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There is perhaps no topic in LDS Church circles that is as misunderstood as the similarities between the ceremonies of Freemasonry and those performed as part of the Latter-day Saint temple endowment. Both involve rituals, but the purposes of the rituals distinguish them from each other. The Latter-day Saint endowment prepares women and men to return to the presence of God. Masonry encourages men to be circumspect and to build relationships with fellow Masons. In the past, one approach taken by many Latter-day Saints has been to account for the clear similarities between the rituals as coming from the same source in antiquity. The facts, however, are more complex, as is often the case. There seems to be a clear chronological tie between Joseph Smith’s introduction to Masonry and the revelation of the temple endowment. Determining the relevance of that correlation remains elusive.

Heber C. Kimball longed for an endowment of divine power—something that would give meaning and direction to his life and something that would make sense of the world as it was and relate it to the world to come. When he was about twenty, Heber moved from his native Vermont to western New York and married Vilate Murray in 1822. She bore a daughter in 1823. He bought land and built a fine house, a woodshed, and a barn. He planted an orchard and was living comfortably, at least physically. But tuberculosis stole his mother in 1824, his father a year later, and his brother and sister-in-law another year later—so no house, no matter how well built, nor any amount of property, could make Heber feel endowed with power over death and the way it ended his relationships. Death could take him or Vilate or their daughter at any instant, and Heber sought richer relationships, more meaning, more security, and more power than his hard work alone could offer.[1]

Seeking Meaning in Life

So, though he was already a potter and a blacksmith, Heber also became a Mason—not a bricklaying mason, but a member of the Masonic fraternity. Members of a Masonic lodge hold elaborate meetings in which they retell stories of the ancient origins of masons who were among those Solomon commissioned to build a temple in Jerusalem. These stories both entertain and teach members to be loyal and worthy of each other’s trust, as well as God’s.[2]

Masons in western New York where Heber lived held their meetings in a tavern room representing Solomon’s temple. In their meetings Masons acted out and enlarged the brief biblical account of Hiram of Tyre, a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali.[3] In the Masonic story, Solomon charges Hiram to build the temple. Hiram refuses to reveal the word of the Master Mason to some of his subordinates and is murdered for his fidelity. Emulating Hiram, Masons ritually advanced by degrees from Entered Apprentice to Fellow Craft to Master Mason, using gestures, secret words, and ritual clothing.

The Masons let Heber enter their lodge as an apprentice.[4] With each meeting, he learned various signs, words, and symbols he promised not to reveal, all of which conveyed that he was building on a solid foundation and adding to it by degrees of light and knowledge through symbolic ritual. As Heber advanced in the order, he metaphorically went deeper into Solomon’s temple on a quest for more light, rising to the degree of a fellow and then finally becoming a Master Mason.

But that’s as far as the young Heber went with Masonry, for just as he was about to go further, a Mason named William Morgan, who was publishing Masonic secrets in a nearby town, disappeared and was never heard from again. A great outcry against Masonry followed, since many people suspected Masons of capturing and executing Morgan. In the aftermath of his disappearance, the popularity of Freemasonry plummeted in the region, and Heber’s own involvement waned. It was a loss to Heber, who had enjoyed the ideals and friendships Masonry provided and the feeling of growth he experienced within the group.[5] The rituals and stories they shared and discussed made Heber and his fellow Masons feel like they were part of something ancient and mysterious.

Masonry

The Masonic fraternity is mysterious, but it has not been proven to be ancient. It apparently started in Europe as a trade guild around 1300, designed to protect its members from usury and the practical problems a mason’s family could encounter in case of death or accident. It seems to have developed into an esoteric fraternity by the mid-1700s. The earliest known Masonic document, a poem called the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript, sets forth a history of the guild:

On this manner, through good wit of geometry,
Began first the craft of masonry;
The clerk Euclid on this wise it found,
This craft of geometry in Egypt land.
In Egypt he taught it full wide,
In divers lands on every side;
Many years afterwards, I understand,
Ere that the craft came into this land.
This craft came into England, as I you say,
In time of good King Athelstane’s day;
He made then both hall and even bower,
And high temples of great honour,
To disport him in both day and night,
And to worship his God with all his might.[6]

