Correction: I failed to also mention Nick Literski as a foremost scholar on Masonry and a co-author on Method Infinite. Nick’s contributions to this field should not go without saying. My apologies for the oversight.
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Links
Tim Rathbone Brigham Young Masonic Connection paper
Todd Compton/Tim Rathbone Sunstone panel
WAS/SAW examples:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/7caa151f-e878-4cde-9dd2-aa8cb03da3d1/0/61
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/1c66d65a-8781-4476-b3dc-a12c6db39174/0/68
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/7caa151f-e878-4cde-9dd2-aa8cb03da3d1/0/58
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/1c66d65a-8781-4476-b3dc-a12c6db39174/0/65
https://culturalmormoncafeteria.blogspot.com/2009/11/brigham-youngs-cipher.html
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/7caa151f-e878-4cde-9dd2-aa8cb03da3d1/0/78
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1841-december-1842/12
https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/biographies-of-josephs-plural-wives/
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/agnes-moulton-coolbrith-pickett
Transcript
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural, theological and historical case for Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Holy cow, this episode has taken more twists and turns than I can even tell you, but it has finally settled in to a really good spot, and I am extremely excited to dive deep into Brigham Young’s cipher. Thanks for joining me. I’m sure many of you have noticed that there have been a number of interviews and, um, videos that have come out in the last couple of weeks, critiquing the work and the perspective of monogamy affirmers like myself. And it seems particularly focused on my work. So, for quite a while, I opted not to watch or engage with them. It just the weight of dealing with, um, Detractors went off the critiques don’t feel accurate or fair, and I feel misrepresented that gets heavy and I just, it’s always a debate between am I better off engaging and trying to deal with detractors and answer critiques or am I better off just delving into the important work I’m doing and the furthering the research that’s always the question. So I had opted to just keep going on with my work, but finally. After several people reached out and recommended that I watched them, I finally decided to go ahead and watch them. And I’m actually really glad I did because I believe they are worth responding to. Um, the main two videos and I will be responding to are these two interviews with Brian Hailes. First of all, this, um, Greg Matson video video on Quick Media. I had a talk with Greg, sandwiched in between his talk with Jacob Hanson. And then it’s talk with Brian Hales, so I’ll be responding in part to this um discussion and then also this um interview with Brian Hailes on Jacob Hansen’s channel and um I’m, I’m sure there will be other videos coming out and other discussions and maybe I can respond to those too, but honestly, I mean those as well, but honestly. Just these two videos, like made me immediately think of the tithing blessings in Malachi 3:10, where the Lord promises that he will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. That’s honestly how just these two episodes felt. There is so much content to respond to that, um, it’s, it’s been a trick to even whittle it down to decide how to format response videos. And so, As I said in the introduction, there have been several iterations of this first response video. And finally, after I’ve dealt dealt into so many different things, I whittled it down to just responding to one source, which, in my opinion, actually deserves this much attention because it’s important for its own sake, but also, it serves as a microcosm. Of the entire polygamy discussion as I see it. So, um, this entire episode is going to be dedicated to Brigham Young’s Masonic cipher in his journal. And I think you will find that, uh, just as I have, I, like, this is an incredible, um, um, document with an incredible amount to learn about it, and it is Fascinating and extremely important and I’m actually really excited to get into it. It was worth setting everything else aside for now. I will say that I am certain that I will be doing a number of response videos to these um claims being made in these um evidence has been put forward and the arguments and the critiques and I think that’s actually worthwhile because what I’m trying to do is not. I’m trying really hard to not get into the personality debate or the back and forth. I really want to focus on the evidence that they have provided for us, and I want to respond to the arguments and put forward my own. And so while there will be a number of, um, response videos coming forward, they’re mainly going to be to respond to the evidence put forward, and I’m really excited about that. I’m hoping. That it will help move this discussion forward. And here’s part of why in watching these episodes, it just, it’s so apparent that many, many people, including Brian Hailes, Jacob Hansen, Greg Madsen, and it seems that the majority of the historians, they seem to be genuinely convinced that the evidence for Joseph’s polygamy is so overwhelming. That that it makes it really hard for them to see that there could be any actual room for people to honestly disagree. And, and that’s what I’m wanting to respond to. That’s what I’m wanting to help people see a different way. And I think, I think it’s important. I’m hoping that looking more closely at the documents like we are going to be doing with this entry in Brigham Young’s journal today, I’m hoping that looking more closely at these documents and the arguments being made can help the polygamy affirmers see and understand why monogamy affirm. like me disagree with them, which I hope will help both sides continue to improve the engagement and discourse. That’s what I’m really going for. And yes, I want to draw attention that I said, polygamy affirmers and monogamy affirmers. I think we could say that, or monogamy, polygamy asserters and monogamy asserters. I assert or affirm that Joseph Smith was a monogamist. People on the other side assert or affirm that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. I think these are the terms that we should use. I’m going to propose them. They’re equal footing. Neither side is being called a denier or any other um pejorative term denialist is not better than denier. So if we could just say monogamy asserter or monogamy affirmer, that is what I will identify as, and I will res respond I will refer to the people who disagree with me as polygamy asserters or. Polygamy affirmers. I’m hoping that can tend on, I, I mean, can catch on because I think it, I think that’s one way we can improve the discourse. To begin this discussion on Brigham Young’s, um, Masonic cipher journal entry, I will just start by playing the clips. These are just short clips of where this source was discussed in these two interviews.
[06:00] Brian Hales: And then we find in Brigham Young’s journal for January 6th of 1842, that in Masonic cipher, there is a Joseph Smith was wed and sealed to Agnes Koolbr.
[06:13] Michelle: Hopefully, some of you are already um somewhat familiar with this, this document, let’s go on and hear it discussed in the other episode as well.
[06:22] Jacob Hansen: What’s very interesting about this is it’s in this Masonic cipher. So, this in and of itself is interesting. Here you have a contemporaneous record being written in some sort of a coded language. Now, A theory. If why do people write in coded language? Well, to hide things from from other people, so only those who who know how to read the code will know what’s being said. So it’s exactly the sort of thing you would expect if they were trying to keep plural marriage under wraps.
[06:56] Michelle: These clips are so helpful because they really do, um, give us a good insight into how these, this document in particular is being seen, how it’s being thought about and how it’s being utilized in the polygamy discussion. I did want to just play one more clip because I find it really interesting to, um, you know, it’s kind of what we’re going to go into today. So I thought it was interesting that while So many people use this evidence and rely on it. They also seem sort of, um, baffled and utterly disinterested in it. So just as exemplified here, because this is what we’re going to go into by the time this episode is over, we are all going to be experts in many forms of Masonic cipher, which I think will be really fun. So here’s, here’s where we’re coming from. This is ground zero, I guess.
[07:38] Brian Hales: Yeah, no, great
[07:39] Brian Hales: points. And I, I love that you could show that Masonic cipher. I don’t even know what that means except that obviously somebody could read it, so there must be a a lexicon somewhere for it.
[07:48] Michelle: So that’s, I just wanted to show the um the confusion about that. And yes, there actually is, I guess what we could call a lexicon for it, and that’s what we are going to go into right now. So, let me Start by sharing this slide. I have many slides to add that I hope you will find very interesting. This is actually Cheryl Bruno’s slide that she created for, um, the discussion that she, that she and I had when she came on my podcast for the first time to discuss masonry, right? So this is a Masonic document, and she brought it up in that very first discussion. It is such a cool source. I have had so much fun digging into this one and figuring out how Masonic ciphers work. I may have geeked out a little bit too much on this, but I think it’s worthwhile, and I think that this will be useful information for all of us. So I’m first going to go in a bit into Roy Royal Arch Masonic cipher. Here is a basic example. I spent forever making these slides, so please appreciate them. I’ve lost way too much sleep as I’ve been delving into this and trying to present it. But I thought that this was so cool as I studied it, as I found this, and I realized that this Masonic code, which is kind of the, it seems to be sort of the center of most Masonic codes, it is totally based on the compass and the square. At least that’s how it looks to me. Isn’t that so cool? You can see the squares in the tic tac toe board on the left, or, and, and then the compass on the right. And so, to make this unique series of, um, of symbols. For each letter, there are 13 unique shapes that can be used with these compasses and squares. And then you can do them either without a dot, as they are above or with the dot, as you see below. And I, I, I imagine that that’s the compass point, right? Where the compass goes. What I think about this is I’m building the, um, symbolism into it. So I thought it was just so neat. It actually was like, oh my gosh, we should be writing tempo stuff like this. I don’t know, because we have the composass and the square. symbols. So I just thought it was a really cool code. Apparently this isn’t as, um, uncommon as I thought. I, this, um, center picture that you’re seeing is actually a code called pig pen cipher, which I guess a bunch of Boy Scouts use, but it’s based on this basic Royal Arch cipher. And, um, and it was, um, so anyway, that’s, that’s the general Masonic cipher that we’ll start with. And hopefully you can see a little bit of how it works. Now we’re going Into it a little bit more. One thing that’s cool is that it was very common to make it your own, to give it your own spin and your own signature. And so you can see how the, um, cipher is here where it goes A, B, C without dots, and then it goes NOP starting to have dots. That is, um, the one form of it that there are all kinds of variations because everybody made their own variations. And so here you can see this is an 1844 journal entry from Oliver Huntington. And it’s actually very important because this gives us, it gives us insight into a change that was already present in the way the cipher was being used in Navu. And so if you look at this, you can tell how, um, I’m gonna explain some of the differences. So this is, um, the code along the bottom. I guess what, um, Brad has referred to as the lexicon that can help us decipher the cipher, right? Decipher it. And so I just wanna quickly explain some of the changes so you can see that in this new. New version. Instead of it going A, B, C, without dots, it goes back and forth. So A is one shape without a dot, and B is the same shape, but with a dot. So it encodes it very differently, and then the same in the, um, compasses over on the other side. It just goes in a different order, which is a really cool, unique variation that would actually make it hard for some, uh, for someone who didn’t know your unique variation to figure it out. So I thought that that was kind of fun to see the difference between those two. So Huntington’s journal entry is especially helpful because we can use it to compare this um more I I guess this Navvo era cipher they were using. I don’t know how widespread it was if it was all of