Previously: A Gothic Castle in Logan
- Brigham Young always sends a group of pioneers to settle the area;
- They always seem to struggle against starvation, cold, or heat;
- We hear later that someone among them had previously uttered a prophecy that a future temple will be built;
- The ground-breaking and cornerstone ritual are always performed at high noon in accordance with Freemasonic protocols;
- A superintendent and master mason are always named;
- Fully functional stone quarries, sawmills, high fire brick and lime kilns pop up but then disappear as soon as the temple is finished, leaving no trace behind them;
- At least one important person involved in construction, be it an architect, master mason, Church leader, or prophecy utterer, always seems to die before the structure is finished.
Many will teach in this false way, powerless, and foolish doctrines, and will be filled with pride to their very center and go to great lengths to hide their secret plans from the Lord. They'll try to hide the things they do from public view. And the blood of the holy ones will cry out from the ground against them. (CoC, 2 Nephi: 12:28, emphasis added)
Any organization which hides what it does from "public view" and tries to hide its intent, motive, and actions from "the Lord", will most surely hide its history. For those who may be new to the blog or who aren't quite sure what I'm proposing in this series, I'll spell it out for you now.
It is my opinion that Brigham Young met with, and was directed to settle and claim Salt Lake valley by the Vatican's representative in America, Jesuit Priest Pierre de Smet, in 1846. He was likely given maps of Utah created by the Jesuit priests who had already explored and mapped the west.
When Young arrived in Utah with his small group of settlers in 1847, they found abandoned infrastructure, cities, homes, temples, and empty buildings everywhere. Brigham Young, already knowing what he would find in Utah, put the pioneers to work claiming and refurbishing the buildings to make them functional, which included building stairs up to usable floors on mud-flooded structures. The construction narratives that we are being fed today as authentic history, with all the manipulations and obvious gaps, are in reality just accounts of renovations being done on existing abandoned structures.
The stories told in this history are a mixture of truth and lies infused with patterns. It is the patterns that reveal that something is not right - prompting that familiar feeling of Deja vu.
I believe that two or three hundred years ago there was some kind of catastrophic event that resulted in some kind of a human reset. There was a past civilization here that was completely destroyed, and all that remains of them is their bones (in ossuaries all over the world) and buildings.
In the Book of Mormon, king Limhi's men discovered the bones and buildings of the Jaredites and were extremely curious about them. I believe this is a pattern or clue that God is giving us from scripture - a pattern of human civilization cycles or resets. We too should be curious about our past.
Some of us may ask how Joseph Smith fits into this reset. This is something I've pondered many times. I've come to believe that God raised Joseph up as the prophet to restore the Gospel at the beginning of the reset, and that his history is still incomplete. We have much of his spiritual history, but I believe the rest will be revealed later, as new records come to light from unexpected sources.
I've been to Palmyra where Joseph was raised, I've seen the Old World churches there and in surrounding towns like Geneva - New York state is full of still standing physical evidence of the Old World - the previous civilization.
Joseph must've wondered himself at the majesty and enigma of these magnificent buildings right there in his home town, being the deep thinker that he was. He must've known and understood so much more than we assume he did - just like prophets we read about in scripture who are never allowed to reveal all that they know.
Brigham Young, on the other hand, was also raised up at the same time but as the antagonist. In my opinion, he became deeply involved in the occult in Boston, which is where I believe he met Albert Pike (who is actually from a suburb of Boston called Newburyport). This is why Brigham and other Church leaders kept going to Boston in the last few years before Joseph was murdered. They may have been learning the truth surrounding the reset and establishing themselves as oath-takers with the Jesuit/Masonic controllers. Boston, in my opinion, is most likely the place where Brigham Young actually learned about the abandoned cities in Utah, and began formulating the plan to mobilize a group of followers, travel west and claim ("found") those cities granted to him according to an oath in accordance with Jesuit protocols.
Of course I could be wrong about some parts of this. This is just my best effort to make sense of our convoluted history with all the critical missing pieces. I present the foregoing hypothesis because often in my posts I get so caught up with details and logistics that I neglect to focus on the bigger picture. And with that, let's move on to the topic at hand: the history of the Manti temple.
Isaac Morley and the "Morlock" Pioneers
These "dug-outs" which they built had smoke vents at the rear and though crude by our standards of today, gave the settlers a comparative degree of comfort and warmth. The pioneers lived under these adverse conditions until the following spring when they were able to start building log cabins and tilling the ground. (A History of the Manti Temple, p. 5)
What's worse than living in a freezing, muddy den all winter long? Having that den become infested with rattlesnakes come springtime. And well…that's exactly what they tell us happened. Narrators really cranked up the level of creative diversity in this story. This is similar to themes and patterns we find in other narratives: out of diversity temples and cities are built. But as Indiana Jones would say, "why did it have to be...snakes?"