The poem dates to around 1390 and includes thirty rules that prescribe what it means to belong to the guild—such as honesty, attendance at meetings, rules governing apprenticeships, integrity in business, fraternity with fellow masons, love for God and church, and secret keeping. It is the earliest known version of a founding constitution for a masonic guild—an organization designed to protect masons and their families. This document and later ones like it tell variations of a legendary story of stone masonry originating in Babylon and of its introduction to Egypt by Abraham or others.[7]

The earliest known minutes of a Masonic lodge, the Lodge of Edinburgh, date to July 31, 1599, and, depending on how typical they were, may indicate that masons at that time were still concerned primarily with regulating those who actually practiced the trade of masonry and forming alliances between them. Later minutes show that by the 1630s there were non-masons admitted to lodges in Scotland, and by 1641 non-masons attended lodges in England. Speculative Masons, as these more genteel newcomers came to be known in contrast to actual or Operative Masons, seem to have overtaken masonry in the eighteenth century, transforming it in the process from a trade union into a fraternity, a brotherhood almost exclusively for men.[8]

By 1737, Masons were telling each other a genesis story about how their forebears learned the ancient art of masonry, used it to build Solomon’s temple, protected the temple site, reclaimed it from attackers, rebuilt it when it fell, and preserved secret knowledge all along the way. “Our ancestors, the Crusaders,” the story goes, “gathered together from all parts of Christendom in the Holy Land.” They were holy architects, “warrior princes who designed to enliven, edify, and protect the living Temples of the Most High,” who discovered the ancient book inscribed by Solomon, replaced by Zerubbabel at the direction of Cyrus, which was “rediscovered after the relief of Jerusalem,” preserving “our maxims and our mysteries” in the Masonic lodges of Europe.[9] Later versions of this tradition specify that Moses had originally learned of the secrets in Egypt. Other Masonic stories tell of Enoch or Melchizedek or Abraham preserving knowledge. According to tradition, the Knights Templar, Christian Crusaders, had preserved those mysteries.

By the mid-1700s, Royal Arch Masonry had developed in Ireland and America, apparently to resolve the tension in the unfinished story of Hiram Abiff, who died without revealing the Master Mason’s Word. The Royal Arch ritual reveals to initiates how the word was recovered by “Mason-Knights, working with trowel in one hand and sword and buckler in the other” during construction of the Second Temple. “They came to . . . an underground vault or crypt . . . under the Ninth Arch wherein was discovered a cubical or white stone or metal plate or triangle upon which appeared the ultimate great Masonic secret.”[10]

In American Royal Arch chapters there are nine officers, including three who preside over the others. The highest of these three represents the high priest in Jerusalem at the time of Zerubbabel, and past high priests constitute an Order of High Priesthood. Those who receive the Royal Arch degrees pass through a series of veils into the Holy of Holies, space reminiscent of the Israelite tabernacle. The highest degree conferred by a Royal Arch chapter makes its recipient an anointed member of the Holy Order of the High Priesthood based on a ritual history of Melchizedek.[11]

Seeking Purpose through Religion

Heber Kimball wanted the knowledge Enoch, Abraham, and Moses possessed. He wanted to be like Melchizedek. By the time Heber got involved, Masonry had long since spread to the United States and blurred the borders between Masonic history and mythology, making it impossible to determine for sure how much of what they said actually happened and how much of it they embellished somewhere along the way.

After his involvement with Masonry waned in the late 1820s, Heber began seeking peace in revival meetings held by evangelical Protestants. When the preachers invited seekers like Heber to come forward and take a seat as they preached to and prayed for him, he expressed his desire “to seek relief from the bonds of ‘Sin and Death.’” But no relief came for a long time.