Illinois, if it was America, I don’t know, but this is what was recorded in Huntington’s Journal. And so we can assume that that it’s similar to what Brigham Young would have seen and so using this. Helps us to be able to compare it. Let me get here to Brigham Young’s personal cipher. He made his own unique changes. It’s really fun as I was talking to some of the experts about this. It’s kind of like I imagined it, and they seem to agree that it can kind of be like our family could have its own unique cipher, but then I could make some changes to my very own so that I could keep some secrets from my family, that my family could keep secrets from. The broader community and then the broader community, you know, so each, it would just get varied and varied um with, with different people if they wanted to do that, which I think it’s kind of fun. But so here you can see some changes between Brig that Brigham Young made specifically. And I do want to seriously thank the experts who have done so much work on this to enable me to have this, this key to Brigham Young’s cipher. I certainly did not come up with this on my own. So I’ll go through though and show you some of the specific differences. This, I, um, this is a really important new slide that I did. Spend hours on, but I, I think it’s very important. This is Brigham Young’s Masonic cipher, and it includes the unique changes that Brigham Young made. And I want to say this is actually cutting edge information that, um, I, I think is really important. I have been speaking to the foremost experts on Mormonism and masonry, and I will talk about her more going forward. Obviously, Cheryl Bruto, she has conferred with the other. Three top experts in masonry and, and it seems that there is some, um, agreement on many of the points I’m going to share. Of course I cannot speak for everybody, but I just want to make it known that, um, most of the information in this presentation other than my personal opinions should be considered somewhat authoritative on this topic. Of course, if I get anything wrong, I hope those experts will reach out to me and I will put it, I will highlight it in the Very top of the description box below in the show notes. So if anyone wants to check, I will be sure to add any errors or corrections right there so you can read them. But right here, this, I think, is, as of now, the authoritative Brigham Young Masonic cipher key, or code. So I want to talk just quickly about the four distinct changes that he made his own unique differences to give his code his own signature. So, first of all, you’ll see that he turned the Compasses over on the right with the WUYS and the XVZ. He turned those into triangles instead of just open compass marks, as we usually see. The next unique change he made is that he switched the O and the P. You see those there highlighted in red, putting the dot on the O instead of the dot on the P. So you can see that down below where the, where the code is written out. Most of them go back. Forth between having a dot or not until you come to N and O, which both have a dot and P and Q, both don’t have a dot. So it is being proposed that that is not just a mistake Brigham Young made. We’ll get into that, but that was a unique change that he was making. And then also, you’ll see there on the right, instead of having the T be the downward compass with the dot, he instead left that link. He doesn’t have that symbol, and he instead cho chose to just invert a T. shape to use as a T. So those are three of the three main changes there’s that Brigham Young made in his own unique cipher. And then one other distinction that Brigham Young did is he put a dot in between each Masonic symbol, and that’s not usually done. That’s not included in this document because I couldn’t fit dots into the, um, into the overall key beneath. But you can know that when Brigham Young used this, he put a dot in between each symbol, and that was not usually done. So, OK, so this is a really important slide. I give permission to anybody to use it. If anyone wants, I will gladly send it to them because this is something that actually we should know. This is, uh, so much work has gone into this by many people for a really long time, and then it is now including the most recent, um, additions made to this body of knowledge, this understanding of Brigham Young cipher. So we will come back to the cipher, but for now, we’re Going to go ahead and go to Brigham Young’s journal. So here it is. This is the document. This is the page with the transcript I’ve written on the side. So it says, um, Brigham Young. Well, 1st January 6, 1842 is written twice, and then in very big pronounced letters with two flourished underlines, says Brigham Young’s journal. And then it has another entry that says, January 18, 1842. This evening, I am with my wife alone by my fireside. For the first time for years, we enjoy it and feel to praise the Lord. So, um, this is the page that is so important. And I first have to say, many, many assumptions are made about this source that I think need to be reexamined. And this will help you see why I think this is, this one source is a microcosm for the greater discussion on polygamy. So these are some of the assumptions that I think we need to question. First, it is, is the claim. As you heard Jacob Ken say that this is clearly a contemporaneous record, um, which I think we usually interpret to mean recorded on the day it happened, right? So this, these first entries were included, were recorded on January 6, 1842, the later entry on January 18th, 1842. So let’s dig into that and look more closely at Brigham Young’s journal and what we journal and what we can learn about it. So these are the three pages before this entry. So it goes, this 123, and then we have the document that we’re looking at. So you’ll see that we have a blank page and then the first entry before is dated September 5th, 1840. That’s nearly a year and a half before this entry. OK? Does that make sense? I, I wanna make sure you see what I’m saying. So the entry before is September 5, 1840, then we have that blank page, we have that September 5th entry, and then we have. This January 6, 1842 entry. That’s kind of a big break in, um, in this journal, right? Then I want to show you these are the three pages after the journal. I guess the four pages after the journal. We have three blank pages, and then the first source that we have, I mean, the first entry we have after this journal is August 8, 1844/2 years later and after Joseph Smith’s death. So this This is really interesting. This entry, this first one we get this, um, August 8th, 1844, is his entry about the leadership crisis between him and Sydney Rigdon, where they both were speaking and, you know, while he was trying to get the saints to follow him and, um, it, it records that, at least his perspective on those events. So this one entry is really stuck out of the blue in the middle of this much broader journal. So now this next slide is also. Extremely valuable. This is another slide that I have to credit Cheryl Bruno for making as we’ve been diving into this document. This shows Brigham Young’s journals, right? And I hope that you can see this well. It’s kind of fun how it makes sort of a little chiasm or chiasmus, which some people didn’t know what that meant when I used it before, but it’s just A, B, C, and ABC going in different directions and pointing to the middle as the important spot. So I just want to point out we have journal A, the highlighted journal. because it’s the one we’re talking about that has this important entry, it starts out, and, and has entries from July 27, 1837 until September 5th, 1840, that one I just mentioned. And then it takes a big break. But in that space, we get Journal B, which is a separate journal, which starts October 19th, 1840. So that one ends September 5th, 1840. Then he goes to a new journal, October 19. 1840, which he continues until 1841, until the middle of June 26th of 1841. Then we have this crucial period from June 27, 1841 through, well, I guess, really through, um, March 1843, right? Because the only entry we have in that entire space is this one cryptic entry that’s put into the middle of journal A. So you can see that we can Suppose maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit more. Maybe there is another journal here that can change this period and just this one entry is recopied into this blank, this blank section in journal A. But then anyway, in any case, we go back and we have journal B, so he starts up again in journal B in March on March 2, 1843 through August 1st, 1844 after Joseph Smith’s death, and then he goes back to journal A August 8th, um August 8th. 1844 through April 1845. So this is very interesting how this works. And I don’t know, I, I mean, I just think it’s funny that it’s a guy, I’m just playing with that. I’m not saying there’s anything really to it, but it could point to the importance either of this one entry that’s recorded, because that seems to be the only entry that’s been getting focused very much in this entire journal. Or to me, it could point to this missing space where we don’t have a journal. It makes me very curious. Um, you, Yeah, I, I’ll talk about that a little bit more, but I, I do find that to be quite a mystery that I think it would be fun to dig into and figure out what’s going there if we can get any information on it. The reason it’s important to understand the makeup of these journals is because of what it tells us or doesn’t tell us about this one cryptic entry. We don’t actually know exactly when this, um, entry was added into this journal. So the experts have been discussing whether it might have been copied. In from that perhaps missing journal, if Brigham Young might have been keeping a journal during that missing time period and may have copied that entry in. And that could also explain the five dots at the end of the, um, of, of Brigham Young’s entry in this Masonic cipher that are always ignored, but that we’ll talk about a little bit. It could mean that there was more that he could have written but didn’t add. That’s, um, that’s something interesting. And, um, that’s actually the possibility that I tend to lean toward, but it also It is possible that Brigham Young just didn’t keep a journal during this period, and he decided to make this one entry and then stopped again and then picked it up later in those other journals. That seems a little bit less likely to be because from what I understand, Brigham Young does have quite a consistent pattern of journaling. It’s, he wasn’t always journaling, but this would be an extremely long break for him, the, the longest break by quite a bit that we would have for him and at quite a critical period of time. So everyone can decide what they think that means and, and when they think this journal entry was written, but we certainly cannot state with um with certainty that this was added the day that it was written, that it was recorded that on January 6th. We don’t know when this was recorded, so we’ll have to define more carefully the word contemporary or contemporaneous to know exactly what this means. I did find this interesting. I think it’s interesting if I go back to look at this, um. Document how Brigham Young writes, um, Brigham Young Journal really big there in the middle of the page and underlines it twice. I, I’m curious about why he did that and what that might mean if he’s announcing this is from my journal, that other journal that maybe he kept that maybe we don’t have access to, or if this is saying, hey, this is my journal from here on out. I don’t understand exactly why he did that, especially when we go forward. When this is the very first page of this journal, this journal A as Sheryl. um, coined, where he does write his name at the very beginning of his journal, as you would do, but that’s all it says. It doesn’t say breaking journal or anything like that. So I, I don’t know exactly what to make of any of this, but in any case, it’s interesting how the, um, you know, the problems with this document, if we want to call them that, seem to already be adding up if we’re going to make these big assumptions. So now, the next assumption that, um, I, that I hear being made is that This cipher was written in code in order to keep polygamy a secret. That, um, is, again, the assumption that you heard Jacob Hanson make and that I think many people make. And there just simply isn’t evidence to support this idea. The idea that Brigham Young made this entry with the intent to hide a secret, and especially that it was the intent to hide polygamy. A couple of reasons, and, and this, of course, should can be debated and should be debated. I think that that would be great if this That’s exactly what we’re asking for. Let’s start debating this. Let’s start looking more carefully at it. That’s what I’m trying to start us doing. So, um, well, I guess actually, others have tried to do this, but I’m, I’m gonna keep, keep trying. So, um, I, I just mean when Cheryl came on my podcast, she did talk about this source and made several of these points. But