I will be arguing in this blog series that Nauvoo Era Mormonism (beginning in the 1840s) represents an emerging philosophical and "spiritual" stage of development in Mormonism, as LDS theology moved beyond its more Pauline-Augustinian roots with many body-despising ideas, and instead in the 1840s moved towards a more Germanic/Indo-European spiritual-mythos that affirmed earthly bodily life. Since the Indo-European spirituality proceeds Christianity, it is considered "pagan." Because anything not considered "New Testament Christianity" or (part of the Abrahamic faith traditions) is most often considered "pagan" in how we use the word in common speech. But given the negative connotation of the word "pagan" and the problematic use of the term pagan bringing with it everything from Wicca to New Ageism (which I do not consider Indo-European), I will instead use the better term Indo-European. For "pagan" is to broad a term and means too many things that I would not and I am not ascribing to Mormonism. The term Indo-European is thus a better term. On my other site here I describe Indo-European spirituality as basically Solar-Pantheonism.
Just as Nietzsche was not prescribing a creed, an only right way of life, nor an ethical dogma, but was offering his way, his perspective and ideas for future philosophers and ethicists to explore; in the same way, I do not see Joseph Smith's theological philosophy as an endpoint or static dogma. I see Joseph Smith as a kind of "higher man," someone who grew up in Augustinian Protestant culture and is trying to break out of it just like Nietzsche did. Joseph, like Nietzsche, is creating and exploring: which is obvious to anyone who has studied the development of LDS theology and how much later systemizing took place by James Talmage after 1900 in order to form a cohesive LDS dogma.
The Personality and Bodily Nature of the Philosopher and Theologian
After studying biblical scholarship for years what has become clear to me is that a large portion of the New Testament is saturated in Pauline ideology: that is the ideas and perspectives therein have been tainted by the point of view of primarily the apostle Paul. I greatly admire the Apostle Paul in some respects but I also am not afraid to be critical of the problematic elements of his ideology. I am not alone in this and even many Mormon and Protestant Scholars have done so as well.
I have found that many biblical scholars who have analyzed the personality and psychology of the Apostle Paul point out that he likely very much sought to escape his body and this life due to his apocalyptic end-of-days mindset and demonophobia, which led him to despise the bodily instincts and promote the ideals of lifelong celibacy and voluntarily martyrdom (as covered by the biblical scholar Paul Middleton). So I do not think one can separate Paul's religious ideology from his personality and physiology: which from a more Nietzscheanish perspective was problematic to say the least. In short, you cannot separate Paul's abnormal psychology (by modern standards), and his body denying martyr-centric heritage and ideology which saturated everything he wrote or dictated to his describes.
If the Apostle Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, Joseph Smith as Prophet of the Restoration is in my view a replacement philosophical theologian; correcting for Paul's short apocalyptic shortsightedness and lack of a more body-affirming philosophy of religion. Just as Paul's personality and psychology and Maccabean martyrs' heritage affected his religious ideology, I believe that Joseph Smith's psychology, personality and lineage, also informed his religious philosophy.
According to this site:
[Joseph Smith's] parents were of sturdy New England stock ...
Joseph Smith had descended on his paternal side from Robert Smith, who emigrated from England in the year 1638. ... [His ancestor] Captain Samuel Smith, receiving his military title during service in the militia of Massachusetts. ... [His, grandfather Asael Smith served during] the Revolution [following] the example of his illustrious father and served with the Colonial forces. ... On his maternal side, Joseph Smith was descended from John Mack, who was born in Inverness, Scotland, March 6, 1653. ... [Regarding the maternal grandparents of Joseph Smith] Solomon, son of Ebenezer Mack, was born in Lyme, Conn., Sept. 26, 1735. At the age of twenty-one years he enlisted in the services of his country under the command of Captain Henry, and the regiment of Col. Whiting. ... In 1748 he enlisted under Major Spenser and was engaged in several bloody engagements ... In 1776, Solomon Mack enlisted in the American army. For some time he served in the land forces and later was transferred to the navy. With his two sons, Jason and Stephen, he was engaged in a privateering expedition commanded by Captain Havens. In this service they passed through some thrilling experiences, but escaped without great harm. His service in the war covered a period of about four years. ... His son Stephen moved to Vermont and later to Detroit, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits and was one of the founders of Detroit. During the war of 1812 Stephen again entered the service of his country. He held the commission of a captain at the time of the siege of Detroit and was ordered by his superior officer to surrender, which he boldly refused to do. Breaking his sword across his knee he threw the parts into the lake and said he would not submit to such a disgraceful compromise while the blood of an American ran in his veins. Such is the character of the forbears of Joseph Smith.
According to the articles at this site:
Ugo Perego research – Joseph Smith [was] English or Irish, probably Irish ... Smith family DNA matched very closely with the many descendants of “Niall of the Nine Hostages,” a fifth-century Irish warlord who was the ancestor of the kings of Ireland up to the 10th century. Joseph Smith’s ancestors along his paternal line were not just Irish, but probably related to Irish royalty. ... Joseph Smith Jr., was shown in 2008 to have descended from Irish royalty.