Late in 1831, Heber and Vilate found some peace in the rituals of baptism and sacrament offered by a Baptist minister. Shortly thereafter they heard rumors circulating in their neighborhood: stories of a new book, a golden Bible, and a young prophet named Joseph Smith. One winter day Heber hitched up his sleigh and drove it over the snow to the home of a friend who had invited preachers of the new book and the young prophet’s message to teach that evening.[12]

Heber listened as one of them said “that a holy angel had been commissioned from the heavens, who had committed the Everlasting Gospel and restored the Holy Priesthood unto men as at the beginning.” He “called upon all men everywhere to repent and be baptized for the remission of their sins, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” and promised that they would find the power they were seeking and the restoration of lost knowledge, covenants, and ordinances. “As soon as I heard them,” Heber said of the preachers known as Mormons, “I was convinced they taught the truth, and I was constrained to believe their testimony.”[13] Heber and Vilate were baptized again the following spring, this time as Mormons.

They were now followers of the twenty-five-year-old prophet, Joseph Smith, who had not only revealed the Book of Mormon, translating it from anciently inscribed metal plates by the power of God, but also revealed lost teachings of Moses and Enoch and was in the process of recovering and elaborating lost priesthoods held by Aaron, Melchizedek, and Abraham.[14] The Prophet’s revelations promised the faithful an endowment of divine power and called for them to gather and build Zion, a holy city to be crowned with a new temple.

Heber and Vilate followed Joseph—first to Kirtland, Ohio, where they settled with a few thousand other converts. After the initial efforts to establish Zion in Missouri were ended by antagonistic settlers, Heber followed Joseph to Missouri to relieve fellow Saints there and to try to regain their promised land. After witnessing Joseph receive a revelation in Missouri that told him to return to Ohio and finish the temple being constructed there, so the Saints could be endowed with power, Heber returned with him. Back in Ohio, Heber was chosen and ordained as one of Twelve Apostles, participated in washing and anointing rituals in the temple, and was sent to England to preach the gospel. He followed Joseph Smith when he moved to Missouri in 1838, then to Illinois, and then again accepted an assignment to return to England with his fellow Apostles in 1840.

Before he left, Heber met with Joseph and others on the site of a small frontier settlement and envisioned a city of God to be named Nauvoo. Joseph soon announced plans for a bigger, better temple to be built there, in which to endow the faithful with more power, and soon he began revealing more ordinances or rituals designed to defeat death and the destructive power it had on relationships. Vilate wrote to Heber in England about these developments, overjoyed at what Joseph revealed.

Nauvoo’s First Masonic Lodge

When Heber returned to Nauvoo in 1841, he found a city rising on the site of the tiny settlement he had left, the temple rising stone by stone on the high ground overlooking the flats along the river, and a brick store near the Mississippi River along with the hundreds of other brick buildings in various states of construction. The store was Joseph’s, and its second story served as a gathering place for important meetings. Early on the morning of March 15, 1842, Heber and dozens of other men arrived at the store. They welcomed a distinguished visitor, Abraham Jonas, a politician, one of few Jews in the region, and the Grand Master of all Masons in the state. Heber and Nauvoo’s other Masons had invited him to come and establish a lodge now that anti-Masonic hostility had faded.[15]

Nauvoo Masons paraded that day from Joseph’s store to the grove at the base of the hill below the rising temple. There they met a crowd of thousands, anticipating a gala ceremony culminating in a speech delivered by Abraham Jonas.[16] Heber, Bishop Newel Whitney, Hyrum Smith, and others who were there to hear Jonas had followed similar paths from Freemasonry to some form of Protestant Christianity to the restored gospel taught by Joseph Smith. Joseph had not followed that path. He had not joined Masonry. That night, however, with the room above Joseph’s store serving symbolically as Solomon’s temple, Jonas let him enter as an apprentice and passed him as a fellow. The next night, he raised him as a Master Mason. Heber and some others who were present noted the events in their journals, but at the time no one, including Joseph, documented why he joined or what he thought about the Masonic stories and rituals, though he undoubtedly thought about them.[17]

Joseph likely pondered the fraternal ceremony as he contemplated how he could prepare his followers for what awaited them in the new temple, how he might best teach them what he learned over time from angels, from translating ancient records by the power of God, and from what he called “time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts.”[18] He had been trying “to get the minds of the saints prepared to receive the things of God,” but he found that revealing anything other than what was already customary caused some of his followers to “fly to peaces [sic] like glass,” making him wonder “how many will be able to abide a Celestial law & go through & receive their exaltation.”[19]