Here is how author Glen Stubbs described this ordeal:
In addition to climatic difficulties, the pioneers were faced with another trying event - a rattlesnake plague. One warm spring day they heard a hissing sound. It startled them and to their amazement they found that the hill, which had served as their protector during the winter, was now, a den of "spotted-back rattlesnakes." The whole camp was alerted to action as the men fought this deadly foe with the aid of pine torches, clubs, guns, stones, and any other available weapon that would destroy the snakes.
This continued for several days before the pioneers were able to get rid of the snakes. The rattlers would go into their holes at dawn and then come out again at dusk. On the south slope of the hill, they would crawl under wagon boxes, the dwarfed underbrush, the woodpiles, and into the dug-outs. The remarkable feature of this experience was that not a single person was bitten by the snakes. (Ibid, p. 6, emphasis added)
Wow, what a story. Do you believe it?
When the "snake plague" was over, the pioneers began to till the ground and build log cabins. This was the spring of 1850. (Horses? Plows? Where did they get all the bales of hay needed to feed working horses after a cold winter with no water? How were they cutting down and hauling trees from the mountains, through muddy spring forests, without roads yet?)
But the story gets even better: after a cold winter living in dens, then plowing and planting critical food crops in rocky virgin soil, going up on the mountain cutting big trees with hand saws, and then hauling them down the mountain with horses to the home sites, and building their own log homes, these industrious settlers must've gotten carried away with all that home building and didn't know when to quit!
Just two years later in 1852 Heber C. Kimball announced in General Conference that there were scores of abandoned homes in Manti.
Excuse me what? Yes, abandoned homes. Here is Heber's report given at the Salt Lake Tabernacle:
In the city of Manti, half of the houses are vacant; there are houses enough empty there to accommodate fifty or a hundred families. In Iron County also there are similar advantages...
We shall thus travel back and forth, and live about as much in one place as in another; for the future we shall keep on the move, going to and fro, and shall never be easy; we never want to be, nor that you should, until the kingdom of God prevails over this earth. We will fill up these mountains, take up the land, and, as they used to say in the States, "become squatters," and we will become thicker on the mountains than the crickets ever were. (Journal of Discourses; Volume 1, pp. 295-96)
How in the world was this scenario possible? Why did those early pioneers who arrived in Manti, just two years prior, build so many homes? Why did so many settlers abandon those homes? How did they have the resources and means to do so when they were living as "Morlocks" during the first winter? And what group went to Iron County to build "extra" homes and subsequently abandon them there (around 160 miles south of Salt Lake City)?
What's really going on here?
My reference to "Morlocks" comes from a famous book written by H. G. Wells, published in 1895, entitled The Time Machine. It's a dystopian novel about a man who invents a time machine and travels over 800,000 years into the future. He discovers a people with extremely white skin, known as the Eloi, living on the surface in constant fear of their enemies who live below the surface in underground caves, the Morlocks. These Morlocks came out of the ground at night and acted like zombies, feeding on the fair-skinned Eloi.
The story of the founding of Manti reminded me of the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ novel. Interestingly, the name Morley and Morlock are similar. Isaac Morley became known as "Father Morley" as he led his small group of settlers to Manti in 1849. The name Morley is derived from the Old English mor or moor, meaning a swamp or "a tract of open, uncultivated land".
The word moor also refers to certain groups of people, and is said to have been derived from the Phoenician word Mahurin, meaning "Westerners". This designation is most interesting because according to some researchers, there was a group of people here in the Americas known as the Moors who may have been the original mound builders. These Moors could have been influenced by Tartarain culture and architecture for centuries before the reset. For more information I recommend the book, One World/One America: When The Tartarians and Moors Lived in Peace and Harmony, by James W. Lee.
The prefix mor is also found in the Latin word mortis (rigor mortis), and it literally means "death" or "the act of dying". This is an interesting etymology, changing the appellation Father Morley to Father "Death". Is this a clue as to the true origin city of Manti? Was the city originally built by the Moors, a group of people that were completely killed off in the reset? Was the Manti temple also built by them, or by the Tartarians? Or was it even older and built by the Nephites?
Who knows? But for now, let's get to the temple construction narrative.
