Years ago, in the wake of Mark Hoffman’s “discovery” of the so-called “white salamander letter” — which, it turned out (even before his conviction for two gruesome murders), he had forged — there was an eruption of Mormon writing on “magic,” early American “folk religion,” frontier “treasure digging,” and the like.
Some of it was really quite good.
I had imagined that we were done with such issues. They had been taken care of. But it now appears, a new generation having arisen since those days, that they’ll have to be revisited, and that we’ll have to dust the old literature off again.
As a first step in that direction, I offer two items that I myself wrote with my longtime friend, former Swiss missionary companion, and BYU department colleague, the Hebraist and Semiticist Stephen D. Ricks:
The first of the two is, alas, not available online, so far as I’m aware:
Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks. “Joseph Smith and ‘Magic’: Methodological Reflections on the Use of a Term.” In “To Be Learned is Good If…”, edited by Robert L. Millet, 129-147. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1987.
But the second is online:
Stephen D. Ricks and Daniel C. Peterson. “The Mormon as Magus.” Sunstone (January 1988): 38-39.
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