Joseph knew that preparing hearts and minds to receive all that God had in store couldn’t be done easily. But he was not one to conclude that it couldn’t be done at all. So, as angels had done with him, and he had done with his followers before, he started with what he had and used what the Saints found familiar to lead them to further light and knowledge.[20] As he left his store for the short walk home that evening, perhaps Joseph thought of Masonic ideas and practices as a way to impart knowledge that was suited to the simplest of Saints and rich enough to reward a lifetime’s journey toward the “broad expanse” and “deep import” of God’s own thought.[21]

On May 3, 1842, Joseph called on a longtime Mason named Lucius Scovill to transform the rooms above the Red Brick Store into a temporary temple. The next day Joseph gathered his brother Hyrum and a few other trusted associates including Heber into the sacred space. There he spent the day endowing them with power—“things spiritual,” as he put it, “and to be received only by the spiritual minded.”[22] The Prophet started with instructions about the priesthood ordinances he wished to give them that day. They were not simply the same as the ones Heber and others who were there received in the house of the Lord at Kirtland, Ohio, six years earlier. As promised, Joseph had more to reveal: a ritual washing, a symbolic anointing, and lessons of light and knowledge—all the plans and principles anyone needed to regain God’s presence and abide there.[23]

Joseph spent the day explaining and serving. The ordinances he revealed were a crucial part of what he wanted to reveal to the Saints, and he wanted to be sure each man he instructed that day understood the endowment. Each of them was a Master Mason. Most had participated in Masonic meetings in the same space, which also represented a temple.[24] As Masons, they learned through ritual how to increase in knowledge and serve their fellow Masons. Through the endowment ceremony, they used rituals as they covenanted with God and learned the laws governing their return to his presence. Joseph picked these men specifically, maybe in part because they were Masons, and began teaching in a way they understood, starting where they were and leading them to more light and knowledge.

Six weeks after he received this priesthood endowment from Joseph Smith, Heber wrote to his fellow Apostle Parley Pratt, who was preaching in England: “We have received some pressious things through the Prophet on the preasthood that would caus your Soul to rejoice. . . . I can not give them to you on paper for they are not to be riten. So you must come and get them for your Self.” Heber announced, “We have organized a Lodge here of Masons,” adding that Joseph Smith and most of the Apostles were among more than two hundred men who had joined. “Thare is a similarity of preast Hood in masonry,” he explained. “Br. Joseph ses masonry was taken from priesthood but has become degenerated. But menny things are perfect.”[25]

Similarities in the Two Ceremonies

Modern-day observers may wonder what accounts for the similarities if the temple is part of a restoration of divine ordinances. The question can be perplexing to those who begin with an unfounded assumption. It goes something like this: If Joseph Smith restored truth from God, he did it without reference to anything in his environment. But what if that if is wrong? What if the divine restoration was not wholly new but like the restoration of an old house, where the restorer keeps all that’s useful and charming and replaces or refurbishes all that’s broken, weak, or no longer useful? In that case there are more possible explanations for the similarities.

It is often assumed that Masonry caused or led directly to the priesthood endowment. Proving that assumption would require evidence that the timing of the Prophet’s exposure to Freemasonry corresponded to his presentation of the endowment, that the similarities in the ceremonies correlate beyond coincidence, and that there is clear evidence of cause and effect.[26]

A Temporal Connection

There is strong evidence of correlation between the timing of Joseph’s exposure to Freemasonry and his revelation of the endowment:

1. In December 1841, eighteen Mormon Masons organized the Nauvoo Lodge.
2. Non-Masons Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon applied for membership the following day.
3. Illinois Grand Master Abraham Jonas formalized the lodge on March 15, 1842, installed its officers, and initiated Joseph and Sidney as Entered Apprentices in the upper-floor space above Joseph’s Nauvoo store. The next day Jonas passed Joseph and Sidney as Fellow Craft and raised them as Master Masons.
4. Two days later Joseph organized the Female Relief Society in the same space. In a subsequent address, Joseph urged the Relief Society women in Masonic terms to “go into close examination of every candidate—that they were going too fast—that the Society should grow up by degrees.”[27]
5. On May 3, 1842, Joseph enlisted a Mormon Mason to “fit up” the same space in which the Masons and Relief Society met, “preparatory to giving endowments to a few elders,” which Joseph did the following day.[28]
6. He endowed nine men on May 4, 1842, the same number needed to create a Royal Arch Chapter of Masonry. It is not clear what, if anything, Joseph Smith knew of Royal Arch Masonry by 1842.[29] Still, no Mormon Masons from Nauvoo left known accounts of Royal Arch Masonry, amid the several that spoke of becoming Master Masons.[30]
7. Joseph prepared select Mormon women for the priesthood endowment, using the Relief Society as a preparatory group parallel to the Masons. He promised the women in August 1842 that they would see “the blessings of the endowment rolling on.”[31] Late in May 1842, three weeks after receiving the priesthood ordinances from Joseph, Newel Whitney addressed the Relief Society about what they could expect, namely “blessings . . . to be confer’d as soon as our hearts are prepar’d to receive them.” In his message any Mason would have heard common themes, and any Mormon, already endowed by Joseph as Newel Whitney was, could hear more.[32]
8. In September 1843 Joseph Smith began initiating select members of the Relief Society (mainly the wives of Masons he had already endowed) into the promised ordinances.[33]

In these ways, correlation between Masonry and Mormonism was obvious to those, like Newel Whitney and Heber Kimball, who knew both. But the question remains whether the similarities suggest more than chronological correlation. Are they accounted for by cause and effect? If so, did primitive temple rituals later to be restored by Joseph Smith get incorporated into Freemasonry? Or did Joseph Smith incorporate elements of Freemasonry into the ordinances he offered? Or, rejecting a possible false dilemma, is the answer some of each? There is no way to know for sure, though some have assumed that they knew.

Proving a Causal Relationship

In 1974, a Latter-day Saint educator declared to the Mormon History Association that the similarities between the endowment ordinances and Masonry are “so apparent and overwhelming that some dependent relationship cannot be denied.” He speculated that Masonry provided the “immediate inspiration” for the endowment.[34] The analysis was zealous and superficially compelling, but it wasn’t careful.

It requires a logical leap to bridge the evidentiary gap between similarity, which was obvious to those who knew both Masonry and the endowment, and dependence, which is assumed—not known. Some people reason that Joseph Smith initiated men and women into the endowment ordinances after he was initiated into Freemasonry; therefore, the temple rituals derived from Masonry. One problem in this theory is that Freemasonry itself borrowed much of its ritual and ceremony from elements preserved since antiquity. There is ample similarity and difference not only between Freemasonry and LDS temple ordinances, but in many other ancient and more modern stories and rituals as well. Disentangling the complex relationships between them is not possible and should not be oversimplified.

It is possible to discern differences in the functions (however similar in form) of Masonic and LDS temple ordinances. Masonic rituals use aprons, door-knockings, and unusual handshakes to foster brotherhood. Bonds are made between men, not between people and God. LDS temple ordinances endow believers with power to regain the presence of God as they make and keep covenants with him. The ritual is not the endowment of power itself. It may be that some ritual forms were adapted from Masonic traditions, but the endowment teaches a divine plan of creation, Fall, and redemption through Christ—promising those who covenant to keep God’s laws that they will gain power over the effects of the Fall. As Heber Kimball was perfectly positioned to know, the endowment did not simply mimic Masonry.

Avoiding Hasty Conclusions

Just as the relationships between Masonry and Latter-day Saint temple ordinances should not be oversimplified, they should also not be overstated. They were part of what Joseph Smith had at his disposal, not the sum. So perhaps the lesson we should take away is that we need not make it a false choice—either Joseph borrowed or he did not. The Restoration is characterized by both give and take. It seems reasonable, given the way Joseph Smith found inspiration in a Protestant Bible for restoring the distinctive gospel he taught, to be open to the idea that he found meaning in Masonry, too, and similarly adapted it to divine purposes. The restored gospel Joseph taught appealed to people like Heber and Vilate Kimball precisely because it had so much in common and yet more to offer than what they were then experiencing in their associations with various religions or associations like Masonry. It seems that the ordinances Joseph presented functioned similarly—offering Heber (and later Vilate) something recognizable, but enhancing what they already had.