we’ve delved into it deeper now, so there’s more information to share at this point. So part of the reason that we can’t just assume that this cipher was meant to conceal the secret of polygamy is that We don’t know at this point who might have known Cypher and who might not have. We don’t know, um, who this secret would be kept for and who it would be kept, um, from, right? But since Brigham Young was a brand new, brand new Mason inducted the day that this was recorded as we will go into, um, at that, at the earliest, like this, this would be the very first day he could possibly be a Mason. And since masonry was quite common and so many new Masons will be initiated. Um, the cipher was obviously not unknown. I’m saying if Brigham Young had this cipher well enough to, um, use it, create it, make it of his own on the very first day he was initiated, then cipher would be really, really commonplace. And actually, as I think of it, maybe that is another reason to think that maybe this, um, entry was made later because Brigham Young was just inducted into the lodge this day at that’s the very earliest day he possibly could have been inducted, which we’ll talk about. And so, So maybe he wouldn’t have had his cipher all worked out and his variation of it yet. And that could be another argument for, um, for saying that he added this much later after he did have his cipher all worked out. So anyway, that’s another interesting thing to look at. But again, we don’t have evidence of who this was being kept secret from, and we certainly don’t have any evidence to show that this was a pattern, that this was something that was done, that Masonic cipher was being Used to secretly record records of of polygamy of polygamous marriages in Navvo, right? And so those are big assumptions and there are actually far better explanations for Brigham’s use of cipher here, possible explanations. So we’ll just propose a couple of them. First of all, Brigham Young, as I said, is a brand new Mason, might have just been trying his hand at at this cool Masonic cipher. We have other documents showing people sort of practicing it with it or Playing around with Cypher, just because, like, I geeked out on it. I could see other people geeking out on it too, because it’s fun and it’s cool. And so Brigham Young could have been utilizing it, but now that I realized that he, um, was a brand new Mason, I am kind of leaning toward the idea that this was actually done quite a bit later after he had already been playing with it and intentionally used the cipher here. So I don’t know if I’m going to, um, lean to that explanation. I don’t know. It’s interesting to consider. But another thing to consider is that as a newly inducted member of the Lodge, he may have been wanting to record the event, but also trying to follow the rules as he understood them. This, this is from the bylaws of the Navvo Masonic Lodge. For members, Section 8 says, should any member disclose to any person other than ancient York Masons in good standing, any of the proceedings or transactions of this lodge improper to be made public, he shall be suspended, expelled, or otherwise dealt with at the discretion of the lodge. So that’s really interesting, right? If he needs to, if he’s recording information about being inducted into the Masonic Lodge, and maybe he thinks that needs to be kept secret, so he would put it in Masonic cipher that only other Masons could read to keep the secret from getting out. So that’s another interpretation that would fit at least as well, if not a lot better. So, in addition, if we do want to inject secrecy into this document and say, no, this was because there was something scandalous that had to be kept secret. Um, although I, I don’t necessarily know that that’s the best reading. Some people may say it is, some people may say it’s not, but we, we shouldn’t just assume it. Um, there is a potential scandal that would have caused a big problem if it had been known. So if this, if this was written in cipher to keep a secret, this is the secret it would be keeping just as Cheryl Bruno already discussed. On my podcast, let me go into it. um, Masonic lodges need to needed to be officially approved and granted their charter. It was a process that they had to go through, uh, that they had to go through. And before they had accomplished that and been granted their charter and inducted in as a Masonic lodge, they were not allowed to operate. It was not a legitimate. Masonic Lodge before that period, so they certainly couldn’t have been inducting new members into it. This is important. The the Navo Masonic Charter was granted on March 16, 1842. This entry in um Brigham Young’s journal is in January 1842, before the Navvovo Lodge was officially. Granted its charter, and it is evidence that they were in, um, they were already inducting members into the lodge before the lodge had been given its charter. I need to make a quick clarification. While recording, I mistakenly said that the Navo Lodge was granted a charter on that date, and that is incorrect. They were actually never granted a charter. So here is the correct information. The Novo Lodge was given a dispensation, and on March 15, 1842, the lodge was installed. Once a lodge, a lodge is installed, they can do work, but they usually have to wait about a year after being installed before they get a charter and the Navo Lodge was never given their charter. So thank you for the clarification on with the episode. That’s like, I guess we could think about it as a marriage scandal, right? If you find a birth certificate and find out that, um, oh, my parents had me only 6 months after they were married, married or 5 months after they, they were married. I was a premature, right? It’s that kind of a thing to discover. This would have been a big deal. This would have been considered, considered highly irregular and definitely again. Masonic Code, and if it had been known, it would have been grounds to refuse or rescind the charter. And so that is the biggest secret or the scandal that we can read into this entry if we are wanting to wonder why it was having to be encoded or kept secret. I do have to, again, I’m, I’m going to mention her a lot, but I have to give a Huge shout out to Cheryl Bruno for her contributions on all of this research. And I have to make a point, as the foremost scholar on Navu Freemasonry, the person who literally wrote the over 500 page book on Novo Freemasonry, let me get there, and I will show you. This is Cheryl, and this is her book that she wrote, Method Infinite, that is all about um Navvvo um, Freemasonry and the intersection of Mormonism and masonry. She, as an expert and as a polygamy affirmer herself who disagrees with me about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, she does not believe this journal entry should be viewed as evidence of polygamy, and she says it should not be considered contemporary evidence of. Joseph Smith’s polygamy, to quote her, both from my podcast and our recent conversations that we have been having several of on this source, she says, this is not a polygamy document. It is a masonry document. So I hope all other polygamy affirmers will recognize this. The fact that this is that this is in Masonic cipher is a very clear indication that it relates to Mormon masonry, Freemasonry, and should be read in that. Way. And this is one thing. I, I said this to Cheryl, and she, um, laughed and seemed to agree with it. When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? So the danger is, I, I talked in one of my episodes about having polygamy lenses on, right? When you are a polygamy firmer, it is possible to see everything as evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And that’s something we have to be careful of. We need to do a lot better than that because that’s what I believe is happening with this doctor. Um, people are just seeing it in the context of polygamy. We’re going to go on and discuss how that happened and why that happened and why it continues and see if we can change that. So, um, but, but the the case is that viewing this Masonic cipher document as evidence of polygamy would be as illogical as viewing a, um, temple proxy ceiling, right? A, a record of the temple proxy ceilings in January of 18. 46 as evidence of being initiated into a Masonic lodge. They just don’t go together. They’re not the same thing. So, to repeat, Cheryl, one more time, this should not be read as a polygamy document. It is a masonry document. Um, in a future episode, I will go more into some of Brian’s more overall critiques of me and, um, my work, and then also of our movement in general. But one of the accusations that he, um, consistently makes is that we don’t. Rely on experts. So, um, as I said, I’m not gonna go into that here, but I do, I, I’m not gonna go into the full discussion here, but I had to bring that point up because it is so relevant to this very discussion, because we actually have incredible experts on Freemasonry. And Cheryl Bruno, she did confirm to me when I asked her that she, she acknowledged that of all of the affirmers who love to use this source as contemporary evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. She has yet to have one of them reach out to her to ask for expert opinion on it. This, this picture is from, um, what her first appearance on my podcast when we discussed this document and where she already said that, where she already said this is not a polygamy document. And so I think it’s really important to point out that Well, for me, as someone who does really love to rely on experts, and I tried very hard to do that, I knew she was the expert to reach out to on this source. And we did have a great time digging into it more than I think anyone has ever dug into it before. So, um, I will continue to make my case in this episode to help everybody understand more completely why this is not a polygamy document, but I do just have to make the point right here. That if people continue to present this as a polygamy document without dealing with Cheryl’s specific objections, it should become readily apparent. Who actually does and who does not respect and rely upon the well-founded and well explained opinions of. So that’s an important thing that I think we need to consider in this um conversation before anybody uses this as a polygamy document, they should hopefully watch this episode, which is hopefully going to contain the information you need, but also go ahead and reach out to Cheryl and I think that she will let you know her opinion. So, OK, there’s more to cover on this source. Here on this page, you can see the entry with what has assumed to be the translation for over 30 years. This has not been, um, pushed back against or reinvestigated since it was first brought forward, that we’re going to go into that story. I think it’s really interesting. But Before we go into the story of how we got this translation and how it became so embedded and accepted, I think that there are some things we should look at about, um, to make the case of why maybe we should, should consider trying to move knowledge forward on this. So, um, this says, I was taken into the lodge, Jay Smith. WAS Agnes with two S’s and then 3 extra dots, which, which I said are almost always ignored. Well, 5 extra dots, but we can maybe think that those are 3 dots in between other dots. I don’t know. But the first thing I think we should look at is the WAS, right? There was. So I’m going to show this slide right here because this is so important. As I um demonstrated the Royal art cipher, it should have become clear that there is no distinction between capitals or lowercase letters. There’s no way to um differentiate between those. So it is difficult to assume an acronym. You can’t see that capital letters were used. And right here on this side you can see that the WAS on the top line is no different in its symbols, it’s structure in anything than the WAS on the bottom line. So I was taken into the lodge. Jay Smith was Agnes, right? There’s really no way to justify reading those in different ways. If we want to say that the bottom line says, is an acronym for washed and, um, for, for weed and sealed, then we would need to say that the top line is the same thing. So it would really need to be read, um, I mean, if we want to Read Joseph Smith wetted and Sealed Agnes on the bottom line. And then we need to read, I wedded and sealed, taken into the lodge on the top line. I hope you can see that that is nonsensical, and there really is no justification for this inconsistency. I don’t know how we can continue to defend reading these two identical, um, groups of of, of symbols differently. And this, this really It’s a big problem. And from what I have found, I, it doesn’t seem to have been acknowledged or dealt with by any of the historians who cite this source. And so, in fact, let’s listen one more time to Brian’s representation of this document. And
[38:04] Brian Hales: then we find in Brigham Young’s journal for January 6th of 1842 that in Masonic cipher, there is a Joseph Smith was wed and sealed to Agnes Koolbr.
