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| − | ===Source of the power?===
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| | + | {{:Question: Did Joseph Smith and his contemporaries believe in supernatural entities with real power?}} |
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| | + | {{endnotes sources}} |
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| − | It is clear that Joseph and his contemporaries believed that one could gain knowledge from such activities as dowsing (using a rod to find water, ore, or buried treasure) and the use of the seer stones. This does not mean, however, that Joseph understood such activities to be a form of magic.
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| − | In Joseph's day, the power of (for example) dowsing was seen as a manifestation of "how the world worked." An article published in 1825 described how the downward bob of a divining rode "closely resembles the dip of the magnetic needle, when traversing a bed or ore."{{ref|mcgee1templateref}} A journal of science reported the idea that "the rod is influenced by ores."{{ref|mcgee2templateref}}
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| − | An early British dowser denounced the idea that dowsing for ore was based on magic. "it [the rod] guided mee to the Orifice of a lead mine. [The rod is] of kin to the Load-stone [magnet], drawing Iron to it by a secret vertue, inbred by nature, and ''not by any conjuration as some have fondly imagined.''"{{ref|mcgee3templateref}}
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| − | Thus, divining was seen in this example as a manifestation of natural law. Just as one might use a compass or lode-stone to find true north, without understanding the principles or mathematics of magnetism which underlay it, so one could use dowsing as a tool, without understanding the principles by which it operated.
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