The historical method and the limited evidence simply cannot reveal the exact reasons for the similarities. It can only tell us how witnesses, participants, and observers answered the question and leave us to decide what meaning and value we will give to their views. Beginning with John Bennett, the Prophet’s erstwhile friend who turned into a bitter enemy, critics have explained Joseph’s temple teachings as piracy. “Joe Smith has violated his obligations as a mason, and has established ‘a new order’ himself,” Bennett claimed as early as July 1842.[35] But Heber Kimball was there, and he did not interpret the similarities as Bennett did. To the contrary, he believed that Joseph restored a pre-Masonic power: the authentic ordinances and divine story. Joseph’s secretary, Willard Richards, concurred that “Masonry had its origin in the Priesthood.”[36] Benjamin F. Johnson remembered Joseph telling him that Masonry was a degenerated form of temple worship, just as the many religious sects were weakened versions of the fulness of the gospel.[37]

Scholarly Observations

Joseph seems to have used Masonry as a point of departure, a beginning rather than an end in itself. Several scholars of differing degrees of belief in Joseph Smith’s teachings have analyzed the evidence and arrived at this conclusion. Michael Homer argued that “the rituals of Freemasonry provided a starting point for the Mormon prophet’s revelation of ‘true Masonry.’”[38] David Buerger argued that the pattern of resemblances was too great and the content of the endowment too unique to explain simply. “Thus,” he concluded, “the temple ceremony cannot be explained as wholesale borrowing from Masonry; neither can it be explained as completely unrelated to Freemasonry.”[39] Allen Roberts concluded that “Joseph’s Masonry was not a conventional one. He attempted to restore it in much the same way the gospel was restored. That is, he saw Masonry like Christianity, as possessing some important truths which could be beneficially extracted from what was otherwise an apostate institution.”[40]

Knowledge and Power Available for Both Men and Women

Joseph Smith’s priesthood endowment did not simply parrot the rituals of Freemasonry. One of the differences between the Masonic rituals and the endowment of power was access.[41] The Mormon Masons in and around Nauvoo let in more members than most Masons did, yet even they were exclusive, determined to keep out more than invite in. With the exception of some French groups, there was no place for women in Masonry, yet Joseph endowed Mormon women with the same ordinances he gave to the men.[42] He also told those first few men he endowed that they were only the beginning, that the Lord wanted each of the Saints to receive the same ordinances and make the same covenants “so soon as they are prepared to receive, and a proper place is prepared to communicate them, even to the weakest of the saints; therefore let the saints be diligent in building the Temple.”[43]

Samuel Brown concluded that Joseph translated Masonic ideas, making the endowment ordinances “an amplification and reform of Masonry.” Joseph mined the Bible for meaning and restored missing plain and precious parts of the gospel. Why not Masonry as well? In this way of reading the evidence, Masonry, like the Bible or an Egyptian papyrus scroll, was like “an artifact that required the attention of a seer, a text in need of translation.”[44]

That’s how Joseph’s followers who knew both Masonry and the priesthood endowment thought of it. Some of them are on record marveling at the way Joseph breathed life into what was old and broken, restored things that had been lost, made plain things that were confusing, and lighted what had been dark.[45] Heber valued what light Masonry held for him, but he found it “degenerated” compared to experiencing Joseph’s regenerated version—the endowment of power.[46]

On May 4, 1842, as Joseph offered ordinances to a small group of trusted men who were Masons, they could see that, however similar, Masonry was no substitute for the possession of priesthood power. Joseph wasn’t looking back to Solomon’s temple. He was building a new one suited to the dispensation of the fulness of times—one in which the Lord would reveal more knowledge and power than he ever had.[47] Heber, at least, saw beyond obvious similarities and valued what he called the precious priesthood knowledge he only got from Joseph. All his adult life he had been looking for transcendent power and promises. On May 4, 1842, he finally got them “through the Prophet.”[48]

Additional Resources

Brown, Samuel. In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Parry, Donald W., ed. Temples of the Ancient World. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994.

