the entire question of human nutritional fuels, which is to say the relationship between fats and carbohydrates. A heterodoxy has emerged. This proposes that – exactly contrary the standard model – the problem is not fats; rather the problem is carbohydrates, and the root cause of metabolic syndrome are the modern patterns of carbohydrate consumption. Low-fat led to high sugar. Certainly, by definition, diabetes is a disease of compromised carbohydrate metabolism. That is exactly what it is. It is like the body has become allergic to carbohydrates.

 

Yet the human body is very good at using carbohydrates as fuel. We have a very good system for turning starches into fuels. We could never have survived or thrived as a species without it. Indeed, civilization itself has only been possible because of the domestication of grains and starches which have provided the staples necessary to sustain larger populations and more complex societies. It is a serious problem if, for some reason, something is compromising our capacity to use such a basic and fundamental food source.

 

The official line is that we do not know what causes type 2 diabetes. The plainest explanation – good enough for a layman – is that the body’s carbohydrate mechanism becomes worn out, or broken, or compromised, by continual misuse. The most likely pattern of misuse is a combination of persistent snacking on sugary or high-starch foods, along with sedentary habits. A sure recipe for type 2 diabetes is a high-carb diet of relentless snacking and not much exercise. In Malaysia, the Malays left their traditional life in the kampungs and within barely two generations took up a sedentary urban life snacking on white rice and sugar ten times a day. The human body’s wonderful mechanism for using carbs – the very adaptation allowing us to be grain eaters - is broken. In a very real sense, a man who cannot eat carbs is estranged from the foundations of civilization.

 

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The counter views in this often reach for radical conclusions. This underpins a entire swathe of cultural, political and philosophical manifestations swirling amidst the chaos of our times. It is now influencing our entire culture. The crazed quest for ‘healthy alternatives’ and the rapid turnover of fad diets, for example, are symptoms of the chaos. Your soy latte with stevia is an artifact of the contemporary metabolic syndrome epidemic and responses to it.

 

So too are radicalized perspectives that propose, for example, that the whole of human civilization has been one huge disaster. In such a view, agriculture was a crime against nature. Society was a crime of man against man, and more especially woman. And the domestication of grains was violence against human biology, the beginning of the end – an end that is presently upon us. This is the post-humanist mindset: for most of human history we have been fundamentally wrong, if indeed we are not fundamentally and inescapably vermin upon the face of the long-suffering Earth. There is a tidal wave of metabolical disorders approaching and these are the types of ideas that will thrive in that context.

 

The low-carb alternative is the inevitable outcome of these issues. Contra-orthodoxy, it has occurred to some people that, while the body typically runs on carbohydrates, it need not. It can run on fats. If starches and sugars are in short supply, the body can use fats as its principle fuel. We have two fuel systems. If one fails, we can switch to the other. This is the strategy of the so-called ‘ketogenic’ approach, and often the so-called ‘paleo’ and 'carnivore' approach as well. The body can turn fats into “ketones” and use them as fuel instead of glucose. In fact, as adherents will tell you, there are some biological advantages to doing so, and it was arguably the ‘normal’ fuel regime of human beings as hunter gatherers, prior to the domestication of grains. Our ancestors sought out nutrient-dense foods. Why carry a bag of rice when you can carry an egg? For Australian aborigines the most prized part of the kangaroo was the fat in the tail. The low-fat orthodoxy has divorced us from all of these ancestral habits.

 

Again, we should note that these trends are best viewed as part of a bigger picture. The romanticization of hunter-gatherers is the inverse side of civilizational self-loathing. This is everywhere nowadays, not least throughout our educational institutions. In this narrative, people once lived in rosy health in harmony with themselves and nature; then civilization destroyed it all. Everything from permaculture to paleo is driven by this posture: mankind took a wrong turn somewhere around 12,000 BC, (for the raw food enthusiasts it was even earlier – we ruined everything when we domesticated fire!) and the only solution to the ills of modernity is a radical primitivism.