Moroni and the Mysterious Terrace Walls
We two were alone; President Young took me to the spot where the Temple was to stand; we went to the south-east corner, and President Young said, "Here is the spot where the Prophet Moroni stood and dedicated this piece of land for a Temple site, and that is the reason why the location is made here, and we can't move it from this spot; and if you and I are the only persons that come here at high noon today, we will dedicate this ground. (Stubbs, pp. 22-23)
If you've read my two prior posts this language will sound familiar to you (especially "south-east corner" and "high noon").
Brigham Young said that it was Moroni who had also dedicated the land for the St. George temple lot, but because the Nephites could not build that temple, the Latter-Day Saints had to do it for them.
A few months after this supposed meeting between Young and Snow, the mayor of Manti deeded the land for the temple lot over to the LDS Church, and a two year excavation process would begin on the very spot that the "Morlock" pioneers had once built their winter "dug-outs" back in 1849. We're told that the ground was extremely hard, and in order to reach bedrock at a dept of fifty feet, dynamite had to be used.
In October of 1877, we're told that men went to work on the temple, but we're not told what they were doing. In June of the following year, we have an account of heavy explosives being used to clear the land for the temple. We're told that the rubble from the blasts was used to construct the terrace walls leading up the hill to the temple.
By December of 1878, only 1 year after construction had begun, we're told that these industrious LDS pioneers had built four terrace walls, 16 feet high and six feet at the base, tapering to two feet at the top. You can see the terrace walls in these "construction" photos, and one has to wonder how these massive structures were built in such a short time.
If blasting didn't begin until June of 1878 then these walls were built in less than six months!
In the photos below the terrace walls actually look more like ancient ruins than newly constructed stone masonry walls, backfilled with tons of foundation soil:
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On June 27, 1878, following telegram was sent from Manti to Salt Lake City: "The large blast for clearing the Manti Temple site was fired at twenty minutes past twelve o'clock P.M. today. Eight hundred seventy-five pounds of powder was used, and upwards of 4,600 yards of rocks and debris were thrown out for preparatory removal". (Stubbs, p. 28)
If you look closer at these terrace walls, it appears as if they are not constructing but rather demolishing them. Here is a photo of well-dressed workmen posing in front of the terraced walls. Notice that the walls look really old and appear to be sluffing off. Notice the rubble everywhere:
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Now let's take a look at the initial masonry work being performed on the new foundation as shown below. Notice that the building below appears to be slab-on-grade, having no basement. This is strange because we hear that there was a basement as described in the 1888 dedicatory prayer. Why is it missing in this photo? Wouldn't a basement have been excavated first?
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In the photo below we see a different angle of the temple around the same time frame. Again, why is all that rock piled up like that? Why build a magnificent building like this and then pile rubble around it afterwards? The only thing that can make sense is that they were uncovering an existing building.
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A Familiar Cornerstone Ceremony and More Premature Death
The Quorum of the Twelve, patriarchs, presidents of stakes, high councilmen, Seventies, High Priests, Elders, presiding bishops, and counselors, bishops and counselors, Aaronic Priesthood members, [the] mayor of Manti and his council, judge and county officers, ladies of Relief Society, superintendents and teachers of Sunday Schools, Manti Choir, and Manti Martial Band. Then came the marshal of the day, General W.S. Snow. The leaders were followed by several thousand people. They marched to the southeast corner of the temple site. (Stubbs, p. 29)
It's interesting that this ceremony included religious, municipal, and military authorities. For instance, what was the significance of General W.S. Snow (the same man who had been with Brigham Young when he stood in the southeast corner and claimed that Moroni had dedicated the temple site) officiating as the "the marshal of the day"?
Stubbs continues with the details:
After some music by the brass band, President [John] Taylor and those of the Twelve Apostles present, assisted by the patriarchs, the architect, William H. Folsom, and the master mason, E.D. Parry, proceeded to lay the southeast or principal cornerstone. (Ibid, p. 29)
This LDS temple dedication pattern is consistent with the Masonic ritual of dedicating a cornerstone in a new building. There are always three persons required to attend: the Masonic Grand Master of the lodge, the architect, and the master mason. The latter usually declares the stone "true" or "laid to the plummet" and a dedicatory prayer is offered. (Read this article for a brief history of how this ritual evolved since the 1700s.)