I would argue that Joseph Smith's Irish Indo-European DNA drove him unconsciously to return to the cultural energy of the Hebrew Bible: which unlike the Pauline (and later Augustinian mindset), was more life affirming and pro-body; with a more warrior spirit among the early Hebrews (when Yahweh (God the Father) had a body and a wife or consort).
The Spectrum between the Augustinian and the Dionysian
Just as Nietzsche can be criticized for being too reckless at times in exploring a worldview free of Paulianity and Augustinianism, so too, as Joseph Smith broke away from the monastic pious mentality of the Puritan Protestant culture of his day, he too was reckless at times and many of his actions became either questionable or unethical depending on the historian examining the data. So yes, in the process of exploring and creating early Mormonism, in some ways Joseph Smith went too far in the opposite direction of body-despising piety and too far in the direction of dionysian expression in the 1840s, which some might consider unethical. In this blog I will not be defending every action of Joseph Smith and I do think he went too far in his expression of dionysian energy at times. I'm simply presenting a spectrum between two extremes (puritanical excess in one direction and dionysian excess in the opposite direction) in order to provide a contrast to the puritanical view; as Smith's theological philosophy and practices moved more toward the dionysian by the 1840s. I am not prescribing all of Joseph Smith's behavior in the 1840s by any means. Yet from the perspective of extremes on a spectrum, I find that Joseph Smith's excesses during the practice of "spiritual wifery" was an almost corrective pendulum swing away from the opposite extreme of body despising celibate monasticism and total life denial like with the stylites.
My main working thesis for this blog series is this: what I learned from Dr. Paul Dobransky's masculine instincts psychology and Nietzsche’s philosophy, is that if you deny the bodily instincts and passions you degenerate internally with repression, neuroticism, or scrupulosity; leading to physiological degeneration and Depresculinity. Dr. Paul Dobransky tries to integrate the highest ideals of a civil society with his MindOS diagram system, combining it with the archetypes of the Greek Gods which represent our human masculine and feminine instincts within the rank order of hierarchical Nature, which is built into our human species.
Spirit-Atom-Instinctualism
In the process of learning about my Germanic and Scandinavian Indo-European DNA, which led me to study Norse mythology and contemplating the polytheistic Gods of my Swedish ancestors, I realized that they utilized their mythical pantheon of Gods as an unconscious tool belt for channeling their own masculine and feminine instincts. So that just as Dr. Paul Dobransky learned that the mythical archetypes of the Greek Gods are a useful tool belt, I realized that the Norse Gods provided a similar function. I realized that my own ancestors did not deny the bodily instincts and that just like Dr. Dobransky's utilization of the Greek Gods to represent our unconscious instincts, the Norse Gods provided the same utility for my ancestors. Did this affirmation of the instinctual body through the archetypes of the Norse Gods, lead to the healthy strength and vitality of Germanic and Nordic People? I think so.
Similarly, Joseph Smith, the Pratt Brothers and Orson Hyde did something similar, by producing what I call a theology of spirit-atoms instinctualism. Just like the pro-Nature spirituality of my Norse ancestors, Mormonism posits that all earthly matter is refined “spirit matter,” in other words everything is composed of divine-atoms within atoms. So Nature is not separate from the nature of the Mormon Gods as earthly nature and God's nature are intertwined; which makes the natural world holy and the flesh too is holy. This is the radical philosophy of Nauvoo Era Mormonism. Instead of denying the instincts of the body, Joseph Smith rejected the Nicene Creed that depicts a monotheistic God as a Platonic Form without bodily parts or passions. This concept of a bodiless Form caused people to despise their own body seeking to live up to the impossible idea of a holy god-concept with no body. This led to mental splitting, of the earth as separate from the skyward Platonic Forms. Joseph Smith corrected for this anti-body error by restoring the original ancient Israelite polytheism or henotheism, which today the Christian scholar Michael Heiser acknowledges comes close to acknowledging was the original theology of the Hebrew Bible. Joseph Smith speaks of the Gods plural in the Book of Abraham chapter 4. He also depicts God the Father with an erect phallus in the Book of Abraham in Figure 7 in Facsimile 2; the image of the figure that Joseph Smith called God the Father here is the Egyptian god Min, representing kingly power, sexual potency and procreation. Joseph Smith also recasts Jesus as a more masculine strong man, who in the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) “waxes strong” and does not teach that one should pluck out their eye living a body despising monastic lifestyle (see my blog post Insights from The Joseph Smith Translation (JST) on Body-Affirming LDS Christianity).
Joseph Smith also depicts Captain Moroni as a mythic heroic figure. Thus, like Dr. Paul’s use of Greek Gods as archetypes and the Norse Gods used by my Swedish ancestors, Joseph Smith did something similar in affirming the bodily instincts through the Gods of Mormonism. So that just as my Norse Viking ancestors were free of body-despising ideas and repressive scrupulosity, Mormonism as a mythopoetic philosophy attempts to do the same thing by redeeming the earthly world through the belief in a God the Father composed of earthly flesh. Thus in my view, Mormonism is Greek Gods and Norse Mythos adjacent, as a kind of gateway theology toward swinging the pendulum away from the anti-body Augustinian mentality and more toward what Nietzsche called free spirits who reconnect with the instinctual body and the natural cycles of the earth as metaphorical Hyperboreans: who are freed from body-despising ideologies and embrace the antifragile nature of the real natural world.