[38:17] Michelle: I hope you were able to catch that, that he said that it said Joseph Smith was wed and sealed to Agnes Krith. That’s, that’s really interesting. I’m sure that it was just a slip of the tongue. Anybody could do that. I know I do it all the time, so I’m I’m not trying to throw any shade on Brian at all. But I do think it gives us an interesting insight into some of the problems with this document and how it is interpreted and represented versus what it actually says. So really, the inconsistency of the word was. It is a very big problem for this interpretation, that alone should render it moot. I don’t see how we can get past that problem of the was. I’ll add it again so you can see. But, um, there are more things that we, that we need to look at as well. This is a smaller thing, but still very interesting, I think. In this translation, it was assumed that Brigham Young made several errors, 5 errors to be exact. You can see them highlighted and underlined in red. So, I don’t know that it It’s the best historical method or practice to just assume that Brigham Young made so many errors. I mean, work has been done to say errors were common in, um, in using cipher, but this entry was put in pretty intentionally, and I think we can assume pretty carefully. So, um, I, I, I don’t know that we should just go with that interpretation and not ask more questions. And that’s part of the new, um, the new rendering of Brigham’s code that I presented is Looking at this again, since we know it was commonplace to switch things out and add your own twists, and since Brigham Young consistently wrote his O’s and P’s, a better interpretation may be that this was one of his unique, um, alterations, switching the O and the P, as I showed here on this master list. That’s where this comes from. And so, um, that’s really interesting to consider that that might not have been a mistake. It might have been in intentional because he does it every. Single time which would make this the correct alphabet for Brigham Young cipher, this one on the bottom where I’ve switched out the O and the P. and so, um, I think that that’s really interesting to consider that, um, unfortunately the entry that Brigham Young has doesn’t include any Ps so we can’t double check on this, but this is what several of the experts are currently proposing, and I don’t see any reason to dis to disagree with them. I think that’s a really good proposal. And recognizing this alteration would remove two of the 5 assumed errors in Brigham Young’s entry, which I think is moving things forward. So you can see now that let’s see, so there are the 5 errors, changing that removes 2 of the proposed errors. So we only have 3 left. And then it’s assumed that Brigham Young also made a much bigger and harder to explain mistake than even just the O and the P. and that is this, the S’s. At the end. We can clearly see that this actually does not say Agnes. It says Agnew. That is how this should be rendered, right? Those are not, um, let me, let me go back and forth. You can see that those aren’t necessarily S’s. Those are W’s. And this is really interesting that this, we just make this assumption. I want to show you this slide right here because it’s important to recognize. Brigham Young included 3 other S’s in his code, those are all marked in yellow, and 2 other W’s marked in red. So it seems strange to just assume that after writing these figures correctly 5 times in a row, 5 out of 5, he all of a sudden mistakenly inverted them for the last two symbols. That, I, I, I think that that is the biggest and most egregious error, and one that I don’t know, that we should just Assume it happened. What’s more is, if the theory is correct, that he was recopying this later on from another journal or from another source, it would be even more strange that he wouldn’t catch his error while he was copying it. So, I, um, of course, I’m not saying that, you know, that nobody can disagree with me and that this is definitive. I’m sure that there, there will be plenty of interpretation and disagreement. But the fact is, the entry correctly read says Agnew, not Agnes. That is the correct reading of it. And, um, it, and since Brigham got 5 out of 5 of these letters correct already, it already requires additional unfounded and speculative step to want to read it as Agnes instead of Agnew. And I don’t think that is the best or the most accurate rending. We can clearly see what it actually says. Reading this as Agnew leaves us with only one. small, very small, and commonly made and easy to understand error. He simply forgot the dot on one of his H’s. That’s it. And you can see that one of the H’s, he gets correct and adds the dot. One of them, he omits the dot. That is a very common error to make and one that is very easy to understand, as opposed to inverting the S’s and the W’s for the entire entry. And, you know, so I, I mean, how many times in a typo have you had TGE? What that would do without the dot is turn that H to a G. So we can assume that it’s supposed to be that, that’s a very common word. We can just see, OK, he just left the dot out. That’s easy to understand, especially when we have another H where he includes the dot and the word is clearly T H E, not T G E. That is a very different mistake than claiming that he wrote Agnes S instead of Agnew W. So, but for anyone who is struggling and feeling skeptical about Agnew, thinking that that’s ridiculous, let me try to help. So I can Remember if I mentioned, but maybe I did, that Agnew was actually a last name that was present in Navu. I recognized the name because of the temple episodes I did. Joseph Agnew is actually the man believed to be responsible for setting the Navu Temple on fire in 1848. He was the most frequently mentioned suspect, from quoting from this article. There is evidence that Joseph Agnew confessed on his deathbed to having set up the fire that destroyed the Navo. In 1848, Agnew was reportedly injured by the flames at the time. And this article goes into more of the controversy surrounding that. But he really is the primary suspect and the only suspect. So, now, I, I want to say something here, but first, I want to state explicitly that I am not at all implying that the Agnew in Brigham Young’s cipher is the same Joseph Agnew that was, that supposedly burned the temple. I Do not have any evidence to support that. I am not making that claim. I am merely pointing out that there were Agnews in 1840s Nu. So saying Agnew might be that entry is not ridiculous, is not ludicrous, is not meaningless. It is entirely, entirely possible. It was just a name. Agnes was a name, Agnew was a name, and it actually says Agnew. But I do need to make a point, because while I am absolutely not claiming that, um, this is Showing some connection with Brigham Young and, and Joseph Agnew, I’m not saying that I do want to make another point here that I hope people will be able to actually listen to and hear and, and take in and comprehend. So in my episode on the Navo Temple, I talked a bit about the evidence for the belief that Brigham Young had orchestrated the burning of the temple. Many people believe that happened. Many people still believe that work has been done on it, and evidence has been provided. I’m not saying any, I’m Drawing any conclusion, I’m just saying that that is something that has been thought and studied. So this is the point I want to make. If someone who believes, who believes that Brigham Young was responsible for having the temple burned, he was in Salt Lake, but they think that he hired somebody to do it. So if somebody who believes that read this document and saw that Brigham Young had written something about somebody named Agnew in code in his diary, and then they interpreted that as proof that he had a connection. To the Agnew that um that he had a connection to Agnew that he wanted to keep hidden, and then they claimed that this document was contemporary proof that Brigham Young had indeed hired Agnew to burn the temple. That would not be any more speculative and imaginative and irresponsible than the way this document is currently being used. In some ways it would be less extreme because it would at least be. Based on an accurate reading of the document, it would be consistent with what the symbols actually say. It wouldn’t have to already change Agnew to Agnes to make that claim. The fact is, either of those imaginative interpretations, saying that it’s Brigham Young hiding his involvement in, um, the burning of the Navo Temple, or saying Brigham Young is hiding Joseph Smith’s involvement in. Polygamy. Either of those is completely unfounded, is just as likely or unlikely to be true. They are equally unsupported by the document. The doc this document cannot support either interpretation. And I wanted to bring out that, um, that interpretation of reading it as Agnew and and implying some sort of secret connection to burning the Navo Temple. I wanted to go into that just So you could see how it really is the same. If someone wants to push back and show me why you have better evidence to say that it should be about polygamy, than what I just provided to say it should be about the burning of the Navo Temple, I, I think that that would be a good discussion to have. But as of now, I see them to be pretty, pretty equally, um, supported by this document, except, as I said, that the document actually does say Agnew instead. Agnes. So I am hopeful that people are at least starting to see a little bit why this document should not be used as evidence of polygamy. I’ve stated so many things, the improper interpretation of it, the, we can’t say it’s contemporary, the expert opinions of it, the, uh, I mean, on and on and on, we can go on. But for any diehards who still want to claim that it says Agnes, there are a few more things that I think that we ought to consider. So let me add this back. And you can see the interpretation. Some may argue that because there are two W’s at the end, it must actually show that it’s S’s because there would be two S’s, so that we can claim it’s Agnes S for Agnes Smith, Don Carlos’s, um, widow. So, again, this is still massively speculative, but let’s look quickly at it to see if we can make any sense of it. Um, first, can we please acknowledge that this is putting the desired interpretation onto the document, right? It’s the definition of motivated reasoning, because we are saying, oh, it must say Agnes. So we’re going to make it say Agnes, even though it very clearly says Agnew. And there was an Agnew in Navu. There was, I mean, there was at least one Agnew in Navu, and I’m assuming very possibly more. It was becoming a very big city. But even if we want to say it’s Agnes, this, I want to point out that there were multiple Agneses in Navvo. There were even multiple Agnes SS’s. This is a record of Agnes Sutherland. She’s another Agnes S of her contribution to the relief Society subscription to pay for the nails and glass for the temple. So she was an active, involved member member in um in Navvo and. She could just as easily be claimed to be a polygamist wife of Joseph Smith, right? In fact, if we want to look at, because we have the AS that John Bennett put out, that’s one of the evidences to support Agnes, um, Agnes Kubre Smith being one of Joseph’s wives. It could just as easily have been Agnes Sutherland. We don’t have any better evidence, right? And so, um, but I really want you to look at this because this is really interesting. If you look at how she is You can see that her name was actually written with two S’s, A G N E S S. Now, I know that that first S looks like an F or an L. And so I have to explain that’s called a medial S. I had to have someone teach me about this a little bit recently. I was surprised I didn’t already know. So I have to admit that I, I, you learn something new every day. This is the medial S or a long S, and it’s how double S’s were written. You will see this often in transcription work. And I know That I’ve been confused in this, in the by this in the past, seeing why is that an F or why is that an L. It was written often in a double S. and then it seems what, what I’ve, what I understand from people who have taught me about it is that as the printing press became more and more common, the printers didn’t want to have to have two different kinds of S’s. So they just use the same kind of S and then that came into writing after is is how it’s assumed that that happened. But the point that this is important, this is Agnes with two S. right? And then, and, and then in that last initial S as well. So it shows us very um a couple of different important things. First of all, spellings were not consistent. If you get into reading these documents, you see that very quickly. And Brigham Young was an especially atrocious speller. There are like when we look a little bit later into some of the journals entries, you’ll see a little bit of what I mean. But um if this Very capable scribe who wrote so beautiful, so beautifully wrote these entries into this list, could mistakenly spell Agnes with two S’s, because Agnes is generally spelled with one S. Brigham Young could certainly have made the same mistake and written it with two S’s. And so, even if this is read as Agnes, there isn’t sufficient reason for all of these reasons, to assume that it must be Agnes Smith. It could be Agnes Sutherland. It could be any of the other Agneses just written with two S’s. All of those things are possible. But by the same token, since we are understanding that Brigham Young could have very easily written Agnes with two S’s, he also could