Welcome readers, to part I of a new series on the Salt Lake Temple. Because the Salt Lake temple narrative covers a span of forty years, this will require a deeper dive into LDS historical events and will end up being several posts long. When I'm finished with the Salt Lake Temple I'll return to my Ancient Temple series where I'll cover four more temples I believe were built by a previous civilization: Laie, Hawaii; Cardston, Alberta; Mesa, Arizona; Idaho Falls, Idaho.
How would it affect your life to learn that the LDS pioneers did not build, but instead found the Salt Lake Temple already there when they arrived in Utah?
Would that change how you look at the entire LDS historical narrative in Utah?
This world we live in is not what it seems. We're beginning to realize that our history is completely fabricated, simply made up to fit a narrative that is meant to control our minds.
It is my belief that everything we're told by government, media, or any other establishment source, is a carefully crafted illusion planned to deceive and control humanity towards an end time agenda.
All the world is a stage, and the "official" history of Utah is a big part of the play.
Salt Lake City is obviously an ancient city. It is full of incredibly beautiful stone buildings that, in my opinion, have been here for centuries. When Johnston's army came to Utah in the late 1850s, one of his Colonel's described the city as follows:
The city is beyond my power of description. It is beautiful--even magnificent. Every street is bordered by large trees beneath which on either side run murmuring brooks with pebbly bottoms. Not a sign of dirt of any kind to be seen. The houses are surrounded by large gardens now green with summer foliage. All the houses are built of adobe nicely washed with some brown earth, the public buildings large [and] handsomely ornamented surrounded by walls of stone... (Colonel John Van Deusen Du Bois, Circa 1858, quoted in The Salt Lake Temple: A Monument to the People, pp. 52-53, by C. Nina Hamilton, emphasis added)
This was around 1858, only ten years after the city was settled. How were they able to build these stone walls and large public buildings so quickly? Colonel Du Bois doesn't specify which buildings he saw, but they obviously left an impression.
In addition to stone buildings, there are tunnels all over the city and under Temple Square that have no construction history. They don't even attempt to explain how they got there.
We're told that many massive stone buildings in Salt Lake City were built in a time when there were no power tools and no cranes.
We see lots strange photos of majestic stone architecture surrounded by dirt roads full of horse-drawn wagons, making no sense at all.
How can they have built all these technologically advanced buildings and not yet know how to even pave the muddy dirt roads?
You can find 19th century photos like this of every major city in the U.S., and all over the world for that matter. Something is not right here.
We are being lied to.
The Salt Lake Temple narrative, like the other three temples I have covered, is full of gaps, anomalies and strange stories that just don't add up.
Some of what I'll be covering in this series are as follows:
The inconsistencies surrounding the story of the temple foundation.
The Masonic origins of LDS cornerstone ceremonies.
How the so-called "Mormon War" was most likely a psyop meant to bolster Brigham Young's power.
The lightning fast speed at which they "built" the railroads and what may have actually been happening.
How Truman Angell was not trained as a architect, and how Brigham Young sent him to Europe to study architecture after the temple was already drawn, and how he returned unimpressed.
How the 22 Greek columns in the Salt Lake Temple Celestial Room were planned to originally have carved faces at the top of them, and what that means for the narrative.
Why the LDS people supposedly adorned the with temple facade with astrological symbolism (i.e., earth moon, sun, and Saturn stones, as well as inverted baphomet pentagrams) even though Brigham Young's writings and speeches never mention astrology.
How in the world the temple went from a massive empty stone shell in 1892 to a fully finished interior, replete with masterful craftsmanship in wood work, with hand-carved columns, giant granite staircases, an empty elevator shaft, and exquisitely detailed artwork and murals... in only one year.
The LDS people are renowned for building the Salt Lake Temple, their architectural magnum opus. The stories we're told about the sacrifice, toil, adversity, and hardships that were overcome to build the temple are more than just inspiring for true-believing members of the Church, it is part of the story that weaves the very fabric of what it means to be a Latter-Day-Saint.
I realize in writing this series I am treading on sacred ground for many people who were raised in the traditions of Mormonism, like myself, but there is much more to this story that needs to be examined.
We encounter logistical inconsistencies, blatantly obvious contradictions, anomalous timelines and strangely manipulated photographs--telling us that men with primitive tools accomplished feats of construction that are physically impossible even with todays technology.
This series begins, as all construction does, with the story of the building's foundation. This part of the narrative lasts 14 years, from 1853 to to 1867 (the date we're told that the temple walls finally rose above the basement layer).
As you are about to see, there is nothing logical or consistent about the story of the foundation of this temple.
We're told that it was originally built out of sandstone.
But around 1858, the entire foundation hole, with sandstone block footings, was quickly back filled with all the foundation soil which had been laboriously excavated. This was supposedly to hide the construction from Johnston's army.
Where would the thousands of tons of excavated rocky soil have been stored? Were they keeping it on the temple site, surrounded by the 14 ft. high stone wall that Brigham Young had built to keep idle men busy? Was it stored nearby and hauled back on wagons with horses and oxen? These are logistical questions we are given no answers for.
But then after all the massive effort to dig out the foundation, then bring all the dirt back to fill it in and hide it--this massive temple foundation hole was totally excavated again (with hand shovels) in 1861!
Ironically, after all this effort to uncover the 8 year old foundation, it was then found to be "defective" and in need of replacement. And this is where we get the story that the sandstone foundation was "taken up" and replaced with granite.
But hold on a second, after two renovations where the foundation was exposed (one in the 1960s and the current one in the 2020s), we can easily see that the supposedly defective sandstone foundation still remains and was never "taken up" as the official history tells us.
We also know from a 1963 Deseret News article that the foundation is at least twice as deep (30 feet) as Church historians claims it is (16 feet).
After leaked conversations with modern construction workers, we now know that it is at least four stories deep, and possibly much deeper.
How ironic then, that such a massive building rests upon a sandy... I mean, sandstone foundation? And does this offer us clues as to the true reality of this narrative--and the entire Brighamite history for that matter?
Let's dive in.
Built on a Sandy Foundation
As legend has it, when Brigham Young and his small band of followers rolled into the Salt Lake valley in July of 1847, the 46-year-old leader stopped where temple square sits today, and tapping the ground with his cane, declared, "here will be the temple of our God."
The temperature that day reached 96 degrees, and Young had been riding in the back of a wagon driven by Wilford Woodruff while suffering from spotted fever, a tick-borne illness with a high rate of fatality.
Finally finding the abandoned city must've been a welcome reprieve to the LDS leader, who was lucky to be alive on that particular day.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to ride in a primitive wagon into an abandoned city with intact and preserved buildings?
For Brigham, the words of Vatican representative Pierre de Smet would have been vindicated: the Jesuit-drawn maps having shown him exactly where to find the city, and perhaps which specific structures were allotted to him and waiting for him to claim under the conditions of his contract with De Smet.
Young and his followers, "the inheritors", would merely need to settle in and start cleaning and refurbishing the empty and abandoned buildings, readying them for the beginnings of an isolated empire where self-appointed polygamous leaders could rule with uncontested totalitarian authority.
While researching the official stories about how such a magnificent edifice was said to have been built on a faulty sandstone foundation, the words that Jesus Christ spoke to the Nephites came to mind:
Verily, verily I say unto you that this is my doctrine. And whoso buildeth upon this, buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them. And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil and is not built upon my rock, but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell standeth open to receive such when the floods come and thewinds beat upon them. (3 Nephi 5:9, RE, emphasis added)
In addition to Brigham Young's teaching of a massive amount of doctrine far exceeding anything Jesus ever taught about what His church actually is (i.e., plural marriage, Adam-God, no priesthood for blacks, blood atonement), I found it ironic that the official narrative asserts that the massive sandstone foundation had to be replaced in the 1860s.
Surely, those who were leading "the Lord's Church" would know better than to build their house of God on a sandy foundation.
Yet ironically, sandstone, if even somewhat protected from wind and rain, can actually last centuries.
Whoever actually built the Salt Lake temple knew exactly what they were doing, as they were masters of architecture. After all, the building is still standing today, having endured hundreds of years of weathering and earthquakes.
Yet, the story of having to replace the sandstone foundation brings the entire narrative into question.
On one hand, we see a beautiful stone structure constructed masterfully, and on the other we read about a people who made construction errors of epic proportions but somehow were still able to pull off building an edifice that they said "will last through the Millennium".
But now we are told that it needs hundreds of millions of dollars and several years of upgrades to the foundation to make it earthquake proof so it can actually last into the Millennium.
As you read what follows look for subtle clues that give away the fake narrative, clues, deliberately inserted into the stories, that reveal that the LDS people did not build, but found this temple.
As the story goes, in 1852 a sandstone and adobe wall, 14 feet in height, was constructed around the temple site. The purpose for this wall, we're told, was to provide security for building the temple and to give otherwise "idle" men something to do.
However, if Utah was indeed an empty desert full of nothing but sagebrush at this early time period, then building secure houses, planning and constructing infrastructure, and establishing farms and digging irrigation ditches would have been plenty to keep the men busy. Idle men would not have survived--unless of course all of that infrastructure was already there.
Here is a rare photo of the old wall around the temple site, built before the construction of the temple was even started.
It's a screen shot and poor quality, but you literally can't find photos like this anymore. As you can see, the wall is falling apart and looks ancient:
According to the LDS Church, the design and specifications of the temple were given to Truman Angell by Brigham Young in January of 1853. The following details were recalled by William Ward, assistant architect to Truman, and cited in an 1892 article published by the Deseret News:
The design was formulated in the following manner: Brigham Young drew upon a slate in the architect's office a sketch, and said to Truman O. Angell: "There will be three towers on the east, representing the President and his two Counselors; also three similar towers on the west representing the Presiding Bishop and his two Counselors; the towers on the east the Melchisedek Priesthood, those on the west the Aaronic Priesthood. The center towers will be higher than those on the sides, and the west towers a little lower than those on the east end. The body of the building will be between these and pillars will be necessary to support the floors. Angell then asked about the height, and drew the following vertical section according to Brigham's instructions. The basement 16 feet high to contain the font. The first story twenty-five feet high, leaving room for a tier of rooms above the side aisles about ten feet high below the second floor. The second story like the first. The construction of the roof was left to Mr. Angell. ("Who Designed the Temple?" Deseret News, April 23, 1892, quoted in Forty Years, p. 92)
The source for the quote above is 39 years after the fact, and was supposedly a recollection by Ward, who died in January of 1893, just a few months before the Salt Lake temple was dedicated.
How are we to know that the above details were not describing a building that was already there? I mean, how hard is it to look at a building and simply describe it?
To me, this is just like all those polygamy affidavits written by women who claimed to be plural wives of Joseph Smith, published decades after the fact and simply made up to fit a narrative.
Are we supposed to trust sources like this?
Ward's statement is one of the sources used to cite evidence that the foundation was only 16 deep feet.
Another source is a Deseret News article published contemporaneously in 1854 that quotes Truman Angell describing the physical attributes of the temple as if it was already there, using words and phrases in the present tense such as "are" and "is" instead of will be.
You can read this strange description in the appendix of the book, Everlasting Spires, by Wallace A. Raynor.
In 1963 the Deseret News published another article contradicting the 16-foot foundation statements it made 100 years earlier. You can read the article below if you enlarge the photo:
The article clearly states the foundation was 30 feet deep, with a photo to prove it.
So who is telling the truth here? The Church Historical Department, the Deseret News from 1854, or the Deseret News from 1963? What sources, if any, can be trusted at all? How deep does the foundation go and what is it really constructed of?
If we want the truth, perhaps we should ask construction workers who have been part of the excavation crews on the Salt Lake temple since 2020. After all, they are just doing a job and have nothing to lose in telling the truth.
There are two videos where two different construction workers were interviewed, both are worth watching before you read what follows.
In this first one, produced by Jon Levi three years ago, we can hear Jon questioning the construction worker around the 4-minute mark. The man tells him that the foundation goes down 4 levels, that he's been down there, and that the workers are not allowed to take pictures. During the video Jon's phone experienced what he thought was a jamming signal:
In this second video, produced by Streets of Tartaria, a construction worker, plainly visible in the video, matter-of-factly states that the temple foundation goes down at least 40 feet and that is where they are installing the hydraulics. In the first few minutes of the video you can see the massive hole that was been excavated and its extensive depth. The construction worker is interviewed around the 15 minute mark:
Now that you have seen just a few of the discrepancies and anomalies surrounding the temple foundation, let's dive into the official narrative.
LDS historians claim that the groundbreaking for the Salt Lake Temple took place on February 14th of 1853.
On that day we're told that hordes of Mormon pioneers gathered around Brigham Young as he attempted to break the frozen ground with a shovel, and after he finally managed to scoop up a small offering of earth, the crowed was so thick that Brigham had to yell "get out of my way, for I am going to throw this".
We're told that this small scoop of earth was extracted from the southeast corner after which a prayer was offered by Heber Kimball, who invoked a blessing on the Architect, Superintendent, Foreman, and all other laborers on the temple according to Freemasonic protocols (more on this in part II).
After the crowed dispersed the workers began the excavation in haste, employing the primitive implements of the 19th century: the shovel and pick axe for loosening the rocky soil, baskets and buckets on ropes for hauling dirt out of the hole, and the horse-drawn wagon for hauling off the excavated dirt.
We're told that 150-200 men and boys worked daily at the site attempting to have it ready to lay the cornerstones at the April conference, just six short weeks later.
The temple, said to have been drawn by Truman Angell, was to be 186-1/2 feet long by 98 feet wide, covering an area of 21,850 square feet or about 1/2 acre.
As the story goes, the workers did not excavate the entire foundation area at that time, but instead dug four trenches that would form a rectangle around the perimeter, as this was all that would be required to lay the cornerstones and begin work on the sandstone foundation. Curiously, we are never told when or how the rest of the 1/2 acre area was excavated.
The trenches were no small feat for a group of newly-arrived pioneers who were likely still attempting to feed themselves while building log homes and establishing farms.
The trenches were dug 20 feet wide and 16 feet deep, with the north-south trenches running 193 feet long and the east-west trenches running 125 feet. According to Henshaw (author of Forty Years) whom I have already quoted above, this would require more than 200,000 cubic feet of earth to be removed from the area, at a rate of 1,900 tons a day (see p.99).
All of which was hauled off by horse-drawn wagons.
(How many tons of dirt could be hauled in a single wagon load? And what distanced was it hauled to and stored? What were the conditions of the roads it was hauled on? Mud, slush, snow?)
Keep in mind that this was in February, and as Henshaw points out in his book, the workers had to navigate winter storms through both February and March, enduring daily freezing and thawing cycles.
Those 150-200 workers would be digging with picks and shovels in frozen ground when they began work in the morning, and by afternoon wagons would have to haul heavy loads on wet, slushy, or muddy roads.
Why would they even attempt to tackle this project during the winter and early spring months? It really doesn't make any sense at all.
But as always, we're told the pioneers completed the arduous task, and by the appointed time they had the trenches ready for the cornerstone ceremony.
Meanwhile, the Sharp Brothers had been at their new quarry extracting large sandstone blocks and shaping them into perfectly cut and squared cornerstones, with hand tools.
The only task that remained was hauling the blocks four miles to the construction site. These blocks, weighing in at 5,400 pounds each, would need to hauled on a wagon pulled by a team of oxen over muddy spring roads.
Somehow, and we're not told specifically how, only four wagons delivered the massive stones to the temple site just in time for the April conference.
Was it really possible to have dug out these trenches in the allotted time during the muddy spring? This was certainly not plausible for a people who had just arrived a few years earlier to divert all their resources to such a project when they were in all reality going hungry.
Before you read on to the next section please take a moment and reflect on the massive discrepancy between what the official history claims (16 feet), and what you have seen in the videos above (40 feet).
It is NOT HUMANLEY POSSIBLE for men with shovels and picks to dig a 40 foot hole in an area covering 1/2 acre in only six weeks. Not then, not today.
Someone is lying to us.
Extracting dirt from a hole that deep would've had to be done one small bucket at a time using a windlass with ropes. (A windlass is a device that uses a series of ropes and pulleys to lower buckets into holes. It was widely used during the 19th century).
It simply would not have been possible to accomplish in a six-week period.
Also consider the fact that there are tunnels all over under Salt Lake City and specifically under temple square.
We're told that some of them were constructed in 1960s during a renovation, but the first mention of tunnels actually goes back to 1889, when John Nuttall wrote in his diary about a tunnel connecting the temple to the annex building.
The second mention came in 1911, when Gisbert Bossard, a Prussian convert, somehow gained access to the temple interior and took dozens of pictures. He claimed there were tunnels running from the temple to both the Hotel Utah and the Sharon building. Read about that here.
Were tunnels under the "defective" sandstone foundation dug out underneath before or after the granite blocks were added on top of the sandstone?
After the April conference of 1853 and the laying of the cornerstones, we're told that it only took two more months to finish excavating the remaining area under the temple. Which again, would not have been enough time to excavate the forty foot depth (along with tunnels) that we now know the foundation descends to.
Over the next two years the narrative goes quiet, and as far as we know nothing was done except continuing work on the stone wall surrounding the temple block.
Then in May of 1855, a report was given to Brigham Young, issued by the church office clerks, stating that 100 men were "rolling down large rocks for the temple foundation".
We are not told how these men accomplished this feat, but somewhere they managed to roll these boulders that two-ton sandstone foundation blocks were cut out of (See, Forty Years, p. 221), right down to temple square.
In Truman Angell's journal we find a plan to construct a crane to hoist and set these blocks, but whether or not it was ever built is not mentioned (See Everlasting Spires, Kindle Edition, Loc 401).
Miraculously, and without a crane, we're told that by June of 1853 the foundation reached a height of eight feet, and by July it was completely finished, consisting of 101,056 cubic feet and weighing around 7500 tons (Everlasting Spires, Loc 419).
So let's recap. If we combine the official narrative with the modern evidence of a much deeper foundation and interconnecting tunnels, this is what we're left with:
In only two years an area of 1/2 acre, excavated at least four stories below ground (interconnected with tunnels) with men using only shovels, pick axes, baskets on ropes, and horse-drawn wagons, was filled with massive sandstone blocks that were set as low as forty feet deep and built up to 8 feet above ground level. This is, of course, completely impossible and absolutely ridiculous.
Yet, the LDS Church has tipped their hand. They, and Russell Nelson in particular, must've known that by digging up the foundation of the temple in recent years the true depth of the temple basement would eventually be leaked and revealed.
But whatever the reasons for the renovation, Church leaders must anticipate that some powerful earthquakes will hit Utah in the future, and this must be an attempt at protecting their infrastructure under the temple, likely consisting consisting of underground prepper bunkers.
Let's get back to the story.
From 1853 to 1855 there is another lull in the temple construction narrative, and things seem to go quiet again until a very important character enters the story: Master Mason Edward L. Parry.
We're told that Parry acted as Master Mason on both the St. George and Manti temples, but he first appears in the Salt Lake Temple narrative, working directly under superintendent A.H. Raleigh (Alonzo Hazeltine).
Raleigh is the man blamed for the "faulty" sandstone foundation that we're told had to be replaced when it was uncovered in 1867.
This is a strange twist in the plot, but every good story that is believable needs elements of diversity, antagonism, or a scape goat to blame the woes of the people on.
What is baffling is how these two men, Parry and Raleigh, said to have been experts in stone masonry, could have allowed the temple foundation to get so far out of plumb that the entire thing had to be scrapped and replaced.
A Giant Bubble Off Plumb
Alonzo Raleigh enters the narrative in 1850 when he's made foreman over the public works masons, and disappears 8 years later when Johnston's army moves into Utah to begin its occupation in 1858.
Raleigh was given "bills & specifications for the temple foundation" from Truman Angell in May of 1855, but strangely, we're told that work on the foundation had already begun two years prior and was finished by July 23 of 1855.
Here is how author Mark Henshaw describes the progress made in those two years:
The stones laid down in those first layers were called ashlars, and each layer was referred to as a course. By Raleigh's calculations, the workers had set down 101,056 cubic feet of ashlars weighing 7,478 tons in total--almost 15,000,000 pounds. They had been cut by hand, hauled by wagon, then laid and cemented in place in each course with mortar made from lime and sand applied between the courses. The top course of ashlars would be cut precisely enough to establish a level horizontal surface on which to put down a layer of smooth flagging stone ten feet wide. It was upon the flagging that the temple's walls would rest. (Forty Years, p. 134)
If we add up what we know about the true depth of the foundation today, the material to fill a forty foot hole would have been multiplied to at least 18,000 tons, a whopping 37 million pounds of rock--"all cut by hand" and "hauled by wagon" of course.
I don't believe it would have been possible for workmen in the 1850s to lay 7500 tons of material in just two years, let alone 18 thousand tons. What we are reading here is just a story, a story full of unbelievable irony.
All that toil during those early years of the 1850s--the quarrying of and transportation of multi-ton boulders, the hand drilling and shaping of the massive blocks, the teamsters hauling the material to the temple site on muddy roads, the lowering down of heavy stones into the excavation site without cranes--just plain not possible.
And then we're told that one man, using a faulty instrument, somehow managed to muck up the entire foundation.
As the story goes, Alonzo Raleigh, construction superintendent and foreman over all masons, refused to use Truman Angell's level, and instead used his own homemade version.
Here is how the narrative reads:
The sandstone blocks needed to be cut and laid precisely level in the limestone mortar between courses to bear the weight of the granite walls that would be stacked on them. That required the masons to use a level to check the alignment of each stone to keep it in horizontal line with the rest of the stones in the tier. Truman Angell had such a took, known to be accurate. But the masons told Brigham that Alonzo Raleigh, the foreman, had demurred from using Truman's implement in favor of his own homemade--and apparently defective--level. The false readings from the device had led to the stones being improperly laid. Truman confirmed the problem on December 7. Enough dirt had been removed for him to take a measurement of the exposed basement walls, and he found sections that were two inches off level. (Forty Years, p. 221)
I have a little experience with levels. I've installed cabinets and countertops, set tile, framed walls, ran drain pipe for plumbing, poured concrete for shower bases, installed French drains in lawns, and my landscape crews have installed pavers and retaining walls.
In my professional experience, 1/4" off level is enough to cause a massive problem for a typical job, but 2", well, you have to consciously trying to be 2" off level.
This story is not adding up.
If this was true, then why didn't Truman Angell, Edward Parry, Daniel H. Wells, Brigham Young, or literally any other mason working on the temple check the stones for level at every course that was laid?
Why would they chance having to tear out the whole thing and start over? For supposedly skilled artisans said to have built all that they did in Salt Lake City, this story makes no sense at all, and is a total fabrication.
Here is what the narrative has Brigham Young saying about this problem:
I shall have to take up one tier of rock all over the foundation, for Brother Raleigh appears as though he wished to destroy that Temple...One quarter of an inch settling of that building would crack it from top to bottom... I do not know as Brother Raleigh realizes what he is doing but it appears to me that he is trying to destroy the architecture of that building. (Brigham Young comments to Wilford Woodruff, quoted in Forty Years, p. 222)
To remedy the problem Raleigh told the masons to used wedge-shaped rocks as shims to level the tiers, a makeshift solution that would have ended in disaster as the weight of the building would have crushed the shims and shifted and cracked the stones.
This doesn't make any sense for an experienced stone mason. There is not much historical information on Raleigh. The Church History Library grants access to Raleigh's log books for masonry laborers on the temple, but not much else. No journals, and nothing on his background in masonry.
Here is where we return to the 1963 Deseret News article (shown at the beginning of this post) that reported that the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple was at least 30 feet below grade, contrary to what historians still claim about the original excavating in the 1850s.
The article notes that the foundation is multi-tiered, consisting of both sandstone and granite, contradicting the narrative that the sandstone foundation was pulled up, scrapped, and replaced with granite.
Here are some more photos of the 1963 renovation:
I found that 1963 Deseret News article on the Nigh Unto Kolob blog. The author of the blog quotes yet another article from The Salt Lake Herald, entitled, "Facts About the Temple", and published in 1891.
Here is what it said:
The Salt Lake Temple foundation is not laid of granite from Cottonwood canon (sic), as has been stated, but is of the same kind of sandstone as the temple block wall foundation--we call it firestone--and has never been disturbed or taken up and relayed as has been stated. (The Salt Lake Herald, October 22, 1891)
This article's claims are interesting. Firestone is not a type of sandstone, it is made of pyrite, a highly oxidative rock that produces a spark when struck against steel. Firestone is not used as a building material because it is highly corrosive.
So what are we now to believe? The official narrative still trumpeted today by apologist historians, or an 1891 article published before the temple was supposedly finished?
If the LDS Church lied about the excavation and original sandstone foundation being faulty, then what else are they lying about?
Honestly, probably everything. I can't believe anything we're told about this temple. And as you will see, the further we probe into the narrative of this building, the more anomalies we find.
The author of the blog also made some interesting commentary on the foundation anomalies which are worth repeating here. He begins by quoting an earlier article by the Deseret News published in 1962:
"The story of the foundation and the back-breaking labors of the pioneers who toiled with oxen to haul giant pieces of granite from Cottonwood Canyon quarries to replace an original foundation has been told."
[Author's commentary] Thus, if there ever was a full foundation of sandstone up the ground level, then the upper 14 feet of that base had to have been removed and replaced with granite. However, the BYU story stated that the temple structure didn't rise to the ground level until 1867, or 10 years after the threat from the U.S. Army. So, this cast some doubt on the full underground base of sandstone ever existing.
Notwithstanding, it is a fact that some 14 feet to 16 feet of lower sandstone sub-base still remain below ground. The 1963 Deseret News stated that the sandstone sub-foundation covers an area of 4,850 square feet.
The photograph also reveals how layered in blocks and even partially eroded the sandstone sub-foundation appears to have been in 1963. During the 1963 renovation, cement walls and footings were added to replace the previous rocky subsoil. At the same time of the 1963 underground improvements, underground passageways were added. (Is the sub foundation of the Salt Lake Temple composed of granite or sandstone?By blog author Lynn Arave. I recommend reading the whole blog post.)
Here is the photograph Arave is referencing, the one I already shared from the 1963 article. It is worth a second look:
Now compare it with this modern photo of the ongoing temple renovation:
Notice the large concrete pillars on the right and how large they are compared to the excavators. Ask yourself why they would add this surrounding concrete in 1963 (as told by the blogger I quoted) and why they had to do it at that very deep level, far exceeding the original 16 feet we're told was initially excavated in 1853?
What are they attempting to cover up with that concrete? What is the real depth and size of this temple? Is there some kind of massive underground palace that this concrete is covering? How deep does the temple foundation really go? And what would LDS leaders be using those underground facilities for during all the years since 1853? Was this building repurposed for benign or nefarious designs?
We all deserve to know the truth, and I hope God will reveal it to us soon.
In the meantime, let's ponder what Nephi meant when he said that those who teach things like, "I, I am the Lord's" true church, and that "the Redeemer hath done his work, and hath given his power unto men", who "teach with their learning" and say, "hearken ye unto my precept"--are the same men who "seek deep to hide their councils from the Lord" (See 2 Nephi 12:28, RE).
Are they hiding these councils in deep underground facilities under Temple Square?
Join me soon for part II, where we'll dive deep into the Salt Lake Temple cornerstone ceremony, a Masonic protocol for claiming founded buildings...
Deja vu is a strange thing - that otherworldly feeling of having experienced something before but not quite being able to place it in time. This phenomenon is often accompanied by a foreboding feeling, almost ominous, as if it is trying to warn us that something is not quite right, like: "pay attention here".
As I've researched deeply into the first three "pioneer" temples in Utah, I get the feeling that I'm reading the same narrative over and over again. Although the names (most of them anyway) and places change, certain elements of the "official" stories always remain the same, showing a very clear pattern.
Here are some examples of predictable and observable patterns in the official history of the construction of LDS temples in Utah:
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.
These stories are often full of irony, a word that comes from the Latin ironia, and Greek eironeia, meaning "dissimulation", and "assumed ignorance". The word dissimulation means "concealment of one's thoughts, feelings, or character; pretense".
As you read through these temple construction stories, ask yourself: what are the narrators attempting to conceal and what is the motivation for their pretense? (Remember, the word pretense means "an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true".)
In my opinion, pretense is exactly what is happening in these temple narratives. They are hiding something for their own gain. As I've written about in a past post, I believe those who control the top echelons of the LDS Church are "seeking deep to hide their councils from the Lord". In the Covenant of Christ, or modern English version of the Book of Mormon, the verse describing these secret councils is even clearer:
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
As the story goes, a man by the name of Isaac Morley was the founder of Manti. Born in 1786 in Massachusetts, Morley was a veteran of the War of 1812 who later joined the Campbellite Commune movement in Ohio. He was baptized into the LDS movement early on in 1830, and began to take on plural wives in 1844. He made the trek to Utah in 1848.
When a Ute chief named Walkara deeded Sanpitch valley over to the LDS Church in 1849, Brigham Young sent Morley to settle the Manti area with a small group of settlers. Supposedly, Walkara had a vision in 1840 in which the Lord told him to give the land to a group of white people who would come in the future, and when the Mormons showed up the chief asked Brigham to send colonists to the valley. Morley and his group of fifty families made the 100-mile trip to Sanpitch on wagons in November of 1849, just in time for the winter snows to arrive.
Before we get too deep into the narrative let's take a step back and analyze: why would Brigham Young send a group of settlers over 100 miles away from Salt lake at the this early time period? Why would a Ute Indian chief just hand over their tribal land to them?
These pioneer settlers with their young families had only been in Salt Lake Valley for three years - wouldn't they have needed to allocate their manpower to building secure homes and establishing a city and infrastructure in Salt Lake Valley? Why divert people (according to Leonard Arrington there were only 4200 people in Utah in 1848, see Great Basin Kingdom, p. 50) and resources to remote locations such as Logan, Manti, and St. George? It doesn't make a lot of sense unless Brigham knew that abandoned cities already existed in these areas.
We are told that when Morley and his group arrived in what is now Manti he supposedly uttered this prophetic statement: "There is the termination of our journey; in close proximity to that hill, God willing we will build our city." The "hill" Morley was referring to is Manti hill, the place where the temple stands today. The settlers set up winter camp by making a cluster of wagons and stretching cotton sheets of cloth over the bows of each wagon-box, creating makeshift wagon-tents. But as the story goes, snow began to fall, quickly reaching a depth of two feet, the water source froze, and cattle began to starve and die. (How did babies and young children survive this winter? We are not told.)
At this point we're told that the settlers decided to move base camp to Manti hill, digging into layers of solid stone (on top of frozen ground) in order to create makeshift "dug-out" shelters. They supposedly survived the winter in these dens, living like hibernating animals. This hardship, we're told, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because, in digging through the solid stone on Manti hill (with hand shovels) they would discover the very stone quarry they would utilize to construct the temple walls. (A stone quarry that is now hidden under the temple. More on this later.)
Glen R. Stubbs described these makeshift dens in a master's thesis, published by BYU in 1960, as follows:
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
As the story goes, the settlement of Manti began to grow during the decade of the 1850s. Even though we had Heber Kimball announcing in an 1852 General Conference that Manti was full of abandoned homes, the official narrative informs us that in that same year the first fort was built. The fort only took a month to build, and it was constructed out of stone from temple hill. It was designed to protect the adobe/log cabins from Indians and other threats. In 1854, we're told, an even bigger fort was built, with stone walls 12 feet high that covered 9 square blocks.
This discrepancy between Heber Kimball's announcement in general conference and what the official record states is interesting and begs the question: which came first, the fort or the abandoned homes?
Also in the year 1852 we have an account of a man named William Ward, an architect and sculptor, who, using stone from temple hill, carved an ornamental block that was placed in the Washington Monument. This donated piece of stone was an attempt by Church leaders, we're told, to get the federal government to recognize the Utah territory as the State of Deseret. Here is the piece below:
(You can see the beehive symbol under the all-seeing eye, accompanied by a Masonic handshake in the upper lefthand corner.)
Just like the first two temples already covered in this series, the Manti temple narrative also begins with a prophecy. Sometime in between 1850 and 1852, we're told that Heber Kimball declared that "the day would come when a temple would be built upon 'Manti Hill' on the outskirts of the city" (see Stubbs, A History of the Manti Temple p. 17). The source for Kimball's utterance in Stubbs' thesis is an article published in the Millennial Star in August of 1888, a few months after the dedication. As I've discovered in the St. George and Logan temple narratives, these "prophecies" are never recorded contemporaneously, but always pop up decades after the fact.
As the story goes, Brigham Young would officially announce the temple in a conference in Ephraim, held on December 4th of 1873, over twenty years after Kimball's prediction. In April of 1877, we're told that Young went to temple hill and had the following conversation with Warren S. Snow, who recorded it as follows:
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:
Glenn Stubbs described the excavation process as follows:
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:
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?
Let's take a look at another strange photo. Here we supposedly see the same building but with a large rock outcropping in the background. Other photos show a terrace wall separating the temple from the jagged mountain slope pictured here. Why is it not shown in this photo?
The story shifts and changes, and the photos don't match up with any of the stories.
According to the record the walls were built first but that is not the case in this photo. Why would you build a building so close to a rocky cliff and then build a wall separating them later? That makes no sense.
Also notice that the background hill, foundation and stone work look different in this photo below than in the one above. Did they have telephoto lenses back in this day? That rock outcropping behind the temple in this photo appears to be a lot closer then the actual distance. If you go there and view this in person you can see for yourself that the hill behind the Manti temple does not look like this:
Here, in a later photo we see a completed building that appears as if it's being dug out of a rubble pile. If you look closer you can see that in the lower-front-left corner that there is a window (or a door) that appears to be buried almost to the top of the arch. Who would build a building and then pile rock and rubble around it? And what's up with the wooden shack in the lower right? Why build a magnificent temple and then place such an ugly shack right next to it? Was this a bunkhouse for the workers who were digging this ancient, abandoned building out of the ground?
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.
In the photo below we see a more extensive view of the terrace walls. Notice how they subtly disappear into the hillside behind the temple. We also see the partially terraced wall directly behind the temple, separating it from the foothills. Again, if the terrace walls were built before the temple, why doesn't this show up in the previous two photos above?
According to the official record, the terrace walls began to be removed as early as 1907 during a landscape renovation. Why go to such effort to build these perfect stone walls only to destroy them and destabilize the grade supporting the entire hillside a mere twenty years later for "landscaping"? Today the only wall left is the one directly behind the temple as shown below:
Also notice that the slope behind the wall on the right of the picture appears to be layered rock, possibly being the remains of a wall that kept going that direction. This begs the question: was this temple once sitting on a massive platform totally surrounded by terrace walls that could have been partially buried in a cataclysmic event? And when Brigham Young ordered Isaac Morley and others to settle Manti, were they commissioned to begin digging this ancient abandoned building out of the earth?
In the video below produced by the YouTuber Streets of Tartaria, he takes you on a tour around the temple and offers a few different perspectives of what was really going on with this building. One possibility is that it is actually sitting on an ancient star fort.
A Familiar Cornerstone Ceremony and More Premature Death
If you've been following the blog on the last two temples (St. George and Logan), you'll know that these cornerstone ceremonies are literally like clock work, always performed at high noon and in ritualistic sequences.
We're told that the terrace walls and foundation were completed by April of 1879, a stunning feat for 19th century workers using only basic hand tools. It should also be noted that Manti is sitting at an elevation of 5,600 feet, making winter time a bit colder there than other areas where temples were built. How much work were these laborers able to do in the winter time? We are not told. These important logistical construction details are always left out of the official historical narratives.
The cornerstone ceremony was performed around noon on April 14 of 1879. The services began at 11 AM with a brass band, and those present are described as follows:
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?
Oftentimes when researching construction narratives of Old World buildings there are discrepancies involving the architectural plans. As you may recall from my last post on the Logan temple, the official story is that they began building the structure without any plans at all.
Truman Angell didn't draw actual plans, we're told, until the temple walls had reached a height of 20 to 30 feet. How was it even possible to excavate and lay a foundation without plans? How did construction workers know what to do or where to even start? This, to me, is a major clue in the narrative that bespeaks the truth that the Logan temple was already there.
In my opinion, this absurdity in the story was placed there intentionally by the narrators as part of their requirement to reveal subtle hints of truth (revelation of the method).
In old buildings that span America and the known world for that matter, the original plans for the structure are often missing or unknown.
In these temple narratives, we are led to make assumptions that plans already existed and were being used by builders, but the drafter of the plans is not named, and the plans are not recorded. This is a sleight of mouth technique which the storytellers use in these so-called histories.
In the case of the Manti temple, plans are mentioned but a definitive drafter is never named. The first mention of these plans was supposedly made by Brigham Young in October of 1876 in a General Conference. Addressing the Saints in several different counties, Brigham stated:
...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
If any of you have been in the Manti temple, then you know about the spiral staircases that ascend 76 feet from the basement to the top floor. They each consist of 151 steps, 204 "intricately fashioned spindles", and a black walnut railing that is so well put together that upon running a hand across it, one cannot feel the joints. The most amazing attribute about these staircases is that they were constructed without a central support. This was an incredible technological feat because staircases this large normally require a central support to hold their massive weight. So how did LDS pioneers build such a large free-standing staircase using only hand tools?
We're not given a single detail.
Here is one of the staircases:
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.
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.
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
Have you ever looked up the etymology of the word "mason"? In English it is derived from masoun, meaning, "stoneworker, builder in stone, one who dresses, lays, or carves stone". In French there are two forms: masson and macon, again meaning "stonemason". In North Old French we have machun, and in Old High German we have steinmezzo. The Germans add a second element, mahhon, meaning, "to make".
The German word Mahhon is what piqued my interest, because in scripture we have a title given to Cain and Lamech known as Master Mahon, which means "master of that great secret". The secret is of course the craft of murdering to get gain. When Cain murdered Abel, "he gloried in that which he had done, saying, I am free; surely the flocks of my brother fall into my hands".
What if the flocks described here are more than just sheep, what if they are people? What if murdering to get gain is only the exoteric interpretating of the title Master Mahon? What if the esoteric meaning of that title implies using murder, intrigue, lies, and propaganda to control human populations? What if getting gain is more than about money? What if it is also about control?
If the German word Mahhon means "to make", then would the scriptural word Mahon have something to do with making an oath? Remember what Satan said to Cain, "Swear unto me by your throat, and if you tell it, you shall die". Why then is the word Mason so similar to the word Mahon? Does it also imply making an oath? According to the online etymology dictionary the word mason from Anglo-French was attested from the 15th century to mean, "a member of the fraternity of freemasons".
Why then, is so much emphasis placed on these "master masons" in the temple construction narratives? What are the narrators attempting to tell us? What are they hiding in plain sight? Are they attempting to inform us that the freemasonic fraternity is fabricating these histories?
This is exactly what I believe.
The "master mason" named for the Manti temple was Edward L. Parry, the same man who was named as such for the St. George temple. Another man with that last name, John Parry, was named for the Logan temple. In my last post I mentioned how the word Parry means to evade using a defensive action (as in fencing), or to dance around hard questions. It also means "to turn aside". Is it a coincidence that this name is used in reference to "master masons" involved in the construction accounts of Utah's first three temples?
As the story goes, Edward L. Parry watched over the stone masons on the St. George and Manti temples daily. One famous story records the following account:
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?
Did you know that there are Egyptian symbols on some of the door knobs and hinges in the Manti temple?
According to Hugh Nibley, his pioneer great grandfather John Patrick Reid, who was a Freemason, was the one who designed the hardware for the doors in the temple. In V.J. Rasmussen's book, The Manti temple, Nibley is quoted explaining the symbolism for each design and how it is likely that Reid would've had no idea what the symbolism meant. Nibley writes:
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:
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:
Another interesting connection to Egypt is the account of the Mi'kmaq Indians of Newfoundland. They were one of the only groups of natives found by the Colonists to have possessed a written language, and that language used Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a book written in 1976 by Barry Fell, entitled, America B.C., a comparison of the Mi'kmaq characters is made with Egyptian characters and the similarities are astounding (see chapter 17). There was definitely an Egyptian presence here in North America, and to me it goes much deeper than a bunch of occultists suddenly becoming excited about Egyptian symbolism in the 19th century, as Nibley claims.
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
Daniel H. Wells was Manti's first temple president, and the man has an interesting history to say the least. Wells lived in Nauvoo before the majority of the Latter-Day-Saints moved in. He was an established landowner who was friendly to the Mormons, and served as a judge on the city council before he was baptized in 1846. He was also a lieutenant general in the Nauvoo legion, and after arriving in Salt Lake City in 1848, was made Utah's (State of Deseret) first Attorney General. For twenty years he was the second counselor in the Frist Presidency under Brigham Young.
Wells is touted as being a man of strong moral character, but he actually has a lot of blood on his hands. He oversaw the genocide of over 100 Timpanogos in January of 1850. Brigham Young and Daniel Wells had decided in a meeting to "exterminate the Timpanogos", who were becoming a menace to settlers at Fort Utah. Wells drafted orders to George D. Grant to exterminate the natives, and Wells assisted him. After capturing 11 warriors they lined them up and executed them in front of their families, even though they promised not to hurt them. 100 others were killed in the fighting.
Since learning of this story it has come to my attention that the population of the Utah Lake Indians (the Timpanogos) was around 73,000 when Brigham Young arrived in the valley, but only 2300 remained by 1906. What happened to all of them? The extermination order described above is documented as Special Order No. 2 in the Utah State Archives. How many incidents involving other genocidal attacks are not documented? Listen to this podcast for more on Daniel H. Wells' involvement with Utah Indians.
The Timpanogo Indians were just one class of Utes (Yutas) and were mentioned by the Spanish explorers Dominquez and Escalante in 1776 on their expedition through Utah (then New Mexico). In their writings they mentioned that another group of southern Yutas had beards and looked like Spaniards. This is very interesting, because an earlier French explorer known as Baron de Lahontan met some natives somewhere on the Missouri river who told him that they were from a land that had six noble cities surrounding a river and a salt lake. He described them as having "thick, bushy beards" and living in cement houses. This meeting took place in the late 1600s, and these
natives referred to themselves as the Mozeemlek Nation. Read about it here.
What happened to all of the bearded Indians mentioned by Spanish and French explorers?
My friend from the Streets of Tartaria Youtube channel sent me these interesting maps and photos. The maps show that cities surrounding Utah Lake existed in the same locations in both 1775 and 1892. How was this possible with the narrative we're told?
He also sent me this photo, showing that Indians (from the country of India) were being held captive in Utah in 1858:
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.
What was really going on in Utah during this time period? Why were they enslaving minorities and killing off natives? What did those native tribes know about the true history of the land? What were hundreds of Bengal Indians doing in Utah and how did they come into servitude?
Daniel H. Wells was involved in much more than fighting natives. In a book written by a descendant of Edward Lloyd Parry, master mason on the Manti and St. George temples, it is revealed that Parry was sealed to Wells as an adoptive son (it was a common practice in those days to be sealed to various Church leaders). Wells had been involved with Parry since the cornerstones had been laid for the Salt Lake temple in the 1850s:
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...
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