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Hi everyone. I’ve been doing lots of reading about temple endowment changes overtime. The pre 1990 penalities that was included bothers me a lot. It feels like the temple paints God as a mean, chastening God. Anyway I wanted to be sure the materials I’m reading is not deceiving me. So I asked my mother who left the church many years ago if she remembered and she couldn’t. Next, my friend asked her mother in law and she denied (one of the graphic symbols) as one of the penalities.
Hence, for you folks who were endowed before 1990, please be truthful. We’re there penalities like the (graphic symbol)?
Also, please help me understand why women need to cover their face with veils during the certain part of the session?
Is it wrong that I just want to get sealed hopefully someday and avoid endowment sessions?
Janes Now, we can talk here about pretty much everything in the temple, but we won’t do into details about the signs and tokens and the former penalties. I didn’t mind the penalties as much as some others did, because my father told me they represented ways that people could be killed by people who were pressuring members to explain about the parts of the temple that are included in what shouldn’t be discussed. (and I see VERY little in that category) In other words, he explained it as representing the level of commitment people had to not defiling what is sacred. He never saw it as members acting toward other members. In other words, he saw it as allowing (suffering) someone to kill you rather than talking about those things.
Honestly, no matter how others viewed it, my dad’s understanding remains the only one that makes sense to me, given the actual wording that was used in that part of the endowment. Granted, that might be because it was my dad, but, even without that, if I looked at it without any pre-conceptions, my dad’s explanation is what makes the most sense for the actual words.
Frankly, the penalties were dropped from the endowment because too many people didn’t see them that way – because too many people saw them as punishments imposed from within the group.
If you are interested, my Sunday School lesson a couple of weeks ago was about the changes to the endowment and the Masonic symbols we use there. The link on my personal blog is:
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2013/08/sunday-school-lesson-recap-masonry-and.html I was endowed pre1990 and remember the penalties well. I never interpreted them literally but simply a way to emphasize the importance of the covenants made. I liked it when they were eliminated because it made the sessions shorter and less complicated. But I never thought of them as some reflection of reality. The veiling of faces is just another sign of respect not a symbol of subservience (if that’s the issue). Once you go through it a few times, the oddness wears off and you can focus on the nice symbolism that is present (or sleep as many do). And I don’t think you can be sealed without going through the endowment first. I forgot to address the other two things: Veiling faces is a cultural artifact that I hope is changed at some point. Seriously, it’s cultural, not eternal in any way. It’s hard for most men to realize how hard it is for many women, and any positive symbolism that might have existed in the past has been lost in our modern culture.
Someone cannot be sealed without being endowed first – and I recommend NOT doing everything on one day. It’s way too much and distracts from the sealing itself. I recommend going through prior to the sealing, having a week or so to process the good stuff and let go of the difficult stuff, then doing the sealing all by itself on a different day without doing the endowment again. You don’t have to do the endowment on the same day as you are sealed, if you’ve done the endowment previously.
I hope they do away with the veiling. I am sure that contributed to my bad experience in the temple. I have a neurological disability and it was not well controlled at the time – anything distracting or sudden (flash of light, someone moving suddenly, etc), or anything around my face causes my facial muscles to spasm – my eyes shut completely and will not open until the spasms stop. Painful and nasty.
I normally wear a hat with a very tight fitting (eg baseball cap) as it interrupts the neural pathways and protects me from light – obviously that is not appropriate in the temple!
Just to clarify… As a post-1990 attendee, I don’t know the penalties. I didn’t realise pre-90s attendees were under oath to not reveal the penalties.
And as for the idea that people would literally rather be killed than reveal the tokens/signs, I find that strange.
President Brigham Young gave this definition:
Quote:
“Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell”
(Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1941], p. 416).Does anyone really believe there will be an actual, literal procession of people at the gates of heaven being tested on various signs and tokens? I guess I never have.
For me, the symbol of having signs and token that we do not share with others are simply a principle that we can’t walk into heaven for anyone else.
If older generations needed different symbols to teach that principle. But I do think people should stop taking the whole thing so literally.