In this case John Taylor, acting president of the Church, would have been officiating as the Grand Master Mason. After the stone was laid he stood upon it and offered these words:
This principal corner stone, the southeast corner stone, under the direction of the Twelve, who are acting in the place and represent the First Presidency, is now laid in the honor of the Great God... (Ibid, p. 29)
The other three cornerstones were subsequently laid in similar fashion by other Church leaders, but the southeast, or the principal, was the most important.
In Masonic protocols the cornerstone for a Grand Lodge is required to be laid in the Northeast corner, because that is symbolic of the Entered Apprentice, with north representing darkness and east representing light.
The only LDS temple cornerstone ceremony performed with Masonic protocol emphasis on the Northeast corner was the Salt Lake temple, thereby qualifying as a Grand Masonic Lodge, which I will cover in the next post.
Of all the cornerstone ceremonies I have covered on the blog thus far, the one performed on the 1919 Church Administration Building is the most obvious example of a Masonic cornerstone ceremony. Read about it here.
After the ceremony was performed the officiators would often insert relics into a hollowed-out cavity in the stone to be preserved for future generations. Check out the video below for an interesting perspective on what the Freemasons may have been actually doing in these cornerstone ceremonies:
Brigham Young died on August 29th of 1877, just a few months after the St. George temple was dedicated in April. At some point in the next few years John Taylor became acting president, and what is most interesting, is that he died on the 25th of July of 1887, less than a year before the Manti temple was finished and dedicated (May 21, 1888). This fits the pattern of premature death of key actors involved in the construction process that we find in so many of these official stories. When something repeats this often, it shouldn't be ignored. We must conclude that there is an obvious pattern and someone is trying to tell us something.
In the case of the Logan temple narrative we have John Thirkell, the man who uttered the first prophecy that a temple would be built upon the bench in Logan, dying just one month before the temple ground was dedicated.
In the case of Manti, we have Heber C. Kimball, the same man who declared in 1852 that there were enough abandoned homes to accommodate 50 to 100 families (where did these homes come from?), also prophesying about a future temple in Manti sometime between 1850 and 1852. He died in 1868, nine years before the construction began on the temple. Is this yet another clue for the pattern of premature death?
Would the Real Drafter of the Manti Temple Building Plans Please Stand Up?
...Go to work and build a temple in Sanpete. As soon as you are ready to commence, I will provide the plan. (JD 18:262)
What did he mean by "I will provide the plan"? Did he draw up the plans himself, or were they drawn by Truman Angell beforehand and he had them in his possession? The record is not clear. Where did these mysterious plans come from? Is Brigham Young implying that he has received the plans for the Manti temple from the Lord?
There are three architects named in the narrative of the Manti temple, the first two being Truman Angell and William Folsom. Folsom was assigned, we're told, by Church leaders in October of 1877 to act as both architect and superintendent on the Manti temple project, yet we are never told directly that he drew up the plans. Truman Angell is mentioned in assisting Jesse W. Fox, the surveyor general, when the temple was surveyed in April of 1877, but that is all we hear about Angell’s involvement in Manti.
The third architect named was Joseph A. Young, one of Brigham Young's many sons. Joseph A., we're told, was only able to draw up some "preliminary plans" before dying, prematurely I might add, in August of 1875, two years before construction began on the Manti temple. Where are these preliminary plans and who finished them? We are not told.
Another clue comes from an article in the Millennial Star, published in December of 1877, that lays out the dimensions of the temple. We're told that it:
...was to be 168 feet long by 95 feet wide. The east tower was to be 179 feet high and west one 169 feet, giving a height of 243 feet from the lowest terrace wall to the top of the east tower. (Stubbs, p. 19)
Although the article mentions Folsom as the architect, it does not clearly state that he was the drafter of the plans. I have quoted it below, and as you read pay close attention to the wording, because the words are deceptive, they paint a picture of Folsom being the drafter without actually stating it. It is an assumptive phrase that, in my opinion, is meant to deceive.
Brother William H. Folsom, the architect and superintendent of construction of the Manti Temple, returned lately from that place. From him we learn some particulars in reference to the building that are interesting to Latter-Day-Saints. (Millennial Star, 1877-12-24, Emphasis added)
"From him", as if he drew them up himself. But the narrators never tell us who actually did draw them up. In my opinion, this is on purpose - to deliberately deceive, obfuscate, confuse, etc. They are inserting an assumption into your mind without you actually being aware of it. This is masterful propaganda at its finest.