have very easily written, written Agnew with an extra W. That would be nothing out of the ordinary for what we see in the spellings that are happening here. That is at least one possibility. And there are other possi. Possibilities as well. Um, this is an important point to consider. If this says Agnes, since, um, it is a Masonic cipher entry entry written in Masonic cipher about people being, um, prematurely inducted into a not yet chartered Masonic lodge, it could be read as potential evidence that women were also being inducted early into this lodge. This could explain. And this could be another reason to explain those ellipses. I already explained that that that that’s um some experts read that as an ellipses within the dots that Brigham Young put in between um. Each of his symbols. And so it, it does intend, I mean, it doesn’t imply that there’s something more that’s not being written, or that’s not being added or it’s not being recorded. Maybe that’s all he needed, and he’s saying there’s more in my journal. Go check the the Brigham Young Journal, as he wrote right below this. We don’t know. But, um, what it could be saying is, I was taken into the lodge on the top line. Jay Smith was, Joseph Smith was also taken into the lodge. We can see a space there, right? Applying. There’s something different. Jay Smith was Agnes, and we don’t know what it’s saying about Agnes. It could be implying anything, but it, it, but it could be implying, but not explicitly reporting that Agnes maybe was inducted into the lodge this day as well. I, I am not about to make that claim. I don’t know that it’s that likely. Some of the other people I’ve spoken to don’t think it’s that likely, but some seem to think that maybe that is the case. So we don’t, the fact is we don’t have any corroboration. evidence that women were being made nascents at this point. So this is still very speculative, but still, it would be a better reading than claiming that this Masonic cipher document is evidence of polygamy. So, after looking at depth, in depth, I do, at at this document, I do think the best reading assumes consistency instead of building in unsupported and unexplained inconsistencies in order. To, you know, make it say something that we imagine it might say or that we want it to say. The best reading will acknowledge that was simply says was and is consistent in both lines. And in my opinion, that Agnew says Agnew, and that the ellipses mean that there was more that was not recorded, which is why we don’t know exactly what the rest of this might have said, and we don’t know exactly what it is about. I think we need to accept that limitation of this document and say, we don’t know what it was saying about Agnew. I think it is safe to say, I was taken into the lodge. Joseph Smith was taken into the lodge. Agnew something. That’s, that’s, um, my best interpretation about it at this time. But I don’t know. I, I mean, I guess I’ll have to ask the Masons. I’m just throwing out anything that’s occurring to me. Is there somebody, um, like, that is Agnew, a character somewhere in the Navu Masonic Lodge. So like, just like a character could say like William Clayton played, I believe, Lucifer in the Navvu Temple. Could Joseph Smith have been Agnew in the Masonic? I’m throwing things out there. I have no idea. All I’m trying to point out is, we don’t know what this means. We don’t know why it was recorded this way, and we don’t know exactly what it implies. And we need to be very careful to not embed interpretation. Into it that cannot accurate that cannot accurately be read into it that should not be assumed to be there when we don’t have good evidence to support it. So if we want to follow good historical practice, I don’t see how we can continue to make these unfounded claims. If people do want to keep using this as evidence of polygamy at the very least, as I said before, they should respond to this content and take the experts on Freemasonry masonry far. More seriously than they have to this point. So now that this entry and Brigham Young’s journal has been beaten to death, I want to take a few more minutes to explain the fascinating history of this piece of history, the story of how this, this interpretation became embedded into, um, our zeitgeist, right? I want to explain where it came from and what has happened to get it where it is now. This is a Fascinating story for a variety of reasons. Um, first, it’s just really interesting, but it also does serve as an important cautionary tale to hopefully teach all of us that we need to be more careful in our uninvestigated assumptions and that we should be always revisiting sources and always asking questions and listening to new arguments being made about them. And as I said before, a couple of times, most of all, it serves as an important. Um, um, microcosm, I said that before, but of the entire polygamy narrative and discussion. What has happened with the source, I think is what has happened with the entire body of evidence on polygamy. So that’s why I think it’s worth going into. So let’s go ahead and add this slide. I love this slide. This is the man who first um deciphered this journal entry. His name is Arturo de Hoyas, and I know there is way too much. on this slide, but this guy’s bio is impressive. It is massive. Um, he, uh just a couple of highlights, he’s one of 3 foremost Masonic scholars in the world, one of the 3 that was invited to the Vatican to discuss Freemasonry and the Roman Cat with the Roman Catholic Church. Um, he is the author of over 60 books on Freemasonry. And then interestingly, he was raised in the LDS Church. I believe he was only raised in the LDS Church, but it meant that he had an interest. In this document. So he decoded this entry on May 21, 1991, almost 150 years after it was written, if it was written on that day, on that January 6, 1842 day. So we can all imagine how exciting that must have been when he finally cracked the code. So perhaps it is no wonder that in the 30 years since, um, art, I believe he goes by art, since art’s first rendering. No one has substantially challenged it or the interpretation that grew out of it. And so I do wanna make it clear that revisiting a source and bringing up new proposed ideas is not attacking the person who first did the groundbreaking work to, um, to bring about this source, right? We, we always want to build on what, um, previous generations have done in, in all fields, right? It’s, if you come up with a better car, it’s not insulting for for development. Helping the Model T, right? That’s just not how it works. This is what history does and everybody who works on history, um, usually should welcome new work being done. And so I think that that’s what our, um, Arturo’s attitude would be as well. I think I can safely assume that. So I want to explain what happened. This is based on public sources and additional correspondences between some of the parties involved. So, um, when Arturo deciphered the code, he excitedly Called his friend named Tim Rathbone to discuss it in that conversation, this was this this happened during the era of the emergence of um evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. All of this was coming out, right? It wasn’t, we didn’t have it in the um common understanding yet. John Dehlin hadn’t started this podcast, but Deac Quinn was writing and doing his research and a lot of these sources were coming out and starting to shake things up in the historical world a bit. So in that climate, Arturo threw out several speculations of what WAS might mean. He did assume Arturo did read this to say Agnes, and then he thought WAS might mean something. So he, he is the one that started with that interpretation. In his own words, however, he was merely, quote, spitballing. He says that he was just spitballing. He acknowledged that the most obvious interpretation was simply That it said was, that it meant was, as we’ve already pointed out, which is Cheryl Bruno’s interpretation. But in his excited brainstorming, he proposed that it also might mean washed, anointed and sealed, or even possibly wetted and sealed, which actually is the weakest of the interpretations he spitballed that he threw out, since those words words were never used together. There isn’t a term wetted and sealed, and that’s really not a term that we could read back into an 184. To document. And also it’s just, I mean, there are so many problems with it. It’s weird for and to be included in an acronym, right? That’s why washed, anointed and sealed, if we want to assume an acronym, would be better. There, there’s no and in it, and also there are no capitals and on and on, it’s just the same as the top. So anyway, but remembering that these were only conjectures and that he was only spitballing, we can understand that nothing was meant to be. Definitive. However, the story did not end there. A few years later, I’m assuming, let me, um, get this slide, that it might have been because of this advertisement, I found, I, it’s hard to find the dates of all the Sunstone symposia, but I did find this that dates it the 9th through the 12th of August, um, 1995. So I’m just going to assume that it might have been at this, um, Sunstone symposium. Tim Rathbone gave a sunstone presentation, let me see if I can get there, entitled Brigham Young’s Masonic Connection and the Nu Plural Marriages, where he excitedly announced that the journal had been decoded and then he went very, very far beyond that. The, um, audio of The Sunstone um presentations is available so I’ll link that below for anyone who wants to listen to this fascinating meeting that it’s so interesting when a historical meeting itself becomes part of history because I that is what has happened with this meeting so um this is Tim Rathbone this is his um his um paper that I think is available online. And then, this is, this is not the slide that he used. I’m just putting this slide up, this is my slide because I don’t have the slides that he used in his presentation. So I’m going to quote a bit of this presentation. He, this is quoting Tim. This entry in Brigham Young’s diary has baffled historians for years, written in an esoteric Masonic cipher that Brigham Young, not yet a Mason, knew about. He seems to miss that Brigham Young was made a Mason this day, according to this to the cipher. Um, but, but at this point, it was presumed that he wasn’t made a mason until later. The Royal, that’s quoting to him again, the Royal Arch Masonic cipher all tered for Brigham Young’s. Purposes on this day of days, the entry reads as follows. So let me go to my next slide so I can show you his interpretation of it. I was taken into the lodge, J Smith WAS Agnes. Now this is really cool because this, as far as I know, is the first time that this, um, decoding, that the, the fact that this had been. Ciphered was ever made public. And this was the first version that was announced, and I think it was in this talk. So, um, but Tim goes on from there. So he says this interpretation, but then he goes on, I’m quoting him again, an expanded version might read, I, Brigham Young, was taken into the lodge room, so he adds room on there for his his interpretation. Joseph Smith wetted and sealed Agnes Koreth Smith. So he just gives us that expanded interpretation and provides nothing to support it. And he doesn’t throw it out as a possibility. Um, it’s not spitballing. It is definitively stating what how this should be interpreted and what it says. I Um, I’m surprised to see this. And, and then he goes on, I’m quoting him again, this doubly encrypted entry written in royal arch code makes uses of the characters WAS and SAW as an acronym for wedded and sealed and sealed and wedded. OK, so that’s, that’s really something, right? Like we’re getting a lot there. I can see the excitement that you would want to build this in because it’s like an encryption within an encryption, right? I think he goes on to say that because it’s encrypted in Masonic cipher, but encrypted within the Masonic cipher is the code. WAS, but then he adds to it SAW as well. Maybe that’s because they’re flipping the S’s and the W’s whichever direction they want them other than in like Smith because no one’s saying that W M I T H, right? So it’s quite interesting. So this is Arturo’s rendering again, and you can see there is no SAW. So I, I have no idea where he’s getting that other than just assuming that they can be flipped over either way willing. So I’ll continue to quote from this presentation. The January 6th, 1842 entry contained a cipher within a cipher, again, said with no citation or footnote. Joseph Smith’s history records the following on this day. Truly, this is a day of days in which the God of heaven has begun to restore the ancient order of His kingdom, a day in which God has begun to make manifest and set in order in his church. Those things which men desire to see, a day in which those things begin to be made manifest, which have been hid from the foundation of the world, a kingdom of priests and kings, all of which is to come to pass at this restitution of all things. So that’s with a lot of ellipses, and he’s, he’s citing that from Joseph Smith’s journal, and this is what he says about it. This ceiling to Agnes is the conceivable explanation for this otherwise cryptic entry. OK. So, um, there’s a lot that I disagree with there. I do not think that that is the conceivable explanation for this otherwise cryptic entry. I think that there is so much motivated reasoning going into this, and I’ll go on to explain a little bit. But, um, he does go on in the rest of his paper to make