Just as Nietzsche did not have a problem with the Dionysian-inspired Johannine Christian community and the Gospel of John, but rejected the other versions of Pauline Christianity that despised the body and were against the lifeward instincts, Joseph Smith followed a similar trajectory. Joseph Smith, as I see him, was a creative genius seeking to basically mythologize himself out of Augustinianism and Protestant Creedalism, by forming his own body of scripture and a dramatic narrative about body affirming Supercouples breaking free of celibate idealism. In doing so, he was able to radically affirm life in the body. However, while I applaud his efforts to affirm the earth and the body, I don’t think his particular Nauvoo era mythologizing is an end point or final goal in creative philosophizing and myth-making. In other words, Nauvoo Era Mormonism was one mythic method for affirming the body and in my view is not an only true dogma. It was just one way to move beyond Platonism and Augustinianism. For me, it’s not the final truth or “only pathway to heaven.”
<‐- Augustinian "monkishness" --- <•> --- Nauvoo Era Abrahamic Expansionism ‐‐>
I am simply arguing for respecting the pendulum swing away from body-despising Augustinianism and toward the more pro-body life affirming Nauvoo Era Mormonism.
This is not to say that there was nothing good or noble in Augustinian Christianity, nor am I saying there was nothing “bad” or problematic in Nauvoo Era Mormonism and the practice of Abrahamic Expansionism; but I do believe the Nauvoo era had practical benefits to it, which I discuss in my blog post on the Selective Birthing of the Mormon People as a Quasi-Ethnic Cultural Identity and a Peoplehood. So to be clear, I am not prescribing Nauvoo era polygamy practices. This is why I am focusing on the descriptive and mythic “spirit of Nauvoo Mormonism” and I am not presenting the Nauvoo era prescriptively. In other words, I am not advocating Joseph's tactics as a polygamist! I am merely presenting the Nauvoo Era as descriptive of how the lifeward instinctual energies in Joseph Smith's Indo-European DNA and psyche found a way to break through the dogmatic dam of the Augustinian stopgap. As the volcanic energy and vitality of Joseph Smith and the first Mormons broke through the Augustinian dam of body despising ideology.
Was this process in the Nauvoo era messy and were there moral failures? Yes, definitely. But there were also moral failures in the process of shaming humanity into a puritanical straightjacket through the extremes of Augustinianism for over a thousand years! Thus, I see two extremes along a spectrum, with the ideal most moderate and healthy position or practice being somewhere in the middle.
The Indo-European Spirit of Nauvoo Mormonism
Nietzsche was seeking to revitalize Hellenist culture and I see Joseph Smith doing something similar in the 1840s. Nietzsche wrote in his notes, posthumously compiled and published in the book Will to Power, the following:
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith, we are probably also the first who understand what a pagan faith is: to be obliged to imagine higher creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence as immoral existence. We believe in Olympus, and not in the ‘man on the cross.
Nietzsche saw paganism or better put Indo-European spirituality, as the integration of the bodily instincts of lifeward vitality, while Augustinian Christianity was the repression and denial of biological life. As he explains:
The Pagan Characteristic. — Perhaps there is nothing more astonishing to the observer of the Greek world than to discover that the Greeks from time to time held festivals, as it were, for all their passions and evil tendencies alike, and in fact even established a kind of series of festivals, by order of the State, for their “all-too-human.” This is the pagan characteristic of their world, which Christianity has never understood and never can understand, and has always combated and despised. — They accepted this all-too-human as unavoidable, and preferred, instead of railing at it, to give it a kind of secondary right by grafting it on to the usages of society and religion.
All in man that has power they called divine, and wrote it on the walls of their heaven. They do not deny this natural instinct that expresses itself in evil characteristics, but regulate and limit it to definite cults and days, so as to turn those turbulent streams into as harmless a course as possible, after devising sufficient precautionary measures. That is the root of all the moral broad-mindedness of antiquity. To the wicked, the dubious, the backward, the animal element, as to the barbaric, pre-Hellenic and Asiatic, which still lived in the depths of Greek nature, they allowed a moderate outflow, and did not strive to destroy it utterly.
The whole system was under the domain of the State, which was built up not on individuals or castes, but on common human qualities. In the structure of the State the Greeks show that wonderful sense for typical facts which later on enabled them to become investigators of Nature, historians, geographers, and philosophers. It was not a limited moral law of priests or castes, which had to decide about the constitution of the State and State worship, but the most comprehensive view of the reality of all that is human.
Whence do the Greeks derive this freedom, this sense of reality? Perhaps from Homer and the poets who preceded him. For just those poets whose nature is generally not the most wise or just possess, in compensation, that delight in reality and activity of every kind, and prefer not to deny even evil. It suffices for them if evil moderates itself, does not kill or inwardly poison everything — in other words, they have similar ideas to those of the founders of Greek constitutions, and were their teachers and forerunners.