Finally, we come to the one primary source document that is used by the LDS Church to "prove" Folsom drew up the plans for the Manti temple: a letter of correspondence written by Folsom to John Taylor on May 24th of 1878. Here is what it says:
...By Request I forward you plans of basement or first floor of Manti Temple, as directed and supervised by our late President Brigham Young, all dark lines indicate plan of first floor, and all red lines indicate rooms or stairs over basement rooms, and the cross and doted lines the size of the rooms as they make assent to the middle or second story...I was told by President Young that he intended to have the Manti and Logan Temple alike...(Read the entire letter here)
In my opinion, this letter doesn't prove anything. It is just as vague as the article from the Millennial Star. Folsom never says that he himself drafted the plans, but rather states that he was forwarding plans "directed and supervised" by Brigham Young. What does that specifically mean? Did Brigham draw the original plan or did William Folsom? Or, was it Truman Angell? We're told Angell drew up the Logan plans (better late than never), and Manti is basically a carbon copy of Logan. So who was it? Why can't we get a direct and honest answer here?
I found this letter in the Church History Library, and while searching I noticed that they also have in their archives a drawing of the first floor or basement plan of the Manti temple as described in the letter above. However, they have not uploaded a digital image of this plan on their website so it is not available to view. This piqued my curiosity so I decided to reach out with the following query:
I was wondering if you allow researchers to view the original plans of the Manti Temple? They are not available in digital form.
Now, I know that these plans are not the complete architectural drawings of the temple and only include the basement or first floor. Apparently, the complete plans are nowhere to be found, however, any alleged evidence is worth looking at.
After a few days, this was the reply from the library:
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we do not allow access to plans of working temples. The original floor plans for the Manti Temple have not changed and therefore are closed to research. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.
And that's all she wrote. I'm not allowed to look at the plans. It really makes me wonder if they even exist. As for finding out who really drew them up, or if there ever were any, I guess we'll never know.
Unmatched Staircases with no Construction History
Here is a description of them in a book by V.J. Rasmussen:
The stairway on the north circles clockwise - the one on the south circles counterclockwise. Each staircase makes six complete circles and rises over 76 feet 2-3/4 inches. (The Manti Temple, p. 104)
Interestingly, the stairs are arranged in Fibonacci-like spirals, lined up in tandem running north and south, spinning in different directions and creating a vortex. If we could see the two staircases side by side we would be looking at an image that resembles a volute. A volute is an architectural design that we often see on stone columns of old buildings, and looks like this:
This design of reciprocating spirals can also be found in a drawing of the internal components of a Tesla Tower.
Is it a coincidence that these designs are similar? (For a more in-depth study of columns and volutes, see this post on the 1914 Church Administration Building).
This Fibonacci spiral is also abundantly found in nature. A simple example is the sunflower:
It makes sense that these staircases would appear in a building that is labeled as a temple, because as Hugh Nibley explained in Temple and Cosmos, the ancients designed temples to mimic the macrocosm of the universe. And what researchers are finding as they are studying the architecture of Old World/Tartarian buildings is that the shapes carved into stone, such as the rose windows found in Cathedrals, are meant to draw in atmospheric energy and pull those who enter therein into a higher vibrational frequency. I wrote about that here.
The question is did the LDS pioneers actually build this temple and its amazing staircases, or are they much older? The Manti Temple took eleven years to build, we're told, and we're not given a time frame of how long the interior took to finish. In fact, there is not much information on the interior at all. All I can find is that William Asper was named as the master carpenter for the interior, and specifically the staircases, and that he was assisted by Joseph Judd and Andreas Olsen.
In scouring the Church History Library's digital archives for any information on these names, I found zero information associating them with the staircases. Although, it is claimed by V.J. Rasmussen that Andreas Olsen recorded an account of his participation in constructing the staircase in his journal, I cannot locate it. The only information I can find on Olsen is his papers describing an invention he was trying to patent in 1881.
The only document the library has on Joseph Judd is an address he gave to the residents of Sanpete County in 1890. There is no digital access and you have to ask special permission to view the physical copy on site at the library.
After sending another inquiry to the library, I was granted a 30-day window to view digital copies of William Asper's letters of correspondence and personal journal. In his journal there is not a single word about the staircases or the temple at all. The "available" journal entries do not even begin until January 1896, six years after the temple was complete. There is nothing interesting in the journal, as Asper spends more time talking about the weather than anything else.
However, I did find one reference to some stairs in a letter of correspondence between Asper and architect Folsom dated January 24 of 1888. The subject of the letter is mostly about paint colors and beams in a specific room that were sagging and needed to be replaced. This is the only reference he made to stairs:
The "stairs in hall" I suppose are those in round or octagon towers. (See link, to view you'll need permission from the library)
Why would Asper say "I suppose" the stairs in the hall are those in the round or octagon towers? Did he not know what stairs he was talking about? This is strange language coming from the "master carpenter" who is claimed to have built these stairs.