many. Additional um claims that I feel are not well supported and then um he anyway he he gives us this interpretation that seems to still be going on to this day and it is a very problematic interpretation for a variety of reasons. I’ve already covered many of them. But we’ll quickly dig into his claim about WAS and SAW as wetted and sealed and sealed and wedded, and I do, I still hear this being bandied about the WAS and SAW, that that’s what it meant. And then I will also go into his connecting it to Joseph Smith’s journal. That those are um really important pieces to dive into and then we will talk a little bit more about where the story went from there because more very fascinating parts to come. So first of all, it was good to finally um learn where this idea of WAS and SAW comes from and to see the support for it because I haven’t seen that before. I just heard it and I, and you know, I thought it was based in this journal entry and then people think that it could be either direction, but I, I have not understood it so. The hypothesis seems to be that these two very common words, saw and was, what is a very common word, can either say what they actually say, I can just say saw or it can just say what, I’m having to interpret this from, from what is implied in, in what is presented in this paper. Or with, um, or they can mean wetted and sealed unsealed and wedded with no clear indication, no differentiation, no. Way to decide to interpret them that way they can be code for polygamy and so he doesn’t offer um a footnote to support this interpretation, but fortunately in his paper he does include what he sees as examples. So I think that these are important to go into just so we can consider whether there is good, um, whether this is a good argument, whether we should continue to assume that WAS can be washed anointed seal. I mean, what it’s. So I can’t even say it because as I’ve said, if we are going to say WAS is an acronym, it should be, I think, washed anointed sanctified because we at least find that in the scriptures that are referred to in the washing and anointing. But, um, but in any case, I think that we should question even that. At this point, I don’t know if I would even argue that that is a good interpretation because I think was is just was, and I think saw is just saw and as we go through the. Examples. I’m, I’m wondering if you all might come to the same conclusion. So the first example he gives was really frustrating because it didn’t include a date. So, uh, it took forever to find. Luckily, I did find it. He says that Brighat Young wrote in his journal, I sealed and wedded Sister Louisa B. Smith, HC Kimball, and Sylva L. Smith, etc. etc. Great is the work of the Lord in these last days. So, um, I I did find the actual entry, and here it is right here. It’s from September 19, 1844. And so you can look, let’s read through the entire entry. Stayed at home all day. My wife is quite sick. I saw Sister Louisa B. Smith, HC Kimball, and Sylva L. Smith, etc. etc. Great is the work of the Lord in these last days. So, so, I, I, I have a hard time saying why it’s not. I saw Sister Louisa B. Smith. I saw Herey Kimball, and I saw Sylva L. Smith. Why it would be, like, you can see there’s no capitalization, there’s no differentiation. It just look at the S on Saw and the S on sister, right? And it’s all lowercase. I saw Sister Louisa B. Smith, HC Kimball, and Sylva L. Smith, etc. etc. He saw some people, right? So we have To ask why, um, why we would point out this interpretation, and it is interesting. I’ve dug into these, these, um, ideas to see if they match up to any ceiling records. I’m not going to take time right now to go into them. It’s interesting because I did find in on some occasions, not all occasions, not most occasions, but on some occasions, I did find that someone said there was a ceiling this day between these people. But as I tried to dig into it, It seems to me that this is the source for that claim. Now, I did not do an exhaustive search. I spent so much time on this that that I just didn’t have time to to search every possible source. I did what I could. I, I took all the low hanging fruit, right? But I didn’t contact, um, um, a genealogist or someone else that might be able to find more. So I would be interested to see if we have corroborating evidence for ceilings and, um, ceilings and Wedding for weddings and ceilings or ceilings and weddings on these days that aren’t just reliant on these sources, but they don’t seem to be well substantiated to me at this point. But, um, then, so this is the first one, and you could see saw sister, right? Is that just the word saw or is that I sealed and wedded Sister Louisa B Smith, HC Kimball, and Sylva L. Smith. And from the way it’s worded, it would mean that he had to marry them all to himself, right? So it’s interesting. Anyway, so here’s the next entry that he cites. Um, it’s the same day but recorded in Hebrew C. Kimball’s journal, and he says that it says, sealed and well, well, he writes SAW but underlines it, which means we’re supposed to interpret it as sealed and wedded. So I’m reading it that way. Sealed and wedded, Sylvester Smith and that be nobles. I was bound to Sylvia Smith. So he says that it says that, um, on September 19, 1844. So let’s go ahead and go. That next page. And here we see this is um Hebrew C. Kimball’s journal for that day. I know it’s a bit hard to read, so I will read it for you. This is September 19, 1844. This is what it actually says. Went to Brother William E. Murray, Elder Winchester’s, and carried the letter Elder B. Young had received from Elder Grant concerning Elder Winchester, saw Sylvester Smith and B at the Nobles. That is what the entry says. You can see where the saw is underlined, all in lowercase, just like Sylvester is all in lower case, right? And it says Sylvester Smith. So unless we want to say that Hebrew C. Kimball is saying that he sealed and wetted Sylvester Smith, and we can assume Joseph Bates Noble, that’s who he presumes it says, then I don’t know what he’s talking about. And that’s the end of the entry. The next line goes on to the next day, which I’ll go ahead and show you. So I have no idea where he’s getting, um, the part about, I was bound to Sylvia Smith. I, I guess that’s a question if I’m missing something, but I certainly don’t see where that’s coming from. And so I have to say here, I’m, I’m sorry to go here, but I have seen some very conjectural and, in my opinion, um, not well supported. presentations proposing the possibility of same-sex ceilings in Navo. And I would say that this right here, if we’re going to go with the WAS means washed anointed sealed or SAW means sealed sealed and wetted. I keep saying it wrong, see, sealed and wedded. If we’re going to say that, I think this would be the best evidence for same-sex ceilings in Navvo that I have seen. This is better than any of the evidence they presented, right? Since Heber apparently sealed and wedded Sylvester Smith and perhaps Joseph Bates Noble either to each other or both of them to himself, polygamously, I have no idea how we’re supposed to read this, but this is the end of the entry. So again, I don’t know where he gets the I was bound to Sylvia Smith. If I’m missing it, then I would appreciate someone pointing out to me because it’s totally possible that I missed things. I try hard not to, but, but maybe I did. But any I want to go on and show you the very next, so this is just the very next portion of this paper. This is the very next line. I will go ahead and read what it says because I think it is relevant to what we’re talking talking about. And so this says, um, this is the 20th, Friday of September. It says, went to the temple. Elder Clayton wrote to me a letter to, um, to Sister Ruth Sayers. This is the part. Sister Evans. was sealed to her husband for time and eternity. So there we have sealed, written out, right? Was sealed. So wetted and sealed, sealed, or just was sealed. And when they wanted to say sealed, they wrote sealed. That’s what I’m proposing. Apparently, he forgot to just to write SAW on that one, and he wrote, was sealed. And I think it’s so interesting that that comes right below the, um, the, um, The entry that Tim Rathbone is claiming that there was is is because they were hiding, they were encoding ceiling. And then if we go down the page to the very next entry, the very next line below this slide, this is what comes right below the 21st, and it says, went to Brother Alton’s and sealed him to his dead wife and gave the family counsel, and it goes on from there. Again, you can see sealed, clearly written out. They didn’t. Code it in any way. And so, so I’m, I’m struggling to think that this is a worthwhile, um, hypothesis, that, that we should read these SAWs or WAS’s in this way. He does make a very big deal with this next source of saying, well, he makes a deal of saying that ME on the top of it, he, he claims that this means, um, married for eternity. And he thinks it’s relevant when, anyway, I, I, um, have looked through this quite a bit. Some of them say MT, some of them say ME. I haven’t looked enough to see what all of them might say, and I haven’t been able to make a firm connection to what MT and ME might mean. But I will say he hasn’t either. And just assuming that it means marriage for eternity, again, I would need to see something more sound. To, um, to help me think that that is a good assumption to make of what that means. But he quotes this page, here it is. I’ll show you right here. He quotes it to say, this day I visited Brother Isaac Chase, Brother HC Kimbell was with me. Brother and sister Chase with their daughter, Clancy wedded and sealed at home. We had a good visit, Brother HCK. So do you see that? Like. I think it’s just so interesting to say that it says wetted and sealed at home when it very clearly says, um, brother and sister Chase with their daughter Clancy was at home. We had a good visit. Brother HC Kimball. This is how they spoke. You see this in many letters. This is, I mean, in many different letters and writings that they was home, right? It’s, that’s all that it’s saying. Again, it’s such a simple thing to say that they were at home. And yet it’s, nope, it’s, it’s wetted and sealed them with their daughter and everyone else, even though it says it clearly in other places. So I think we have one or two more to show because I’m, I’m trying to go into all of the examples that he provides so that we can look at the source of these claims we make. I think everyone should have their eyes open to see if they want to keep making these claims, if they feel like this is good evidence and that this is a good theory to keep promoting. So, um, here. We have, I think this next one is, yeah, this is Hebrew C. Kimball on the same day, the 10th, and even though this one doesn’t even say WAS or SAW, he still uses it to make this claim, and I guess to corroborate this claim, this is a longer entry where he and Brigham are going all around town visiting people, so I’m skipping down to where the arrow is. It says from thence went to brother Brother Greens, then to to then to Brother Chases. They We sealed all right. So, and it doesn’t say was sealed. It says WARE. They were sealed, but it’s spelled W A R E. Remember I said that, um, spellings were not standardized at this time. So, again, this already says they were sealed all right, and yet he’s using it to corroborate that the WAS here means what it is sealed, I guess I can’t even make sense of, of his examples. So, again, the, the point of wanting to show you this is just so we can all understand the, um, you know, the trustworthiness of the evidence of the arguments and the evidence that we are relying on when we want to say that WAS is an acronym for wetted and sealed or that SAW is an acronym for sealed and wedded in Brigham Cypher or in any other source. Please recognize this. Please take it seriously and decide if you want. To keep saying that. And if anyone does want to keep saying that, may I recommend that we come up with better evidence to support it. And, um, as I showed you at least one source, while I was searching for each of these, I saw dozens and dozens of of uses of the words saw and especially was that he didn’t pick out for this special meeting, meaning, and I also, I showed a few of them, but I saw multiple entries about feelings that didn’t use this coded language. So I personally do not see how this can even be taken seriously for a second. I, I think we ought to discard this theory. It is not supported. And then, um, but then he did expand the idea in a comment on Mike Reed’s blog post about the cipher. I believe this blog post was from 2013, and I will link it below as well. But there’s a comment in it, and I’m going to quote from that. It says, Hello, I am the author of the paper Brigham Young’s Masonic Connection. Novo plural marriage. I am also a friend of Art De Hoyos, who translated the January 6, 1842 passage written in Brigham Young’s diary. If one reads, and then I’m skipping down to the last paragraph, if one reads Brigham Young’s diary for 1837 through 1845 on page 84, Brigham Young writes, 15 January 1845. This is the last ME, marriage for eternity. And he says, at Brother JB Nobles saw, sealed and wedded, Sister Mary Anne Clark. So the last marriage for eternity, um, Brigham Young at Joseph Bates Noble, sealed and wedded Sister Mary Anne Clark. He then says, Brigham Young married or sealed Joseph Bates Noble and Sister Mary Anne Clark on this date. OK. I, I did spend quite a bit of time looking into this one. I, I mean, I was tired, maybe I missed something, but again, I cannot find anything to support that. Nothing. So he’s making that claim, and it seems that he’s just, it’s just circular, is my best guess that he’s saying, because it said so, that means that’s his evidence for making this claim that, um, Brigham Young sealed, married or sealed Joseph Bates Noble and his sister Mary Anne Clark on this date. I don’t know where he’s getting that from. So he continues and goes, If one reads Brigham Young’s Hebrewsy Kimballs. Willard Richards, and he’s saying that’s Joseph Smith’s diary after June 27th, 1844, and William Clayton’s diary, one finds the terms of or initials SAW sealed and wetted or WAS wetted and sealed for a number of dates. Um, let’s see, he goes on to say, oh, these are acronyms used for plural marriages. And then he says, any other questions? Author and historian Tim Rathbone. So I guess he’s given us his authoritative. Word on the matter and so I decided to look into these as well. Maybe there’s more that he’s adding after the fact, you know, this was years after he had written his paper, so maybe we, maybe there’s more we could find. So first of all, he claims that William Clayton’s journal includes many examples of SAW for sealed and wetted or WAS for wetted and sealed for a number of days. So I looked for them. I looked at SAW. I looked at every use of SAW and William Clayton’s journal. And I I found two potential entries when SAW might conceivably be used to say, seal the wetted instead of just saw. I mean, if it just said like, I saw many apple trees, I thought, you know, like those, I’m not including. But when it’s about people, then maybe it’s a possibility. So these are the two examples I found. 