Seely, David Rolph, Jeffrey R. Chadwick, and Matthew J. Grey, eds. Ascending the Mountain of the Lord: Temple, Praise, and Worship in the Old Testament, The 42nd Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013.

Notes

[1] Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 1997), 79–81.

[2] Much of the literature about Freemasonry is marred by author bias or is speculative and unsound. Recently, however, good scholarship on the topic has begun to flourish. A sound introduction to Freemasonry is Margaret C. Jacob, The Origins of Freemasonry: Facts and Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). For Freemasonry in its American context, see Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). The most thorough study of the relationships between Masonry and Mormonism is Michael W. Homer, Joseph’s Temples: The Dynamic Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2014).

[3] See 1 Kings 7.

[4] Holzapfel and Holzapfel, A Woman’s View, 79–81. For context, see Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 12–13.

[5] Heber C. Kimball, “Synopsis of the History of Heber Chase Kimball,” Deseret News, March 31, 1858, 25.

[6] Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, “The Halliwell Manuscript,” http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/regius.html.

[7] Museum of Freemasonry, “Gothic Constitutions,” http://www.masoniclibrary.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:gothic-constitutions&catid=23:lecture&Itemid=30.

[8] Freemasonry was largely fraternal, though there were some female lodges in eighteenth-century Europe. See Jan A. M. Snoek, Initiating Women in Freemasonry: The Adoptive Rite (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012). Also see Jacob, Origins of Freemasonry, 92–129.

[9] The Masonic Trowel, http://www.themasonictrowel.com/Articles/Manuscripts/manuscripts/chevalier_ramsay_oration.htm.

[10] Henry Wilson Coil, “Royal Arch.” In Coil’s Masonic Encyclopedia (New York: Macoy, 1961).

[11] Coil, “Royal Arch.” Michael Homer, “‘Similarity” of Priesthood in Masonry’: The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27 (1994): 37–38.

[12] Kimball, Heber C. Kimball, 15–18.

[13] Kimball, Heber C. Kimball, 15–18.

[14] For evidence of Joseph’s explanation of these priesthoods and their role in administering powerful rituals or ordinances, see his “Revelation, Kirtland Township, Ohio, 22–23 September 1832” (D&C 84), in Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper, eds., Manuscript Revelation Books, facsimile edition, vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2009), 275–89, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/revelation-22-23-september-1832-dc-84.

[15] Kenneth W. Godfrey, “Joseph Smith and the Masons,” Journal of the Illinois Historical Society 65, no. 1 (1971): 83.

[16] Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., “Joseph Smith, Journal, March 15–16, 1842,” in Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, vol. 2 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers, 45 (hereafter JSP, J2).

[17] “Joseph Smith, Journal, March 15–16, 1842,” JSP, J2:45.

[18] Joseph Smith, “Letter to the Church and Edward Partridge, 20 March 1839,” Joseph Smith Papers, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/letter-to-the-church-and-edward-partridge-20-march-1839#!/paperSummary/letter-to-the-church-and-edward-partridge-20-march-1839&p=1.

[19] Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff Journal, 1833–1898, Transcript, 9 vols. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1983–1985), 2:342 (January 21, 1844).

[20] Greg Kearney, “The Message and the Messenger,” presentation, 2005 FAIR Conference, http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2005-fair-conference/2005-the-message-and-the-messenger-latter-day-saints-and-freemasonry.

[21] This is based on Greg Kearney’s idea that Masonry provided a highly effective teaching tool for the message Joseph had to convey. See Kearney, “The Message and the Messenger.” For more on Joseph Smith and Masonic ritual, see Samuel Brown, In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 178–83.

[22] “The Higher Ordinances,” Deseret News Semi-Weekly, February 15, 1884, 2; “Joseph Smith, Journal, 4 May 1842,” JSP, J2:53–54, see also n. 198.

[23] “Joseph Smith, Journal, 4 May 1842,” JSP, J2:53–54.