All I'm asking here is to see documents or journals proving that this man built the stairs, but these are nowhere to be found. All we get is a vague mention of some "stairs in hall" that needed painting in 1888. What is really going on here? I've thought for some time now that the construction narratives on some of these old buildings are in reality just renovation narratives, and that many of these structures were just cleaned up and painted. Is this what was really going on with the Manti temple?
Why are these staircases such a big deal? Because only three like them exist in all of America, two of which are in the Manti Temple. The only other one like them is found in a building in Washington D.C. that was constructed between 1799 and 1801, known as The Octagon. It was said to have been designed by William Thornton, the same architect who designed the U.S. Capitol building. The building still stands today:
Notice the the stairs leading up to a second floor and the mud-flooded windows. It is claimed that this building was constructed using unskilled slave labor, a bold claim when you consider the excellent craftsmanship of the staircase:
Why do we not build staircases like this today? Do we just pale in comparison to the craftsmen (claimed to be slaves) of the 18th and 19th centuries, or is something else going on?
Mr. Emil Fetzer, LDS Church Architect during the 1980s, said this of the Manti temple staircases in 1985:
It would be difficult to match the workmanship today, even with the improved tools available. (Rasmussen, The Manti Temple, p. 104)
After quoting Fetzer, Rasmussen goes onto explain that when renovations were performed on the Manti temple during the early 1980s:
...the steps were meticulously inspected and found to be in excellent condition. The joints in the stairs had actually bonded themselves together. (Ibid, p. 104)
This is quite incredible considering the staircases are claimed to be around 140 years old. This was truly an amazing feat of construction performed by carpenters who had limited resources and tools.
Why are there not more details about the construction of these stairways?
The Black Walnut used on railing was shipped from the East, we're told, but other than that we don't have much information. The following logistical questions are left answered by the narrative:
- In what carpenter shop was this Walnut milled and shaped?
- What kind of glue was used that allowed the joints to create stronger bonds over time?
- Who drew up the designs of the staircases?
- How did they know how to construct them without a central support?
- How and when were they installed in the temple?
- Were they built on site or in another location?
- How many men worked on them? Where did they learn such unique carpentry skills?
All we have is three names and some incredible claims.
We are left in the dark as to the real story surrounding these staircases, but just the fact that only one other stairway like this exists in America, should be enough to pique our curiosity and get us questioning the narrative. For now, let's move on to the subject of masonry.
A Master Mason and a Hidden Rock Quarry
On one occasion Mr. Parry noticed that one of the workers was about to place a slightly cracked stone into the wall of the temple. He approached him about it and the worker said it was just a little crack, that it wouldn't make any difference, and anyway the crack would be on the inside, so no one would know about it. Mr. Parry told him that there would be three people who would know it. When the worker asked him who the three were, Mr. Parry said, "You, me, and the Lord". (Stubbs, p. 47)
Like the Logan temple narrative, we also get stories about work animals in Manti. This time it was mules, the "Parry Mules". Apparently, these mules we're so excited to get to work one morning that they went to the temple ground without being led there and waited for the workers to show up. Mules? Really?
The rock for the temple, we're told, was taken from two different quarries: temple or Manti hill, and the Parry Brother's quarry east of Ephraim.
From Manti hill we're told that oolite limestone was obtained. This oolite, or "eggstone", was creamed-colored and used on the walls of the temple. The Parry Brothers' quarry also contained oolite limestone. Click here to see photos of the remains of this quarry.
I'm not questioning whether or not the Parry Brothers' quarry existed, my primary concern is that the Manti temple was built directly on top of an existing quarry. Why would a developing area like Manti cover up access to an oolite quarry full of aesthetically pleasing stone?
This makes no sense at all, unless of course you're trying to cover something up. Like, for instance, the fact that there was no quarry there at all. I mean, if they are claiming that a massive quarry existed underneath a sacred building, then how would anyone prove that this was true? It would be impossible unless permission was granted to excavate under or around the temple. And of course an interested party outside of the LDS Church would never be allowed to do this. Case closed.
Did Egyptians Build the Manti Temple?
John Patrick Reid, my great grandfather, whom I remember very well, was the first Branch President in Belfast, Ireland and also the leader of the Masonic Order there. I've often been told that his work on the Manti temple specialized in the hardware for the doors, designing both the hinges and the knobs. Sometimes the ornaments are the naturalistic curves characteristic of the 19th century, but as long as he was at it, it seemed Brother Reid might as well put some symbolism in the ornamentation...