 

The truth of it, though, is that – grains or tubers – human beings like carbohydrates and have actively preferred them throughout history. The only natural low-carb high-fat diets are in high altitude or high latitude communities. Eskimos eat fat. It is all they have. People who live on the Tibetan plateau eat fat. It is the perfect – and only possible – fuel system they have. And it works well, and it has certain benefits. The cognitive benefits are notable. When the brain is fueled by ketones rather than glucose there is a marked increase in mental clarity. The brain likes the steadiness of ketones. Muscles, on the other hand, prefer the quick and volatile carbohydrates. A high altitude life built on rancid yak butter might be good for quiet contemplation but life down on the grain-growing plains requires a fuel system that is better suited to the biological energy needs of the builders of cities.

 

That, in fact, is what “going keto” is all about. Having trashed our carbohydrate metabolism to a whimper by living in decadent sugar-laden prosperity down on the plains, some people decide to go on a retreat up into the mountains for a while, and live on fat and berries, and there are others who resettle there for good. You can simulate this high-altitude experience by restricting carbohydrates to about five per cent of your daily fuel intake, either by food selection or by fasting. This pushes the body into ketosis. It will run happily on fats instead. Ketosis is a drastic but effective strategy at any stage in the progression of metabolic syndrome, and it allows the over-taxed carb-system time to mend, but it amounts – in a sense - to opting out of all the established dietary norms and other allegiances of human civilization.

 

Diabetic cookery, 1922. Prior to the invention of synthetic insulin and the standard diabetes drug Metformin (synthesized from the plant Galega officinalis), the standard diet for diabetics was low in carbohydrates and high in fats - more or less identical to the contemporary "ketogenic" diet (but the exact opposite to what medical orthodoxy continues to recommend.) The ketogenic strategy to arrest metabolic syndrome is really a return to practices prior to the intervention of modern pharmaceutical therapies. Old cookbooks invariably had a chapter on diabetic cookery and reveal the history of competing models of human nutrition and competing models of how to treat the illness.

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As it happens, there is a sacred and traditional perspective that addresses these issues. In fact, properly considered, all the great spiritual traditions, and their cosmological sciences, including traditional medicines, give an account of these things. The domestication of grains was not done unintelligently or without an awareness of its shortcomings and dangers. Every tradition has devices to keep the human fuel system intact, whether by fasts or festive foods. Grains were regarded as sacred, but no one was ever stupid enough to demonize fats. Corn is sacred to Demeter, but no one ever said the olives of Athena have too many calories. It is instructive to consider traditional societies in terms of how they sanctify and thereby regulate and protect the human fuel system. It is the subject of countless myths, as well as folk-tales and superstitions.

 

Taoism is interesting. China and rice are synonymous, and grains were domesticated there at a very early stage. Yet the ancient and indigenous spirituality of the land, Taoism, regards grains as a necessary evil. Grains “feed the three worms” that lead to human corruption. Instead, Taoism valorizes an earlier and more natural order before grain-eating became the norm. In Taoist asceticism, a retreat into nature and natural places – mountain tops especially – to adopt a life without grains is foundational. It is sometimes presented as a journey to the land of the pole star too. It represents a return to the primordial state. Much of Taoist spirituality – extended into Chinese medicine - in fact consists in the prolongation of that state.

 

In this perspective, though, we are all weaklings now. We hide it with our mighty machines. Very few are up for the low-carb monkish life in the mountains, while down on the plains mankind’s great carbohydrate adventure becomes more problematic and compromised and starts to come unraveled. Modernity lets slip all the traditional safeguards, checks and balances. Science fumbles from one theory to another. A great epoch was built on grains, but the enormous vitality of that move could not last forever. Grain-eating was always a precarious undertaking, and could only be done with prudence. But men aren’t prudent for long. Whatever other correlations we suspect might be causes, modern "dis- ease" (let's include depression and anxiety in this spectrum) correspond with modernity's neglect of and contempt for all the traditional wisdom that sustained us in the past. We pay the price for that hubris.

 

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The upshot of this is that there are very few things as crucial to us as our capacity to use carbohydrates as fuels; but that is exactly what has been compromised. It represents a crisis of extraordinary proportions. Industrial patterns of carbohydrate consummation are undermining our very capacity to use carbohydrates as our primary fuel. The consequences of that are historic and unfathomable.


Harper McAlpine Black