Note that what Nietzsche means by "evil" is our evolved human instincts themselves, which puritanical versions of Christianity demonize. In other words, in Augustinian Lutheran Christianity (which is what Nietzsche is objecting to mostly), anything other than monastic sainthood was deemed "evil," as the bodily drives and instincts were deemed evil and depraved.
Another way to put it is what Nietzsche referred to as "evil," was what Freud would later call the repression of the unconscious bodily drives. Freud taught that what the religious call "evil" is really just the unconscious instincts which cannot be eradicated but only repressed or sublimated or given a healthy outlet in law abiding ways. For Freud, and most psychologists today, repression can be just as harmful as criminality, in that without a healthy outlet for the so-called "evil instincts" they just boil over inwardly like a boiling pot and bubble up and release or manifest themselves in one way or another. For more information on Nietzsche's perspective of the instincts see Nietzsche and the Human Animal by Academy of Ideas.
As I see it, early Nauvoo Mormonism was an attempt to integrate the so-called “evil” primal instincts of pride and lust and power-seeking, through the outlet of a kingship polygamous mythology of men-elevating-to-god-kings through becoming exalted in rank via status and power within an ordered hierarchy as depicted in Orson Hyde's Kingdom of God diagram.
I see 1840s-Mormonism as a hybrid religion. Joseph Smith is stuck between his Indo-European natural instincts and will to power and his pious Augustinian Protestant family upbringing. I see a war of instincts within him (the barking "dogs in his cellar" as Nietzsche puts it), with his will to power instincts eventually winning out by the 1840s, as they overpowered his pious programming. One can even see early evidence of this volcanic will to power burgeoning forth early on during the time he composed the 1830 Book of Mormon with for example his description of Christ as a destructive warrior in 3 Nephi and the the "Strength of the Lord" empowering Hebrew Christians to fight and conquer. Thus I personally see Smith's unconscious Irish Indo-European nature (his being descended from warriors and royalty) coming forth here and there in his sermons and scriptural productions, which is balanced by his more Platonist utopian idealism.
Joseph Smith's utopian egalitarian idealism is however corrected for by the harsh realities of the nature of humanity. As his former 1830s communitarian egalitarian idealism and the pursuit of the end of rank order and differences among men and the dream of a society without rich or poor or any class or divisions in status, was at war with our natural biological instincts. This, according to Google AI:
Joseph Smith's early attempt to form Zion was based on a doctrine called the Law of Consecration, which he taught in 1830. The Law of Consecration was a voluntary religious egalitarianism doctrine that aimed to create a utopian society called Zion. The doctrine's main principles were:
- Income equality: The doctrine aimed to eliminate poverty and achieve income equality. Group self-sufficiency: The doctrine aimed to increase group self-sufficiency. Religious communism: The doctrine was an attempt to recreate the religious communism practiced by 1st century Christians.
- Group self-sufficiency: The doctrine aimed to increase group self-sufficiency.
The doctrine allowed members of the Church to deed their real estate to the United Order, a Church body. The United Order would then divide and allocate the property to new members as an "inheritance" or "stewardship". (Source)
- Religious communism: The doctrine was an attempt to recreate the religious communism practiced by 1st century Christians.
This of course did not work, and attempts like this never does, because the religious communism practiced by 1st century Christians was based on the Pauline belief in the ability of Christians to override their bodily instincts and pursue the ideal of celibacy without a focus on future retirement planning due to a apocalyptic end of the world mentality (which never happens soon as expected).
I think that Joseph Smith, after studying philosophy and science with Orson Hyde and Parley Pratt in the mid 1830s, began to reject the Pauline despising of the body; which opened him up to embracing a more embodied "spirit-atoms-instinctualism" and thus affirming biological life, which also led him to reject the Pauline end of the world mentality: leaving room for Mormon-Christians to focus more on life in the body in the here and now.
So that by the 1840s, his previous utopian ideal was largely replaced as he moved away from an anti-body utopianism ideal and toward a more pro-body spiritual instinctualism; wherein he began to integrate the concept of scientific atoms as spirit-atoms so that all flesh was no longer inherently evil or depraved but now holy; and thus by returning to Nature, he began to affirm evolutionary life's rank ordered cycles and hierarchies: by presenting a more Indo-European and ancient Hebrew theological philosophy that embraced the most vitally alive and procreative energies of the body. So that ambitious, sexually virile men, became godly as God himself was an exalted man with a body. So that rather than a spirituality of decline, a trajectory downward into emasculated states of humility and groveling and denying the instincts on a path toward celibacy and voluntary martyrdom. Joseph Smith instead reinvigorated the Indo-European and Hebrew Bible energy with a spirituality of organic becoming: of rising in status, exaltation to exaltation, through tribal friendships and wives and concubines; gaining upwards with the higher the status as future god kings and queens, the greater one's future Kingdom Domain among the Gods. Joseph had thus revitalized in his own way what Nietzsche called "the [ancient] pagan faith ..." of imagined "higher creatures than man" and the belief in "Olympus": through Smith's ideal humans becoming Gods akin to Olympus; and the new order of plural marriage and higher priesthood and secular status became divine actions which affirmed biological life and hierarchical Nature.