The Masons were fond of copying Egyptian symbols from manuscripts and inscriptions without knowing what they meant. The mid - and late - nineteenth century was a time of Egyptomania when everybody was wild about Egyptian things and many phony occult and theosophic societies claimed Egyptian origin. Of course Brother Reid, both as a top Mason and superstitious Irishman (he firmly believed in fairies) and as a designer of solemn and significant objects would call upon his knowledge to supply the mystic symbols. Whether he knew their significance or not, it just happens that he, on this little object, has depicted the three most important symbols in the Egyptian mysteries. (The Manti Temple, pp. 33-34, emphasis added)
So we are suppose to believe that this man, who believed in fairies, unknowingly incorporated into the door hardware the three most important symbols in the Egyptian mysteries?
Some things are just not coincidences.
Here are the photos of the hardware as shown in Rasmussen's book:
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To read Nibley's interpretation of each symbol see pages 34-35 of Rasmussen's book. You can purchase it on Amazon or if you have an archive.org account you can check out the book for free here.
This little gem from Nibley is interesting to me because I firmly believe that the Masonic Order is very much involved in the covering up of true history. You can find their paw prints all over the narratives of these old buildings - all over America. What Nibley is describing as "Egyptomania" may have actually been a time when Egyptian artifacts we're being discovered all over the United States. Why else would Egyptian fervor sporadically sweep over archeologists, the Freemasons, and occult and theosophic societies?
For instance, you may not know that in 1909 a Marine from Idaho actually discovered an ancient Egyptian citadel in what is now the Grand Canyon. You can read about that in the addendum to this post I wrote a while back. Also, there are what appear to be pyramid mounds buried all over the U.S., see the video below about one that is buried under the St. Louis arch:
Perhaps the Mi'kmaq's language stems from the Nephites who used "reformed Egyptian" in their written language, and maybe the Manti temple was built by the Nephites themselves, or others like the Mi'kmaq who used a similar language.
Nibley described John Reid, his great grandfather, as the "leader of the Masonic Order" in Belfast, Ireland. This is interesting because one of the oldest Masonic lodges in the world can be found in Dublin, Ireland. What connection did Reid, being the leader of the Order in Belfast, have to the Masonic leadership of the LDS Church? What was the purpose of him being inserted into the narrative of the Manti temple? Who really designed the door hardware and how old it is?
More Clues from the First Two Manti Temple Presidents
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There were also African-American and Native American slaves being held captive in the Utah Territory during the same time period. Apparently, Mormon leaders were encouraging the LDS people to buy up "Lamanite" children. Read about that here.
It was Wells, as superintendent over the construction of the Salt Lake Temple, to whom ELP [E.L. Parry] reported for work back in March of 1857; it was Wells, them a member of the First Presidency, who with ELP and others was present for the depositing of the treasure box in the Salt Lake Temple in August of 1857; it was Wells who, on behalf of Brigham Young, dedicated the St. George Temple, for which ELP served as master mason, on April 6, 1877; and it was Wells who was present with ELP at the special dedicatory session of the Manti Temple on May 16, 1888, to hear the dedicatory prayer. (Timothy J. Brooks, The Life of Edward Lloyd Parry, p. 150)
Wells, like a ghost, had been involved in Parry's temple building background for thirty years, and had him sealed to him. What was the real connection there?
Wells held various leadership positions during his life in Utah, among them the following: Lieutenant General of the Utah Territorial Militia, Mayor of Salt Lake City, Attorney General of the State of Deseret, and most interesting, he served on the Board of Regents for the University of Deseret from 1850-1869, and its Chancellor from 1869-1878.
The University of Deseret was the precursor to the University of Utah. When it was established in 1850, we're told that there no buildings for students to meet in, and no budget to run the school, so it was suspended until 1869 - when Wells took over as chancellor. The students and faculty initially met in the Council House, and then in an adobe building known as Union Academy. It wasn't until 1884, we're told, that the University's first real building was constructed, on Union Square. Here is a drawing of the building:
Of course we are given no construction history or details of this building, as it seemed to just pop up out of nowhere. Curiously, it looks like an awful like the original Salt Lake Highschool building as shown in the postcard below:
And here is actual photo of the original University of Deseret building, and as you can see, it is an exact replica of the High School:
It looks like someone (or something, like AI) messed up on this narrative, but no matter, this building doesn't exist today. The University of Utah moved to University Circle in 1900, and several other Old World buildings were "constructed" that still exist today. View them here.
