[Norski]

Forgot the extra references:

Resources

The following resources contain a more extensive treatment of Joseph Smith’s magical and occultic practices and worldview:

John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1994, 421 pages. This non-Mormon author is an associate professor in the Department of History at Tufts University.

Grant H. Palmer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins, (Signature Books, SLC, 2002, 281 pages). Palmer is an LDS seminary teacher and three-time director of LDS Institutes of Religion in California and Utah.

D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Signature Books, SLC, revised and enlarged edition 1998, 646 pages. This work is comprehensive and thoroughly documented. The author is a former BYU professor and one of the most respected historians of Mormonism.

Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism, Magic and Masonry, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, SLC, 1983, 97 pages. This former Mormon husband and wife research/publishing team are well-known for their carefully documented critiques of Mormonism.

[Elsie]

Physical phenomena during visions[edit]

J. N. Loughborough, who had seen White in vision 50 times since 1852, and her husband, James White, listed several physical characteristics that marked the visions:

1. "In passing into vision, she gives three enrapturing shouts of "Glory!" which echo and re-echo, the second, and especially the third, fainter but more thrilling than the first, the voice resembling that of one quite a distance from you, and just going out of hearing."^[21]
2. For a few moments she would swoon, having no strength. Then she would be instantly filled with superhuman strength, sometimes rising to her feet and walking about the room. She frequently moved hands, arms, and head in gestures that were free and graceful. But to whatever position she moved a hand or arm, it could not be hindered nor controlled by even the strongest person. In 1845, she held her parents' 18.5 pound family Bible in her outstretched left hand for half an hour. She weighed 80 pounds at the time.^[22]
3. She did not breathe during the entire period of a vision that ranged from fifteen minutes to three hours. Yet, her pulse beat regularly and her countenance remained pleasant as in the natural state.^[21]
4. Her eyes were always open without blinking; her head was raised, looking upward with a pleasant expression as if staring intently at some distant object. Several physicians, at different times, conducted tests to check her lack of breathing and other physical phenomena.^[21]
5. She was utterly unconscious of everything transpiring around her, and viewed herself as removed from this world, and in the presence of heavenly beings.^[21]
6. When she came out of vision, all seemed total darkness whether in the day time or a well-lighted room at night. She would exclaim with a long-drawn sigh, as she took her first natural breath, "D-a-r-k." She was then limp and strengthless.^[21]

 

 

^{Ellen G White   Seventh Day Adventist founder}