So that in affect Joseph had reordered a radical pro-body morality in Nauvoo: moving the moral ideal away from the ascetic celibate priest and more toward the Hebrew Bible's warrior heroes with wives and concubines as representatives of God on earth as Kings and Priests.
We see the early psychological stages of this development toward "Olympus" in the Book of Mormon where there's a strong push for civility and egalitarian utopian peace but then there is also again simultaneously the Strength of the Lord empowering Nephite warriors to win in battle (See In the Strength of the Lord by John Tvedtnes). The same Jesus that preached peace in the New Testament Gospels, like the different Jesus of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, as a resurrected being, the Mormon-Jesus returns to earth in the Americas in 3 Nephi chapters 8 through 11 to destroy whole cities, even women and children in the process. Joseph Smith would later echo this "kind yet warriorly” duality of God's nature (as described in the Bible) in his private letter to Nancy Rigdon in the 1840s as a way to explain the moral complexity and acceptability of polygamy, when Joseph tells Nancy:
... That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said thou shalt not kill,—[Exodus 20:13] at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy [Deuteronomy 20:17].
(Source).
In the context of the letter to Nancy, the point Smith is making is that God had said monogamy was right in the past as a tradition but now God allows for non-monogamous spiritual wives by revelation through him; which was part of Joseph Smith's larger theological innovation I call Abrahamic Expansionism. One of the ingredients for this new body affirming theology is the rejection of Augustine's original sin dogma and instead the affirmation of all bodily flesh as holy as spirit-atoms. Therefore, he and Nancy could be together sexually as a form of spirituality, and fulfill the purpose of bodily life, the object and design of which is happiness. He goes on to assure Nancy that God "is more liberal in his views." The context of this liberality in God, is Joseph Smith's developed theology of the body by the 1840s.
Thus I think he is being sincere in his language here to Nancy, if understood within his new theological paradigm of spirit-atoms and the restoration of the Hebrew Bible theology; as he is basically explaining that as he returned to the theology of the Hebrew Bible as the prophet of a restoration, as he learned from his studies of the Hebrew language that there were Gods plural and that God the Father had a wife and the Hebrew patriarchs were polygamous, he felt inspired to restore the pro-body theology of the Hebrew Bible. In his dissertation The Fulness of the Gospel: Christian Platonism and the Origins of Mormonism (2014), LDS scholar Stephen Fleming argues that when Joseph Smith first began experimenting with plural marriage, women too could have more than one spouse but as this did not function as expected, he turned to polygyny only.
This affirmation of the instinctual body expanded beyond sexuality and into a more healthy masculinity and territorial boundaries. Despite the Book of Mormon having a general overall message of peace, Joseph Smith goes on to retaliate against his enemies by forming a militia and becoming a military General with sword and pistol. He would not "turn the other cheek" endlessly like a doormat and be a passive bullied martyr but was going to fight back like his Indo-European Irish ancestors. Joseph made this clear with his Nauvoo legion on parade, as a show of force and power.
The life of Joseph Smith from 1839 to 1844 had thus undergone a radical shift in energy. This post-1840s religious Mormon mythology is in my view a hybrid, as a cross between Protestantism and Viking-like Indo-European mythology (for the Vikings themselves took wives and concubines and the Norse Gods valued power over puritanism); which is why I think the Friberg paintings published in the Book of Mormon in the 1980s, were paintings where the Nephites were depicted looking like Viking warriors. Thus, I see Nauvoo era Mormonism as a gateway mythology, a transmutation of the instinctual energies of the body into a new religious mythology that by 1840 aligned more with the vitality of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and Ancient Germanic mythology: as a more pro-body, sex positive, mythos of power acquisition; and an elevation of the instincts as holy and akin to the very nature of the Gods themselves as seen in Orson Hyde's Kingdom of God diagram.
So on the spectrum of extremes between scrupulosity-inducing purity and docile piety on one end and savagery and ruthlessness on the other, I see Joseph Smith's Nauvoo era Mormonism somewhere in the middle as a gateway toward a future Middle Way. As one end of a spectrum between two extremes, for example lifelong celibate Catholic priests on one end of the spectrum and polygamist Mormons in the 1800s on the other end of the spectrum. In other words, I do not see either extreme as the ideal or the only morally recommended lifestyle. But between these extremes, I see a "middle way" where the body is not repressed and the instincts denied but nor is cruelty and the oppression of women the rule of religious law either.
Original Nauvoo era Mormonism as a Indo-European Greco-Nordic-Stoic Form of Spirituality
The Lectures on Faith are very similar to Stoic theology. The Book of Abraham is basically polytheistic, thus its kind of a return to the Greco Nordic pantheons through the polytheistic Pantheon of the original Hebrew theology: which was based on the Canaanite Pantheon. Thus, Mormonism is a return to the original polytheistic pantheon archetypes of father and mother gods that procreate offspring, which mythologically affirms organic life on earth in the flesh. Hence Mormonism is the restoration in many ways of the ancient polytheistic pantheon and acts as a quasi Greco Nordic Stoic spirituality.