It wasn't until 1909 that the Skull and Bones branch was inaugurated at the U, and this is where the story of the Manti temple gets even more interesting. With Wells being so involved in the University of Deseret, and with Brigham Young knowing Albert Pike, was it actually these two men that planted the seeds for the future Skull and Bones branch at the U?
For now we can only speculate, but regardless of who it was that brought Skull and Bones to Utah, we know that at least two descendants of Manti's second temple president, Anthon H. Lund, were members of the Order.
Lund became the Manti temple president in 1891, and in 1900 he was made Church Historian, and then served in the First Presidency under both Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant. Anthon had nine children, seven of which were sons. His first son, Anthony C. Lund, was director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from 1916 to 1935. But it was his third son, Hebert Zacharius Lund, who would have two sons inducted into the Skull and Bones Order at the U: Richard Jensen Lund in 1933, and Anthony James Lund in 1937. A third Lund, Arthur Lund, was inducted into the Order in 1935, but I can't find any genealogical information on him.
It is interesting that yet another influential LDS family, like the Romneys, would have ties to the Skull and Bones Order at the University of Utah. We're told that the Order at the U isn't connected to the Order at Yale and that although mysterious, is basically a benign fraternity. I, for one, believe the Order is far more nefarious than we are led to believe. If you are unfamiliar with the oaths these "tapped" seniors are made to make, you can read them here.
This wraps up my post on the Manti temple, but before I end there is one more interesting connection to Tartaria in the name Manti. Although we're told it was a name taken from the Book of Mormon (which means it could have Hebrew or Egyptian origins), it also has a Turkish origin, dating back to the Ottoman empire. It simply means "dumpling". Both Turkish and Mongol horseman would carry dried manti and boil it over a campfire for a quick meal. The earliest Turkish cookbooks don't mention manti but rather a similar dish called Tatar boregi. This dish was also referenced in cookbooks dated back to the 1880s.
The Empire of Tartaria began as a split between two brothers: Mongol and Tatar. They were said to have descended from the ancient Turks, whose ancestor was Japeth, son of Noah. For a full explanation on the history of Tartaria, check out the video below:
The Manti temple narrative is full of enigma. Honest researchers should question and scrutinize this narrative by the following queries:
Why would Heber Kimball tell the LDS people in General Conference of 1852 to go and squat on abandoned homes in Manti when they were supposedly in the middle of building a fort there?
Why would they build a massive infrastructure of terrace walls only to tear them down twenty years later?
Why do construction photos seem to be showing the building being dug out of a huge pile of rubble?
Why are the original plans not available for viewing and why isn't a drafter definitively named?
Why is there no construction history on the spiral staircases that are two of only three found in the entire U.S.? And why do we not build stairways like that today?
Why does the correspondence letter between William Asper (the master carpenter) and John Taylor, only mention the stairways in reference to what color they were painted?
Where are the original plans for the stairways and who drafted them? Why are there no logistical details included in the narrative about how the stairs were constructed?
Why is there Egyptian symbolism on the door hardware and why is the explanation of Egyptian origin linked to Freemasonry?
What happened to the 73,000 Ute natives living in Utah at the time of Brigham Young's arrival?
What happened to the bearded natives described by Spanish and French explorers who built houses out of cement?
Why were there Bengal Indian slaves living in Utah in 1858? How did they get there and how did they end up in servitude?
Why is a 1775 map of Utah Lake depicting cities that weren't supposed to exist until the latter half of the 19th century?
Why does the original building constructed for the University of Deseret look exactly like the old Salt Lake High School building?
And finally, are there clues in the origin of the name Manti that link the town to Tartaria?
As always, all I am doing in this posts in asking questions, and it is up to you, the reader, to make up your own mind about what really transpired in these stories. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't know what happened, and I believe it will take years, maybe even decades, as well as new information coming to light, before we will begin to have any idea what our true history is.
For now, I'll leave you with another verse from the Covenant of Christ. This one is from Nephi's quotation of Isaiah:
Woe unto you that build house to house until everything is crowded and yet you live isolated in the place. The Lord of Hosts said directly in my ear: Truly many families will become desolate, and fine mansions abandoned... (CoC, 2 Nephi 8:12, emphasis added)
Does this sound like a pattern of resets is being revealed? It most certainly does to me. Stay tuned for part 1 of the Salt Lake Temple coming soon...
