Old "It Came to Pass" Again, Almost

Somewhere back in space I got on a rant about people who leave religion. Folks will cut out from the Roman Catholic herd and go mill around with the Baptists or Nazarenes or whatever. Go from one religion to another, usually within the same belief set, like the examples above. Some will do that but go elsewhere. Like the friend I had once who, after becoming involved with a woman of the Jewish tribal belief system, joined up with that belief and, as far as I know, went off to live on a kibbutz somewhere.
     Hope he's still alive. Him and his loved one.
     Another group of drop outs kinda makes me wonder. You know: good RC boy goes off to become a Muslim, hoping some day to be a shaheed. A martyr. Blow himself up with a bunch of other sinners around. Or a plain wrapper Lutheran will drop out of that one and head off to spend time saving diesel fuel in barrels on a commune and waiting for the arrival of the ass-ended masters.
     And then there's folks who become $cientologists.

Well, this ain't about none of that. It's about the divergent gang who fall under some name or the other with Latter Day Saints in it. Like Church of Christ Jesus in the Reformed Latter Day Saints of Yore. Or Ladder Carrying Polygamists of Jesus & Quetzalcoatl from the Latter Days of Saints. Or Church of Mormon Reformed and Isolate. Whatever.
     Mormons.
     Them.
     Like when I was a kid we knew about Mormons 'cause, well, my father had been raised in Arizona, close enough to Utah to know about 'em and with a last name like Young, well, it aroused prescriptions, see?
     "No, I'm not related to Brigham Young. I'm one of the Arizona Youngs. Different people, see?"
     Some folks did. Most didn't even ask.
     That was back when Mormons lived in Utah and the rest of 'em weren't all that common, even with the pairs of missionary kids out patrolling neighborhoods in black pants and white shirts with black ties all day and night in 110-degree heat.
     The knock at the door.
     "I'm Elder Levi and this is Brother Nephi and . . . "
     "And I'm an atheist. Have a nice evening, fellahs."
     And the closing of the door.
     Say hallelujah.
     Hallelujah.

Well, as you can well imagine in times like these, there are tons of web sites defending or defaming the Mormons, their prophet and his antecessors and all that. Some of 'em try mightily to convince you or me that, despite all the archeological evidence and the DNA research and all that, there never were chariots pulled by horses under the command of Jewish tribal migrants in the North American continent before Cecil B. Demille and Charlton Heston got ideas.
     Other sites provide intimate detail on how the prophecy of the Book of Mormon came to be, was plagiarized, fabricated or whatever else you want to know about it. The book.
     All in all there's a ton of stuff on the InterWebs about Mormons and a big chonk of it ain't all that nice neither. But then there's a ton of stuff about Roman Catholics and Baptists and the Holy Spirit of Pedophilia Crutch pastor got sent to prison a couple weeks back for somethin' happened at Christ Camp.
     So you get to see a lot of it, if you chose to look for it.
     
And then, sometimes, you get a good giggle out of it.

So let's start with Oahspe, of which I have two copies, one the British 1960 printing, which I bought at a hippie/lesbian book store, back when I was self-medicated. The other is the 1935 edition, edited by E. Wing Anderson and published under the dispensation of The Essenes of Kosmon, a Fraternity of Faithists.
     Them.
     If you are not aware of Oahspe (also called "The Kosmon Bible"), I can tell you that you better get yer readin' glasses on. It's a hugely thick book of persistent stuff about different godhead figures having children who become gods and travel from planet to planet in "star ships" doing whatever they want as gods and so forth. Some of the stuff is from the divine perspective and some of it is in parallel text from a historical & more human perspective.
     The spirits keep good records.
     I say that 'cause it was the spirits of the various deities and the arch-chief-overall deity, known as Jehovih, commanded the transcriber of the texts to buy a typewriter and to turn to with taking copious notes.
     The transcriber, a dentist named John Ballou Newbrough, was told by visiting angels and spirits what to do and how to type it. He eventually finished all the writing out of the spirits' stuff and had the entire thing published, first, in 1882 (also known as Anno Kosmon 34). The book attracted some attention, in that Ballou Newbrough suddenly found himself with questioning followers, and eventually the collected folks formed a community that ended up, of all places, in . . .
     You ready?
     . . . ended up in . . . New Mexico.
     Bet'cha you were thinkin' they'd end up in Utah, didn't'cha?
     Nope.
     They formed a community in Shalam, NM, where, during a flu epidemic, John Ballou Newbrough and many of his faithful met their ends.
     But the book's still here, two copies in my house and a bunch more in libraries and homes of disbelievers and not. Don't know how many of 'em there are, them books, but I figure if I got a copy in 1972 or so, printed in 1960, there's gotta be a bunch more of 'em out there.
     And man, are they out there.
     Star maps. Descriptions and pictures of hieroglyphs – none of 'em as cool as the stuff Joseph Smith the Prophet of Moroni cribbed from newspapers &c – with the path of the stars and planets through the firmament. All that. The rotation of the galaxy. All that.
     In the book. Fold out pages in the small, 1970 edition. Full page in the larger edition from 1935.
     It would be a hoot to find a copy of the original printing. That would have been around the same time that the Mormons were getting run out of town after town on their way to the promised land of Utah.

According to what I've been able to spirit up (no pun intended), the Book of Mormon and Oahspe are just two of a couple more religionistic spirit texts that surfaced in the 19th Century. The two that got printed (Oahspe & Mormon) are probably the lucky two for having a readership and subsequent followers.
     All the same, I come back to the question of leaving faiths again.
     Like why would anyone look at their present belief system – religion, creed, fellowship, whatever – and say to themselves that such was not the right path.
     "Hmm . . . this killing for virgins . . . It don't make no sense . . . "
     "Hmm . . . maybe I should stop being a Muslim and become . . . "
     A dead body?
     That's what happens with that line of thought.
     "Hmm . . . the nuns brutalized me in Jesus' name . . ."
     "Maybe I should become . . . "
     A Baptist?
     Yeah, right.
     Look at a belief and reject it, only to take up another belief with all the usual mental gymnastics that the previously rejected faith had in spades. Don't make no sense to me. I don't understand it: Why would a person fall away from believing on a god who had certain rules only to take up a belief in a god – either under another name or with a completely different disguise – who had another set of equally arcane rules?
     Wouldn't it make more sense to just say "Nah. Ain't no god. I'm done"? And go forth from that moment to believe no more?
     Makes more sense than to spend your life as a Roman Catholic and then become a Mormon. Or a Nazarene Church goin' person.

But here's the real dig: Out there in the InterWebs, there exists a site that goes on about Mormons for some time before revealing that there are two books from the book of Mormon that never got put in the original book.
     And whoever said that didn't pay much attention to the website promulgating the first one, The Book of Zelph.
     If you go to it (the site), you'll quickly see that it's a spoof on the Mormon book, right down to the blind obedience to the person who claims to have found the "cartload of gold plates" which said person subsequently translated – a la Joseph Smith – and subsequently offers to the masses yearning to be free of their minds.

At least it's not another Church of the SubGenius con. Right?