The Pre-1900 Mormon Philosophy & Post-1900 LDS Philosophy
There is a huge difference between the pre-1900 church and the post-1900 church which I discuss throughout this blog. There is a huge difference between appreciating the "Mormon philosophy" of the 1840s and belonging to the LDS Church of today. In other words, much of what I appreciate about original Mormonism is no longer what the LDS Church is today. In fact today's LDS Church has become more protestantized and has lost much of the original 1840s (pre-1900) philosophical ideas I appreciate most.
I do believe that Mormonism is in many ways an improvement philosophically on Catholicism and Protestantism. I write a lot on this blog about appreciating your Mormon heritage and ancestors. In other words, I think my pre-1900 Mormon ancestors were overall noble people and there was a reason they joined Mormonism and left their Protestant churches. The Protestant churches were teaching the Trinity (three in one) nonsense and harmful ideas like everyone and their grandmother is going to go to hell. So Mormonism was an improvement on those ideas.
The Mormonism that my Mormon ancestors grew up in however is not the more controlling protestantized Mormon Church of today. For example, my ancestors could drink coffee and tithing was more liberal and there was no so-called "worthiness" interviews; and there were no church leaders saying silly things like if you say the word "Mormon" you're going to make Satan win. All that are inventions by the current post-1900 Mormon Church leadership.
So I still appreciate and value old school pre-1900 Mormonism and it's Philosophy of Life, which was in many ways better than the alternatives of Catholicism or Protestantism. But I do not consider myself Mormon anymore, not even a cultural or philosophical Mormon, because I do not want to play the role of a Saint. But again, if someone does want to be a Saint, then what I provide on this blog is a way to privately in one's head return to the more empowering philosophy of pre-1900 Mormonism while socially fitting into the current LDS system.
If "Indo-European-mythology" is at its Core Pro-Body, is 1840s Era Mormonism a Christo-European?
This is a controversial perspective, but one way to be a New Order Mormon or nuanced LDS believer, or simply appreciate Mormonism as an outsider, is to appreciate the "Indo-European spirituality" within 1840s Mormonism.
I think that Joseph Smith himself was attempting to move away from Augustinian Protestant ideas of sainthood by the 1840s; as he invented a lot of ideas in the 1840s which were more, quite frankly, Indo-European. Thus I actually see Joseph Smith, by 1840, moving away from sainthood and more toward a type of Christo-Indo-European spirituality.
According to the December 2024 Wikipedia article on Paganism, we learn that:
Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism,[1] or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi (soldiers of Christ).[2][3] Alternative terms used in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen.[1] Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion[4] and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian.[4] Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".[1][5]
During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a belief in "false gods".[6][7] The origin of the application of the term "pagan" to polytheism is debated.[8] In the 19th century, paganism was adopted as a self-descriptor by members of various artistic groups inspired by the ancient world. In the 20th century, it came to be applied as a self-descriptor by practitioners of modern paganism, modern pagan movements and Polytheistic reconstructionists. Modern pagan traditions often incorporate beliefs or practices, such as nature worship, that are different from those of the largest world religions.[9][10] ...
The term pagan derives from Late Latin paganus, revived during the Renaissance. Itself deriving from classical Latin pagus which originally meant 'region delimited by markers', paganus had also come to mean 'of or relating to the countryside', 'country dweller', 'villager'; by extension, 'rustic', 'unlearned', 'yokel', 'bumpkin'; in Roman military jargon, 'non-combatant', 'civilian', 'unskilled soldier'. It is related to pangere ('to fasten', 'to fix or affix') and ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European *pag- ('to fix' in the same sense):[14]
The adoption of paganus by the Latin Christians as an all-embracing, pejorative term for polytheists represents an unforeseen and singularly long-lasting victory, within a religious group, of a word of Latin slang originally devoid of religious meaning. The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church. Elsewhere, Hellene or gentile (ethnikos) remained the word for pagan; and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace.
— Peter Brown, Late Antiquity, 1999[15]
So we see here that "paganism" is defined in part as basically some form of polytheism and nature worship. So the way I see it, the main distinguishing differences between "traditional (Nicene) Christianity" and Paganism, is that the former is monotheist and the latter is polytheistic. The other area of difference between traditional Christianity and paganism, is that one is basically overall anti-Nature and the other is more pro-Nature, which I discuss in my blog post here. But again, the word Pagan also brings to mind modern movements like Wicca and Heathenry. Therefore, it is wrong to call Mormonism merely "pagan." Yet in some ways it is pagan, but so is most of Christianity. For example, Christian authors Frank Viola and George Barna wrote the book Pagan Christianity that covered the many pagan ideas and practices in modern Christianity. Modern Christianity was also changed after coming into contact with the Germanic Indo-Europeans, which is extensively covered in the scholarly book The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell. Therefore, today's Christianity itself can be called a Christo-pagan religion. So what I will argue is that Mormonism was just a further extension of this trend. But I will seek to avoid the word pagan and instead use the better term Indo-European.