1st February 17, 1842. Um, let’s see. He says, Thursday, I dined at Sister High. With brother Joseph Smith, Heber, Kimball, Wilfred Woodruff, Brigham Young, and Willard Richards. At night, Saw W and S. So that could be a good one, right? Because it’s encoding W and S. We don’t know who it is. He’s telling us what he did that day, but then at night, saw WNS, that could very well be read at night, sealed and wetted W and S. Again, I don’t know if he’s sealing wetting those two together, or he’s sealing. And wedding them to himself as two additional wives. So this looks like it could be a solid source that that night that he totally could have performed those ceilings or, or had those ceilings done. But there is a pesky detail that we need to take that we need to pay attention to. Note, I said this was the 17th of February 1842. This was a full year before Clayton supposedly became a polygamy insider, right? I talked about This in the Whitney documents that that Clayton saved this, but he wasn’t a polygamy insider yet. So he could have read polygamy into it at this point if the standard narrative is true. So it’s hard to understand why he would be in on, um, why he would be being sealed and wedded to, to other women, or why he would be performing, um, a ceiling and wedding, and how he would already be in on the code on. The code that to embed it, right? So, I’m going to discard that one and just say that that night he saw WNS, whoever those people were, he beheld them. He saw them, right? They met somehow. And then, um, the other one that I found is the 14th of October, 1843. This one isn’t as strong as the last one, other than the dating problem, but it says, evening, I went to Sister Booth’s and saw SA, but could not have a chance to converse any. So he went to Sister Booth’s and he saw somebody named SA and they didn’t have a chance to talk. So the dating works, he would have been a polygamy insider already, according to the narrative. It was after he would have written the polygamy revelation. So it’s possible for that. But it is a little weird to say that he was sealed and wedded to someone without having a chance to talk to them at all, right? Like, like, um, let’s see if I read. Um, um, evening, I went to Sister booths and sealed and wedded SA but could not have a chance to converse Eddie. So just show up, be sealed, and, and get out. You don’t get any time alone. You can’t talk. So I guess we could interpret it that way. It’s a little bit amusing, but, um, also, there’s no evidence that William Clayton was sealed to anybody on this day. I don’t think that this is a strong case to make. I will confess I did not take time to look through the over. 700 uses of the word was in his journal. No, I, I do not see reason to do that. So maybe I did miss a few of the special coded ones. If someone wants to do that and show me where was means wetted and sealed instead of just was, I’ll hap happily listen, but I don’t find enough evidence to support more research down that empty rabbit hole at this point. So, um, anyway, that’s, that’s going into that claim. So far, I’m, I’m just Not terribly impressed by these, um, assumptions or by this theory that we have going on. But I do, however, think it will be worthwhile to look into the one claim he makes in that, um, comment about the Brigham Young Journal. So I’m going to go ahead and add this, because he claims that this is a new source of, um, SAW as sealed and wetted that he hadn’t included in his paper. I guess he found it later. So this is Wednesday, the 15th of January, 1845. It says Went to the temple, this top one is the one that he refers to. Went to the temple and stone quarry at Brother Joseph Bates Nobles. Saw Sister Mary and Clark, right? So he saw someone, but apparently he sealed and wedded her. And, um, let’s see if we can make sense of it. Went to the Temple and Stone Quarry at, at Brother Joseph Bates Noble’s sealed and wedded Sister Mary Anne Clark. So he says that he sealed them, Joseph Batesnoble and Sister Mary Anne Clark. I don’t think it works well at all. And also, as I said, I haven’t found any record of Joseph Bates Noble or Brigham Young marrying, uh, Mary Anne Clark on that day or any other day. But, um, but I do think that while I’m going to discard this as a source for ceiling and wedding or polygamy, I do think that this source is very important for a very different reason. So I’m going to go ahead and, and let’s read the rest of the page. It says, Anne went to Seys Hall in the evening at Brother. Aaron Johnson went up to the high council, was their writing. So again, we have another was. So wetted and sealed writing? No, it’s just was, right? Was as was, saw and saw, was their writing. Then the 16th says, went to the temple, spent most of the day with Brother HC Kimball in correcting his history. Went to Robert Pierce’s in the afternoon with HC Kimball. That is interesting to me. I don’t think this is important, an important, um, entry about. By me, but I do think it’s an important entry about the rewriting of history. He went, um, spent most of the day with Brother HC Kimball in correcting his history. Brigham Young was helping Hebrew C. Kimball correct his history, or Brigham Young was correcting Hebrew C. Kimball’s history. That’s very interesting and I think very important. That is an entry I think we should pay attention to. Then we go to the 17th, went to the temple and to Doctor Richard. The church historian to see about the records of the church in the evening, Brother Kimball, um, Brother Kimball, John Taylor, and George A. Smith, who became the historian a little later, was at the upper room in the evening. So I think this is an interesting page in Brigham Young’s journal, but for a very different reason again, not because of polygamy, but I think it’s something we should be paying attention to because of the rewriting of history, which is what monogamy affirmers. Believe happened and this source supports our, um, our claims. So there’s, there’s one that I just happened upon. So, anyway, OK, that’s pretty much what he says, although, no, it’s not. There’s one more very important source that we need to look into. This is going a little longer than I wanted it to, but I think we need to look into this one as well. And this is Joseph Smith’s journal. So let me go ahead and add this journal entry from, um, January 6th to 18. 42, the same day as Brigham Young’s Mason Masonic cipher. Now a couple of things I want to point out before I even bother to read this. At the top you can see, I know this is a very light copy. It’s hard to see it, but it’s dated over on the, um, top left hand corner and then at the top it says the new year in beautiful calligraphy. It is a big deal. This is the first entry of the new year. This may even be Willard Richard’s first entry as Joseph Smith’s, um, new scribe and historian. Or news, I think. And so, um, this is the new year, and as I read the entry, I, so, so, um, Tim Rothbone is making the assumption that what is being talked about in this entry, how it’s so, um, vociferous in its excitement of things being restored, he’s connecting it directly to polygamy, saying it was, it, it regards the ceiling of Agnes to Joseph Smith. Now, I have problems with that for a variety of reasons. First of all, Agnes, according to the narrative, was around Joseph Smith’s sixth plural wife. So this wasn’t a new thing that was being done or a new doctrine that was being revealed. The, um, revelation wouldn’t be written for, oh gosh, over a year and a half later, right? And so, so what is the new exciting thing that’s happening that would make you think that this relates to, like, Joseph Smith’s 7th wife, 6th polygamist. Life. Why, how would this relate to that? As I read it and, and as I spoke about. So first of all, it has nothing to do with being sealed to Agnes. Again, that is just extreme motivated reasoning and research bias to read that into it. There is just nothing to support that. And actually, it, it goes contrary to what is written here. But then another thing, if again, if we wanted to assume that this is about something exciting based on Brigham Young’s Masonic cipher, then maybe it would be the fact that they started. And um what is, what is the word I’m looking for initiating people into the lodge at this point. Joseph Smith was uh according to that was initiated into the lodge this day according to how that should be read by the but the experts say that is a better reading. So it would more likely have to do with that thing that happened brand new, especially when people make connections between the Masonic Lodge and the temple, right? That would be a better understanding than to say it was about his. 6th plural wife. In any case, let’s go ahead and read this entry, and you can see if you think it is best applied to the ceiling with Agnes Smith. Let’s go ahead and read it. The new year has been ushered in and continued thus far under the most favorable auspices. It is about the new year, the coming of the new year, right? And the saints seem to be influenced by a kind and indulgent providence in their disposition and means to rear the temple of the most high. God, anxiously looking forward, looking forth to the completion thereof. This is about the new year. They’re building the temple. They’re hopeful, they’re excited. They’ve got this temple project going on. They’re looking forward to it as an event of the greatest importance to the church and the world, making the saints and Zion to rejoice and the hypocrite and sinner to tremble. Truly, this is a day long to be remembered by the saints of the last days, a day in which the God of heaven has begun to restore the ancient. Order of his kingdom unto his servants and his people, a day in which all things are concurring together to bring about the completion of the fullness of the gospel, a fullness of the dispensation, a dispensation, even the fullness of times, a day in which God began to make manifest and set in order in His church, those things which have been, and those things which the ancient prophets and the wise men desired to see, but died without beholding it. A day in which those things which Begin to be made manifest, which have been hid before the foundations of the world and which Jehovah has provided, has promised, should be made known in his own due time unto his servants to prepare the earth for the return of his glory, even a celestial glory, and the kingdom of priests and kings to God and the Lamb forever on Mount Zion or the 144,000 whom John the Revelator saw, which should come to pass in the restitution of all things. OK, there it is. Again, this entry is clearly simply about the anticipation of beginning a new year in the restoration of the gospel with the temple underway and high hopes for continued revelation. Little more should need to be said about this entry because of how clear it is. So I hope that people will really look into this and take this seriously and look at the, um, quality of evidence to make these claims, right? To see if we want to stick with them. But the story is not over. So I’ve given you a comprehensive understanding of where this idea that this Masonic cipher is about polygamy and that WA. Yes, and SAW is about polygamy. I, there, there is, now you have the full story of where that comes from and what there is to support it. But the story does not end there because in a crazy, crazy twist of fate, the other presenter in this session who had spoken just before Tim Rothbone was none other than Todd Compton. There you can see at the bottom, hopefully underlined in red, this session is Todd Compton and Tim Rathbone, where they are both giving their papers. Todd presented on Elvira, Annie Cole’s Holmes Smith, which I don’t like that he had Smith onto the last names of these women who never had Smith as a name, but, and, um, it calls her Joseph Smith’s Polyandrous wife, and