Trigger Warning: lots of nerd stuff to follow
Last week, to much fanfare, Apple released a new augmented reality (AR) headset called Apple Vision Pro. For a very simplistic explanation of what AR is, lets start with reality. That is your real world — what you see, hear, and feel, with or without technological enchantments. Virtual Reality (VR) is a world that is completely made up (virtual). The current VR systems are a headset that completely blocks out the real world, and you experience a world complete detached from reality. From my limited expectance of VR, it is so convincing that I became nauseous from a VR rollercoaster game I played with just a headset on.
Now on to AR, which is a cross between your real world and a completely virtual world. The glasses you wear let in the real world but augments it with other information. A simple example would be wearing glasses that, as you walked through a museum, would superimposed pictures of the artist on your glasses. These pictures would appear next to each painting with a short biography.
Joseph Smith is often accused of taking things from his environment and repurposing them for religious use. One my say this is augmented religion. A little bit of reality augmented by the virtual world. Not completely real, but not complete virtual either. For example, the bases for the Word Of Wisdom is based in 19th-century reality, with the temperance movement in full force, and the 1829 New England Medical Review with an article saying drinks should be taken at body temperature. That was the reality of the times. Joseph took this and augmented it with a religious aspect, making it a commandment from God and creating an augmented reality.
When the Zion’s Camp group found some bones (reality), Joseph augmented it with the story that the bones belonged to a Nephite from Book of Mormon times named Zelph, and he:
was a white Lamanite, a large thick set man, and a man of God. He was a warrior and chieftain under the great prophet Omandagus, who was known from the hill Cumorah, or Eastern sea, to the Rocky Mountains. His name was Zelph. The curse was taken from him, or at least in part; one of his thigh bones was broken, by a stone flung from a sling while in battle years before his death. He was killed in battle, by the arrow found among his ribs, during the last great struggle of the Lammanites and Nephites.
Taylor, John, “History of Joseph Smith”, Times and Seasons, 6: 1076
Now that this is some first rate augmented reality!
Lastly and probably most famously, he took Masonic rituals that had medieval origins (reality) and augmented them with a story of them being divinely revealed and required by God for Exaltation.
What other examples do you see of Joseph Smith “augmenting religion”?
Image by Julien Tromeur from Pixabay
Wheat & Tares 
Joseph placing his face in a hat with a peepstone in the bottom that received a wireless feed from the gold plates. I wonder what resolution a little brown rock could produce? Could it match the Vision Pro’s resolution of around 3200×3600 for each eye on a tiny screen the size of a postage stamp?
There are so many examples!
* Seer stones. A few years ago the church published photographs of the seer stones and they look like smooth, striped stones. I guess he partially created the BofM with them.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/book-of-mormon-printers-manuscript-photos-of-seer-stone-featured-in-new-book?lang=eng
* Hats. JS looked into hats to translate the BofM and also to receive revelation.
* Egyptian papyrus. I think these turned out to be funeral texts but he used them as a medium to produce sacred text like the Book of Abraham.
* My favorite of all – angels with swords commanding him to practice polygamy. That may not count as augmented reality because it’s more like a vision than repurposing a physical object. However my grandmother’s theory was that JS started to use the Old Testament as justification for polygamy and other things, so perhaps it still counts.
If you made a list of all the Church’s truth claims, you’d find that the subset of augmented reality was much longer than the list of reality. Nearly all of our modern scriptures (BOM, JST, BOA, much of D&C, etc.) were hijacked from other works. The temple ceremonies were hijacked from Masonry. The First Vision was made up and modified. And the practice continues today: RMN claims that every little change he makes is due to revelation or the “Lord’s will”. Not saying it’s good or bad, just saying it’s made up (i.e., augmented).
It’s the other way around for some folks. They put on the reality augmenting goggles and learn that the larger reality *is* reality–and that the “real world” is a diminished version of reality.
Not related to JS, but it is to AR. The temple ceremony seems perfectly suited for AR. Put your glasses on and have at it. I’m thinking that this would do away with the need McTemples.
I recently attended the Van Gogh multimedia show. A much more advanced version of this technology could be used to create the celestial room. It would be spectacular. And you could change the scenery frequently.
Quit constructing McTemples. Invest in AR technology. Much better experience, less costly.
Joseph used Masonry as strategy to gather contending sects to common ground. In the temple setting, Masonic symbol is an overlay, a type of sheet to cover deeper symbolism (in the presentation of the endowment, the initiate literally reaches-through Masonic symbol to grasp higher truth). LDS jackass scholars have so fixated on Masonry, that they’ve effectively obfuscated the ancient temple tradition: anybody who is familiar with Rosicrucianism and to a greater extent, Kabbalah, sees that Masonic symbol is just the crust, not the pie. Unfortunately, the fools that flourish in the false framework of LDS scholarship have fixated on weak-minded, intellectually bankrupt apologetics, and mislead the congregation as a result. Brigham’s presentation of the endowment is not what Joseph intended. We are undergoing a slow, generational process of expunging the Masonic overlay…
You could do this with just about anything. For example,
Reality: A group of wealthy landowners and a few financial titans get together and draft a document that allows them to keep their wealth out of the hands of the British Crown – and keep their slaves
Augmentation: Our “Founding Fathers” compromise on an inspired document that ensures life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.
Further augmentation: In order to maintain said life liberty and happiness, we must assert our power and will across the world and constantly feed the military industrial complex.
Here’s another example:
Reality (or at least the most plausible, historically): A first century Jewish teacher/revolutionary/ former disciple of John the Baptist challenges the powers that be with his message of radical love while ignoring of all authority and social conventions. He is executed by Roman officials, in what could be seen as public display of non-violent resistance.
Augmentation (by the Gospel writers and Paul): It’s embarrassing that the founder of this new Jewish/christian sect was executed, so we’re going to say that he came back to life and ascended into heaven and wants to bring us along with him.
Further augmentation (by the church fathers): we are separated from God due to original sin and need Jesus to intercede on our behalf because we are unworthy of Gods grace.
Further augmentation (by the Reformers): we are worthless, depraved worms. We will be lucky if God decides to spare us from eternal hellfire. Good thing God chose to murder his only son to potentially save us.
Further augmentation (Joseph Smith):…., Well, ok you get the idea. The point is, all of our “reality’ our personal and collective narratives, our national myths etc. are augmented reality. It became reality to us because it was useful for a somewhat a cohesive and functioning society and it benefitted the current power structures.
The teachings of Joseph Smith include a broad spectrum of religious doctrines as well as political and scientific ideas and theories. This volume contains the earliest surviving documents written, dictated, authorized, owned.
https://catalyticministries.com/