Before Joseph Smith became a "prophet" he was a magician, then he claimed to be physic and could tell peoples future and things of that nature. He then later became known as a "prophet" of God. He saw that there was a conflict in church and had conflict of his own so he took advantage of a good oppurtunity to start his own. He eventualy went on to having many wives ( some already married). I have enough trouble with one. So if your telling me that balancing that many wives isnt magic then magic doesnt exist. Just a little comic relief for the mormons. These are facts that you can find in non mormon history books and history channel as well. You may find this in anything talking about Joseph Smith that wasnt written by Mormons. I also watched a video about Joseph Smith called " The Pieces to the Mormon Puzzle". This is a video with ex mormons who saw how inconsistant their beliefs were and how the three books the Mormons use go completely against the Gospel of Christ and the rest of Gods' word ( THE BIBLE ). I have also looked online to several different websites that also said the same thing.

A good THICK book on this topic is Michael Quinn's *Early Mormonism and the Magic World View*. Mormonism sprang from backwoods America and the founder, Joseph Smith has a well documented connection to the occult and folk magic. Quinn, a former Brigham Young University historian, writes this in the introduction to his book: QUOTE: Eleven years ago my Introduction expressed confidence that LDS believers did not need to fear including occult beliefs and magic practices in the history of Mormonism's founders. In 1992 LDS church headquarters affirmed that view in its official Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which mentioned the influence of treasure-digging folk magic (see ch. 2) in five separate entries concerning Joseph Smith. These articles did not list my book in their source-notes, but one did cite an anti-Mormon minister's article about this topic in a Protestant evangelical magazine. Nevertheless, I was pleased to see this ripple-effect from the splash of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. As Richard L. Bushman recently wrote in a review for FARMS, "the magical culture of nineteenth-century Yankees no longer seems foreign to the Latter-day Saint image of the Smith family. ENDQUOTE FYI: FARMS stands for *Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies* It's a BYU-based organization which tries to reconcile historical fact with Mormon scriptures and official church history,

Please provide more information than just saying that it is all wrong. Here are some good links: http://www.xmission.com/~country/reason/clndest7.htm http://www.gnosis.org/ahp.htm http://www.lds-mormon.com/ematmwv.shtml http://www.irr.org/mit/masonry.html

I don't think so unless you consider putting a rock in a hat and claiming to have visions. How crazy is that lol...