[24] According to the minute books of the Nauvoo Lodge, George Miller, Hyrum Smith, and Heber Kimball reported on December 30, 1841, that they had already been advanced to the degree of Master Mason in different lodges. Newel Whitney did the same on January 3, 1842. Brigham Young and Willard Richards were raised to the degree of Master Mason on April 9, William Marks on April 22, and William Law on April 27. Nauvoo Masonic Lodge Minute Books, MS 9115 and MS 3436, Church History Library (hereafter CHL). James Adams was raised as a Master Mason long before May 1842. See Kent L. Walgren, “James Adams: Early Springfield Mormon and Freemason,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 75, no. 2 (1982): 121–36.

[25] Heber C. Kimball, letter to Parley P. Pratt, June 17, 1842, MS 897, CHL.

[26] David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies (New York: Harper, 1970), 169.

[27] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, March 17, 1842, and March 30, 1842, accessed July 11, 2015, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book#1.

[28] “The Higher Ordinances,” Deseret News Semi-Weekly, February 15, 1884, 2.

[29] Apparently there was a Royal Arch chapter functioning in Springfield, Illinois, by September 1841, to which James Adams, one of those Joseph Smith endowed on May 4, 1842, possibly belonged. Another of the original nine, Newel Whitney, reportedly associated with Royal Arch Masonry earlier, in Ohio. See Michael W. Homer, Joseph’s Temples, 95; Michael Homer, “‘Similarity of Priesthood,’”37–38. As an off shoot of Freemasonry, there have always been fewer Royal Arch chapters than traditional Masonic lodges. Homer, Joseph’s Temples, 95.

[30] Samuel Brown concluded that Royal Arch degrees were not available in Illinois in Joseph’s lifetime, but he may have gained knowledge of them from conversations or exposés. See Brown, In Heaven, 179. Kent L. Walgren documents Adams’s involvement in Masonry in Springfield and Illinois generally, but says nothing of any possible involvement in Royal Arch Masonry. See Kent L. Walgren, “James Adams: Early Springfield Mormon and Freemason,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 75, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 121–36. D. Michael Quinn located an 1844 document in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU by Oliver Huntington that, according to Quinn, included “the Masonic cipher of the Royal Arch Degree.” D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1987), figure 19.

[31] “History, 1838–1856, volume D–1 [1 August 1842–1 July 1843],” Joseph Smith Papers, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/history-1838-1856-volume-d-1-1-august-1842-1-july-1843?p=284&highlight=the%20blessings%20of%20the%20endowment%20rolling%20on.

[32] “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Tenth Meeting of the Society,” Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 54, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book?p=1&highlight=relief%20society%20minute%20book#!/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book&p=55.

[33] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, August 31, 1842, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book?p=79&highlight=endowment%20roll%20on. See also the Editorial Note at the beginning of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book for context relating to the endowment ordinances, accessed July 11, 2015, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book?p=87&highlight=endowment%20roll%20on.

[34] Homer, “‘Similarity of Priesthood,’” 1.

[35] “Astounding Disclosures!,” Sangamo Journal, Springfield, Illinois, July 8, 1842.

[36] Willard Richards, letter to Levi Richards, March 7–25, 1842, Richards family papers, MS 1558, CHL. The Mormon Master Mason in charge of Joseph’s induction into Masonry reportedly said that Joseph understood the ceremonies better than longtime Masons. Horace Cummings, autobiography, 1, Horace H. Cummings Papers, MS 4285, CHL.

[37] Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review (Independence, MO: Zion’s Printing, 1947), 94–97.

[38] Homer, “Similarity of Priesthood,” 112.

[39] David John Buerger, “The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20 (Winter 1987): 33–76.

[40] Allen D. Roberts, “Where Are the All-Seeing Eyes,” Sunstone 10, no. 5 (May 1985): 36–48.

[41] 2 Nephi 26:33.

[42] Margaret C Jacob, Facts and Fictions, 92–129.

[43] “Joseph Smith, Journal, 4 May 1842,” JSP, J2:53–54. See also footnote 198; “History, 1838–1856, volume C–1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842],” http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary?target=X7188#!/paperSummary/history-1838-1856-volume-c-1-2-november-1838-31-july-1842&p=502.

[44] Brown, In Heaven, 185.

[45] See D&C 124:28, 38; Willard Richards to Levi Richards.

[46] Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt.

[47] D&C 124:40–43.

[48] Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt.