The Refiner's Fire
The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844

This 1995 book presents an alternative and comprehensive understanding of the roots of Mormon religion.

John L. Brooke (Author)

9780521565646, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 May 1996

444 pages, 14 b/w illus.
23.1 x 15.7 x 2.5 cm, 0.62 kg

"The Refiner's Fire is an important and daring work for which Brooke has received the Bancroft Prize in American history....Combining intellectual and demographic history with rare skill, Brooke sheds great light on transatlantic subcultures that have not been labeled "occult" (read "hidden") for nothing." Religious Studies Review

This 1995 book presents an alternative and comprehensive understanding of the roots of Mormon religion, which proposes that the faithful will become gods. The book's central thesis is that the origins of Mormonism lie in the fusion of radical religion with magical ideas about recovering the divine powers of Adam lost in the fall from Paradise (ideas known as the hermetic philosophy) that occurred during the Reformation and the English Revolution. The book is organised around the two problems of demonstrating the survival of these ideas into the nineteenth century and of how they were manifested in Mormon doctrine. A final chapter outlines how Mormonism gradually has moved toward traditional Protestant Christianity since the 1850s. Besides religion, this book deals with magic, witchcraft, alchemy, Freemasonry, counterfeiting, and state-formation.

List of illustrations
List of maps
Preface
Part I. A Prepared People: 1. Dreams of the primal Adam
2. The true spiritual seed
3. Something of our ancestors
Part II. Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger: 4. A Urim spiritual
5. Alchymical experiments
6. I was born in Sharon
Part III. The Mormon Dispensation: 7. Secret combinations and slippery treasures in the land of Zarahemla
8. The mysteries defined
9. Temples, wives, bogus-making and war
10. The keys to the kingdom
11. A tangle of strings and the kingdom of God
12. Let mysteries alone
Appendix: the sectarian and hermetic circumstances of Mormon origins in Vermont and New York
Abbreviations used in notes
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]