I first realized that Mormonism is a kind of "Christo-Indo-Europeanism" after watching the video "Christo-paganism: A Controversial Idea" by The Ark Channel on YouTube. This video explains the pagan developments in modern Christianity. This video does a good job of explaining what I see in original pre-1900 Mormonism, which is a Christo-paganism, and by paganism I only mean to imply positive connotations.
As mentioned above, before the Christian reader says to themselves with an accusatory tone, "See, I knew Mormonism was pagan!" Let’s step back a bit and realize that Germanic pagans (Indo-Europeans) heavily influenced today's version of Christianity.
According to the Wikipedia article on the Christianization of Scandinavia, Scandinavian were slow to convert to Christianity and leave behind their Gods like Thor and Odin. One of the ways Christian missionaries were able to convert those who descended from the warrior tribes of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and ancient Germania, was by focusing on the image of Christ as not a peaceful, pacifistic suffering martyr (as portrayed in the Gospels, especially in Mark), but by instead emphasizing the New Testament's book Revelation: wherein the author of that text interprets Christ as more of a vengeful Conquering Messiah at war with Satan who is basically personified as Rome.
I see Christianity today as a stabilizing and civilizing force in the modern world. And what is interesting is that the modern version of Christianity (let's call it Cultural-Christianity) that we experience today, is actually not based on the earliest writings of the New Testament (which emphasizes/encourages the ideal of celibacy, pacifism, and voluntary martyrdom). Instead, Cultural-Christianity rejects pacifism, celibacy and voluntary martyrdom (as practiced in the New Testament), and instead supports having a family, wealth, retirement, and self-defense and even going to war. This evolution from Anti-Familial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity to today's modern Cultural-Christianity, that is more pro-family and a pro-self-defense, is in large part a result of Germanic Indo-Europeans integrating into Christianity (beginning around 400 AD): which helped radically modify first century Ancient-Christianity and change it from a world-denying religion into a more life-affirming religion today (with most Christians focusing on building a prosperous future here and now on earth). This transformation is covered in the book The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell. What you realize reading Russell's book is that modern Cultural-Christianity is really not New Testament Christianity (which again emphasizes/encourages anti-familial ideas like the ideal of celibacy, as well as pacifism and voluntary martyrdom), as today's Cultural-Christianity is really a Germanized version of Christianity. In other words, Germanic Indo-Europeans are in part responsible for this modification into today's Cultural-Christianity and the world-affirming beliefs and attitudes of most Christians today!
Mormonism & Norse Indo-Europeanism
Not only has modern Cultural-Christianity undergone a Germanization theological process, I have also realized that Mormonism is a further Germanization of Christianity. In fact, one could call early 1840s era Mormonism a Christian-Indo-European-ism or Norse-like version of Christianity. In other words, Mormonism changed from a more Nicene-Christian Protestant Church (prior to 1835) to a more Norse-adjacent Christo-Indo-European mythos after 1835. For example, prior to 1839, official LDS doctrine was monotheistic, Trinitarian, and God the Father was a non-earthly personage of spirit without a wife (see the original monotheist doctrine of LDS Lectures on Faith).
After 1839, Joseph taught there is not one single Deity (or Monotheist-Trinity) as most Christians believe, but instead he taught a Pantheon of Gods, similar to the ancient Germanic Indo-Europeans; but Joseph Smith did not directly use Indo-European mythology as source material. Instead, he was inspired by Egyptian pagan imagery (which he published in the Book of Abraham), as well as the original polytheistic-henotheism of the ancient Israelites/Jews (which he learned about when learning the Hebrew language in the mid 1830s). After this, post-1836, Joseph Smith's theology and scriptures begin to move away from the bodiless Father God of the Nicene Creed, and Joseph Smith instead says in the 1840s that God the Father has an earthly body and a wife; which is similar to the Egyptian Gods, ancient Judaism (when Father-Jehovah of the ancient Old Testament had a body and a wife or consort), as well as the Norse God Odin and his wife Frigg (Queen of Asgard, the home of the Norse Gods).
Joseph Smith wrote a private letter to Nancy Rigdon in the 1840s where he says “God is more liberal in his views,” basically saying God was not a puritanical Protestant. I would argue that Joseph Smith moved to a more Norse-like mythology in the 1840s. I see a lot of parallels and similarities with 1840s Nauvoo era Mormonism and Germanic Indo-European mythology, in particular the life-affirming aspects.
I am Mormon Friendly & Appreciative of my Mormon Heritage I consider myself a Appreciator-of-Mormonism as of 2024 after understanding it differently from this perspective as described above. I appreciate my Mormon heritage and 1840s LDS philosophy, like the emphasis on an affirmation of bodily life with it's philosophical monism rather than Augustinian dualism. I appreciate the attempt in Nauvoo in the 1840s to overcome puritanical body-despising attitudes with a more pro-body experiment by Smith synthesizing the concept of Swedenborgian conjugal relationships in the eternities with what Stephen Fleming describes as Joseph Smith's conversion to Christian-Platonism: wherein Joseph Smith sought to restore Plato's concept of how in the heavens people shared sexual partners within an ideal heavenly utopia; with wives having conjugal rights to celestial husbands as much as the men having conjugal rights to celestial wives (see The Fulness of the Gospel: Christian Platonism and the Origins of Mormonism by Stephen Fleming). From this perspective, Joseph Smith can be seen as a social experimenter via plural marriage which was initially more egalitarian and polyandrous rather than only polygynous; but as the experiment unfolded, as Fleming explains in his dissertation, Smith turned to polygyny only. Regardless of the errors that took place during the experiment of seeking to form a utopian polygamous Christian-Platonist society, I appreciate this return to the body as good as found in the Hebrew Bible by Joseph Smith, which has some similarities with Nietzsche's pro-body philosophy.
In other words, I appreciate my Mormon ancestors and the theo-philosophy I inherited because it made me better able to appreciate my Scandinavian Viking ancestors and their pro-body polytheism. For if I had remained a monotheistic Catholic or Protestant, I might have been more phobic of polytheism and would not appreciate the original polytheism of ancient Judaism and my polytheistic Norse ancestors. I wouldn't have found value in Dr. Paul Dobransky's use of the Greek gods as a psychological model for personal development through integrating the masculine or feminine instincts into one's personal psychology. Thus I am appreciative of Mormon in that while I see it as mythology, I see it as a stepping stone or gateway theology to what I describe as solar-pantheonism.
Once you end up deconstructing your Mormon faith which is highly likely to happen in the internet age, knowing that mythologies are human constructs, you are given the freedom to construct your own spirituality and mythology; that can be even more beneficial and empowering to the psyche than Brighamite Mormonism. In other words, Mormonism broke away from Augustinian dogma's that despise the body and instead affirmed the body, but it also came with other high demand religious cultism. But knowing the power of creativity and seeing Joseph Smith as a creative explorer can act as a model for one's own exploration beyond Mormonism.
The Modern LDS Church (or Brighamite Sect) of Today
Unfortunately, today’s modern Mormon Church has moved away from this Norse-like energy and has moved back to the more puritanical and Protestant version of the LDS Church (which developed prior to 1839). So whenever I speak positively of Mormonism, note that I am not supporting or advocating the more puritanical high demand religiosity of today’s LDS Church, but I am speaking positively about the more Norse-like energy that developed in 1840s Nauvoo era Mormonism.
So I would say that Joseph Smith's 1840s Mormonism was much more like the religion of my Norse ancestors in many ways. This is why Catholics and Protestants do not consider Mormonism "christian." In other words, I think Joseph Smith was becoming more "Greco-Norse"/Indo-European adjacent" in many ways the last years of his life.
Before the year 1836 however, Smith was still basically a monotheistic Protestant in his mindset and most of the Mormon scriptures he produced (prior to 1840) taught typical monotheism and Protestant Saintliness. Smith began to move toward building a scriptural foundation for a more pro-Nature theology in the last few years of his life, and then he was assassinated. So that what remains is that the majority of the scriptures he produced contains basically monotheistic Protestant dogma. This is why you have non- Brighamite Mormon sects in Missouri and elsewhere, where they stick to all of the Mormon scriptures composed prior to 1836. Thus these other Mormon sects fit into the category of basically being Monotheistic Protestants, believing in the Nicene Creed of traditional Christianity. This is because the main body of Mormon scripture Smith produced prior to 1840, contained mostly typical Protestant theology.
Life-Affirming Pre-1900 Mormon Indo-European Spirituality vs. The Post-1900 Protestanized LDS Church (Brighamite Sect)
Joseph Smith's more pro-nature theology, which he developed in the 1840s, is actually what I think makes Mormonism more appealing, at least to me. For without the more pro-nature innovations, Mormonism is not much more different than the anti-nature Catholic and Protestant churches. In other words, without its Christo-Indo-Europeanism, it is just another anti-nature, puritanical sect, like in most of Protestantism.
So when Joseph Smith moved closer to the pro-earthly Indo-European mythos of my Indo-European and Norse ancestors, that is the part of Mormonism I actually like the most (that is the more pro-Nature, pro-body aspects). Unfortunately however, today's Mormon Church began to pretty much downplay, ignore, or abandon those more pro-nature aspects after the year 1900; and have returned more and more to the Pious-Protestant version of Mormonism that developed pre-1840, which I find less appealing.
So as of right now (as of 2024), I'm not a practicing Mormon and do not intend to ever try to be practicing Mormon because it has moved in a more "Protestantized," anti-Nature, and puritanical direction post-1900. However, I still appreciate the more Indo-European mythos that developed in the 1840s Nauvoo era of Mormonism; and in this blog series I will be posting more about this.
Note that even though being an LDS member doesn't work for me personally, this perspective might be useful to anyone else trying to stay LDS.
