Freemason Joe Steve Swick III criticizes Samuel Morris Brown’s new book on Masonic influences in Mormonism. In an editorial review, professor Richard Bushman described Brown’s book as weaving “the most exotic elements of Mormonism-seerstones, new names, hieroglyphs, angels, the Adamic tongue, Masonic catechisms, seals, ritual adoptions-into an illuminating and compelling explication of Joseph Smith’s beliefs about the temple, family, and human salvation.”

Joe Swick, however, as a Mormon and Mason, feels that Brown didn’t go far enough.

Almost unbelievably, Sam fails to anywhere significantly engage the funerary rites or traditions of Freemasons … the funeral sermon of King Follett—contained several clear Masonic references relevant to the topic of his book. These Masonic references likely exist because King Follett was the Prophet’s Masonic Brother, and the funeral itself was Masonic.

The “funerary traditions,” Swick notes, is symbolized by the apron. “Sam is unwilling to directly state that Masons – or Mormons – even wear aprons,” he writes.

Full story here.

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For further investigation, see John L. Brooke’s The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 for more evidence of Masonic influences, including that of alchemy, Rosicrucianism and Hermeticism; Lance S. Owens’ classic “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection“; and here.

Richard Cimino
5 Feb 2009

Holding its rituals and gatherings in a Parisian restaurant, the Kolob Order may well be the first effort to bridge the differences between freemasonry and Mormonism.

The order is the brainchild of a Frenchman who goes by the pseudonym Adama. He is both a Freemason and a Mormon convert and Sunday school teacher. In the independent Mormon magazine Sunstone, it is reported that the founder converted to Mormonism in 2005 and a year later started the Kolob Order after studying the Book of Abraham, an early Mormon scripture.

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