symbols

The Hopi Nakwách – The Symbol of Brotherhood

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Nakwach symbol

Nakwach symbol

Hugh Nibley had a fascination with the Hopi Indian tribes of northeastern Arizona. He believed that the Hopi captured something about life that the rest of the world had missed. Their culture, traditions, and ceremonies were stable and permanent. They did not look to the conveniences of the day, and yet had still survived unhampered for thousands of years. Their rituals were particularly of interest to Dr. Nibley, as he saw in them something very familiar in parallels to ancient patterns throughout the world:

By the latest count, the Hopi are the only people in the world who still preserve a full annual cycle of full-dress protological, eschatological and cosmological ceremonies. ((Boyd Jay Petersen. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. 280))

What most impressed Nibley were the similarities between the Hopi rituals and those of the Church. Nibley’s son-in-law, Boyd Petersen, recounts: [Read more…]

The Ancient Pentagram – A Christian Symbol

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Pentagrams on the Nauvoo Temple

Pentagrams on the Nauvoo Temple

One of the more well-used and worn-out attacks from our critics has been the Church’s use of the symbol of the pentagram (a 5-pointed star) on some of our temples, most particularly on the early temples of this dispensation such as the Nauvoo Temple. In an sweeping gesture they pass these symbols off as absolute proof that Mormonism is a Satanic organization. They cannot imagine why a so-called Christian faith would even think to use such symbols when it is so clear to them that they are evil and of the devil.

Why do these critics always assume the worst, and ignore the simple evidence? It didn’t take me more than a few minutes of Googling to find the following information on the symbolism of the pentagram from several different sites: [Read more…]