then Tim Rathbone gave his, um, His presentation on Brigham Young and the Masonic Connection. What is really interesting is that when the host of the session introduced um Todd Compton, he included this a book in sacred loneliness is scheduled for publication this year with signature books. So Todd Compton had a book scheduled to come out that year. So this It is so interesting because now I will read what we find. So here, let me give you a picture of Todd Compton’s book. This is in Sacred Loneliness. So this presentation happened just as he was getting ready to publish it, and this picture of Todd is from, um, his, his interview with me on my podcast. I have to say I really, really like Todd. He is a great guy. He is kind, he has a great sense of humor. He’s very thoughtful. I really like Todd. So again, I’m not, I’m really not trying to throw any shade here. I just want to explain how we got this story so we can all think about it. And so Todd was in that session, um, with Tim Rothbone, heard the presentation, had a book almost ready to come out, we can presume it was scheduled to be published that year with signature book, and I’ve heard from others that that’s a long publishing process. So we can imagine maybe. He had to hurry and get an edit to print to be included in the book. Maybe he felt like he needed to include this and didn’t really have time to look into it. I don’t know. But in any case, this is what we read on page 137 of Todd’s book In Sacred Loneliness. The, um, the, the title of this section is J Smith, WAS Agnes. On January 6, 1842, Brigham Young wrote a journal entry in Masonic code. Which when deciphered read, reads, I was taken into the lodge, Jay Smith was Agnes. Was is probably a code word meaning wedded and sealed to. Then he adds the two onto it. As we know from other sources that Joseph Smith probably married Agnes before March 24, 1842, and certainly before June, January 6th fits the time frame for a marriage. The June is just based on John Bennett, including an AS initials, right? Which again could be Agnes Sutherland or could be anything. Anyway, the Masonic code shows that something significant and esoteric happened involving both Joseph and Agnes on this day, and a plural marriage is the most likely event. Smith’s diary emphasizes the importance of this day. His scribe rights, so again, he’s using the same um journal entry, and here’s his cut of it. His scribe. Writes, Truly this is a day long to be remembered by the saints of the last days, a day in which the God of heaven has begun to restore the ancient order of His kingdom unto his servants and his people, a day in which all things are concurring to bring about the completion of the fullness of the gospel. So that’s what he quotes from that. The marriage to Agnes is the reasonable explanation for this otherwise enigmatic entry. So that’s what we have in Todd’s book based on Tim Rathbone’s paper, which I just went over in detail. So, This is, this is really interesting. It’s hard like I think we can see the direct connection. It’s not an amazing circumstance, the direct connection from Tim Rathbone’s um Sunstone presentation with Todd Compton presenting along with him to Todd’s book coming out. Later that year or a year later and from there the rest is history so that was um Todd’s inclusion of this and then from there we go on and I’ll show you this is from um Brian Hill’s website, he says. Um, August 7th, 1841, Don Carlos passed away and goes on to say five months later, Joseph Smith was sealed to Agnes. Brigham Young’s journal for January 6, 1842 records, I was taken into the lodge. Jay Smith was Agnes. Italics added. The word was probably stands for wetted and sealed, and Todd’s book is cited for that. And then we can go on. Next we have, yep, Mark Tinsmeyer. This is also a picture from Mark coming on my podcast. I appreciated that he came on. I would like to discuss with like Mark, Mark, if you want to come in, I’d like to discuss with you further and hope we can have a little bit better discussion than we were able to have last time. But he recently, um, included a paper in Secret Covenant, and so I’m going to cite from that paper, the, the paper, it’s the. here old women’s tales versus the historical verification of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So this really is a paper debunking um monogamy affirmers, right? And, and he includes this source. Here’s what he says on page 74. Brigham Young recorded of Smith and Agnes Kolrith Smith’s January 6, 1842 ceremony that they were WAS or wetted and sealed using. Sonic cipher. And again, my gosh, this has just grown. If you can see now there’s a ceremony being built into it, right? And it’s, and it’s Brigham Young writing about this event that happened and it’s just saying he wrote of this event, this thing rather than this the entire imagination of this being a ceiling, there was no ceremony list right? the the entire imagination of it comes from a very Um, difficult interpretation of this Masonic cipher, and this is the way it’s presented. I think it’s interesting. That we see here that um Mark seems to do the same thing that we heard um in in Brian Hale’s interview where he said that Joseph was wetted and sealed, right? He adds the was back in because it needs the verb and this is what Mark does here too. It says it’s it’s a plural, so he has to use were instead of was, but he says that they were was, right? Or it says Joseph Smith was. And then Agnew, and now we have a ceremony, and they were wetted or sealed. So it’s building, building on this a lot, I think. And then, um, Mark actually writes about this one more time, and he, he creates a list of contemporary, well, this is his contemporary source chart that he is using as the evidence that Um, shows that um monogamy affirmers are incorrect, and I think it’s interesting that this is the very first one on his list, and you can see how it’s represented here. The date January 6th, 1842. The source is Brigham Young Journal at the Church History Library, and this is how it’s described. It says that it notes ceiling between Smith and Agnes Koolrith. Again, so it states factually something that is very, very much based on interpretation, and I would say not very good interpretation. And then it goes on and on from there till it becomes just accepted, adopted by pretty much everybody, right? It goes from the scholars into now it’s being cited by, um, Jacob Hansen, Greg Madsen was familiar with it, not to mention the All of the um anti-Mormons and you know people who are critics of Joseph Smith who rely unquestionably on this source and on others that are very similar and so this is, I guess what I would say is, and thus we see, right, how one of several top of the head spitballing conjectures based on a truly remarkable and exciting discovery became. An embedded contemporaneous source of evidence of Joseph Smith’s novel Polygamy. We can see how a false narrative has been built in to the polygamy discussion during our lifetime. I would say this interpretation of this source combined with the whole what it unsealed, all of that is a false narrative. I hope that you can see. Based on the evidence that has been presented here. I do, however, I need to give credit where credit is due, and I am very happy to do so. I was actually very pleased while I was doing this research to find sources that did not include, um, to to find historians that did not. include this source as evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. The first is Gary Bruguera in his paper identifying the earliest novel polygamist, which I have relied on quite a bit. I of course checked that, and I was very happy to see that he did not use this Masonic cipher in his work. And so I wanted to give a shout out to him. And then also I thought that, um, I was actually very happily surprised to see that the Joseph Smith Papers historians did not use this source, and I thought that that was so great. It made me really happy. In fact, here is the biography that they include on Agnes Milton Kolbrith Pickett, and you can see what they say, the underlying part. It, it gives it in the Much more measured way than many of these voices and these sources do. It says, identified in some sources as a plural wife of Joseph Smith, sealed on the 6th of January 1842. So it says there are some sources that say this, but we’re not going to say for certain that she was a plural wife of Joseph Smith, sealed on this date. And I appreciated that. And then if you click on that footnote, Footnote number 14, it only provides one source, which I found to be fascinating, right? It doesn’t give us John Bennett’s AS and all of the other, you know, readings we have and renderings we have. All it gives us is, um, Mary Anne West’s testimony in the Temple Lot case on the 22nd of March 1892. Question 67. 6 through 687. And so I will just um read that portion because I think it’s interesting to see this is the only evidence that they include and I, I’m sure there are reasons for that, but in any case, I was happy that they didn’t use this bad source that I think, um, would be better not being used. So I’ll just read this quickly. This is the, um, first the her direct examination and the cross examination. State who Agnes Smith was. I think I have stated that. She was the wife of Don Carlo Smith. Whose wife was she at the time that you lived with her? She was Joseph Smith’s wife. How do you know that? No answer. Now, Mrs. West, you may answer the question. She told me herself she was. Her husband said she wished her to marry Joseph, and she did so. That is all. Then the cross-examination. Did you say that Agnes Smith was the wife of Don Carlo Smith? Yes. Yes, sir. Did you also say that she was the wife of Joseph Smith? Yes. Yes, sir. She was after Don Carlos died. How do you know she was? She told me so herself. Did Joseph ever say that? No, sir. I never heard Joseph say anything about it. Did Joseph ever stay with her there? I don’t know. Well, you stayed there and you ought to know something about it if he did. Yes, sir, I was there, but I don’t know about that. Did you ever know of his staying with her there? All I I know about it is what I told you. She told me that she was married to Joseph Smith, and she said it was the wish of her husband, Don Carlos, that they that she should marry him. So, um, as I still, I wanted so much to get into the episodes on the wives this past year, and now we’re almost to the end of the year, and I still haven’t, so I still am intending to get to the episodes on the wives. And that will be a fun source to include as I go into all of the evidence on Agnes to see what we can find. But in any case, I was Happy to see that this is what um Joseph Smith papers included. So I think that is a fair source to include. We have that source, and it was a testimony given, right? We can dig into it more. But um, but I, I that made me happy seeing that they didn’t use it, and I just wanted to end this by strongly recommending that all other historians follow that lead, follow the lead of the Joseph Smith Paper’s editors on their decision that they made about this source. To not include it as contemporaneous evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy in Navo or to not even look at it as a polygamy document at all but to recognize that it is very, um, there are a lot of um interesting things about it. I won’t go so far right now to say that it’s suspect, although that might be my inclination. I think that people can draw their their own conclusions. We have a lot to figure out about. This journal about this entry about where it came from, why it was put in, and then I think it is so important for us to recognize how this happened. I think that clearly there was nothing malicious and no intent to deceive. I don’t think things just happen. That’s why someone gets excited about an idea, then someone really overstates, um, their hypothesis and, and makes a hypothesis and then everyone’s just so excited to have this. This new, um, research on or this new claim on something that they’re interested in that it just gets adopted without being critically examined. And then it takes a long time for people to come around and start to question those assumptions. And when we do, we get a lot of pushback. So I hope that this one source can at least help, um, more of the polygamy affirmers to recognize the value of this discourse and then Need of this discourse and as I said earlier I think this is important because for me I see the same thing happening on many of these sources and then this entire discussion like um for example the affidavits which I’ve been working on and more research is going to come out on those but Daniel Bachman was able to rediscover those when he found them um at the church history library and it was so exciting right? and and. And, and we’ll talk more about that in the future, but it’s, it’s a similar thing. It’s like, oh, look what I just found. So of course, we just accept them uns unquestioningly, which makes sense because it was such a huge discovery, but they still need to be critically examined, just like this source needed to be critically examined. So I hope that we can work together to create more room for this discourse and this discussion. We can all recognize how necessary it is and that we can engage in the best ways possible to hope to bring more um information to light so we can all get closer and closer to good interpretations of sources to good examinations of evidence and ideally figuring out more about the truth. So thank you so much and I will see you next time.