I was endowed in 1964 so remember all the penalties. As I understand it they are part of the current masonic ritual along with the signs and tokens but in the temple ritual the penalties were discontinued along with the five points of fellowship when the endowment was changed. I remember the penalties, but as a 19-year old, I just thought they were weird hand signals that made absolutely no sense to me. I guess I was a bit dense. But now that I understand that they were masonic symbols, and were more literal than I had any idea, yes, I’m glad they are no longer there. But once again, at the time, I was pretty oblivious to what they meant. (Frankly, much of the symbolism in the temple still goes over my head.) Given how lots of people view talking about these things in detail, I am going to be careful in how I say this, but I meant it when I said that my father’s interpretation is the only one that makes sense given the actual wording that was used. The wording was very clear that the “penalties” were things that people would be willing to endure rather than reveal those aspects of the endowment – NOT what would happen to them if they did so. That is a critical distinction, since the second version (“You will be killed if you talk about these things.”) just doesn’t make sense with the actual wording.
That doesn’t mean I liked that aspect, but it’s why I didn’t get my garment in a wad about it.
/end of rant
🙂 Old-Timer wrote:The wording was very clear that the “penalties” were things that people would be willing to endure rather than reveal those aspects of the endowment. . . .
I also thought the wording made this very clear, but it was just one more thing that made the temple an un-beautiful experience for me. Not edifying in the least.
Yeah, I never connected at all with that part on an emotional level, and I really love the temple. I’m glad it was removed.
Okay – It’s official I am the weird one on this topic. First, I really had no problem with the penalties, the actions were funny, but the idea didn’t bother me. I did then and do now, understand it bothering others. However, more than just not having a problem with them, I found them quite compelling. Many of my heroes in life have suffered horrendous deaths and torture because of their convictions. It was their convictions that made them heroic. They truly risked their lives for them. Every time we came to penalties in the session, I paused to wonder if my convictions (whether temple ordinances or not) were strong enough for me to risk my entire life on them.
The heroes I speak of are Joan of Arc, William Tyndale, John Wycliffe and the like. Everyone of them died by things like burning at the stake. I believe Wycliffe was killed twice. Once when he was alive and later his remains were exhumed and burned again.Later on as I read the history of the Amish, the list of Martyrs who died for them is incredible.
Old-Timer wrote:The wording was very clear that the “penalties” were things that people would be willing to endure rather than reveal those aspects of the endowment – NOT what would happen to them if they did so. That is a critical distinction, since the second version (“You will be killed if you talk about these things.”) just doesn’t make sense with the actual wording.
Thankfully (as a post 1990 endowment recipient) I was never sworn to secrecy regarding this aspect of the endowment. I agree that these penalties were never carried out. However the fact that these are called penalties is not exaclty helpful for this perspective. If I were willing to die a gruesome death to protect my family (and I am), how strange would it be to call this hyothetical death a “penalty” for loving my family so much?
The Freemason ceremony that was the catalyst for much of the endowment uses the following language:
Quote:“…I will…never reveal any part or parts, art or arts, point or points of the secret arts and mysteries of ancient Freemasonry. . . binding myself under no less penalty than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_(Mormonism) For me personally, that’s where the penalties end – that they were a secrecy control mechanism coopted from the Masons. That is not to say that blood oaths have no use in religious ceremony. Blood oaths were used in the OT (Deuteronomy 27 and 28 are good examples) but, in contrast to the temple penalties, the curses spoken of were in consequence of not hearkening unto the voice of the Lord.
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/response/qa/temple_oaths.htm The difference between how the wording was in the LDS temple and how it is in Masonic ritual is a GREAT example of how Joseph took things and altered them to fit his own theology. The oaths are radically different, and the central issue is that many people have assumed the meaning of the temple rituals was the same as the Masonic rituals. They are two very different oaths.
I like that perspective, mom3. I still didn’t like the actions, but it’s that perspective is why I didn’t mind the rituals themselves.
Old-Timer wrote:The difference between how the wording was in the LDS temple and how it is in Masonic ritual is a GREAT example of how Joseph took things and altered them to fit his own theology. The oaths are radically different, and the central issue is that many people have assumed the meaning of the temple rituals was the same as the Masonic rituals.
They are two very different oaths.
I agree with you completely about the wording used in the penalty phase (bad pun
👿 ) after 1930. I believe that an unbiased reading of the words themselves would support your premise. But I do still believe that the word “penalty” is a holdover from the masonic origen. Had I been included in the committee that made the 1930 changes, I would have recommended replacing the word “penalty” with “solemn oath,” “promise of resolve,” or “oath of conviction” (nod to mom3).
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