Seer Stone Definition: A stone used to see visions; a stone that elicits the faith or state of mind to see a vision.
Seer Definition: One who sees visions, especially of a spiritual nature.
The church recently released a picture of the seer stone Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon. Even though the stone had been discussed in church magazines before, many Mormons apparently find this “news” surprising or even it troubling. It needn’t be.
Some are troubled that an instrument reportedly used in the magical arts would be used by a prophet of God. But we will see that seer is an old biblical term for prophet, and ancient prophets likely used seer stones, perhaps before magicians did. In any case, the use of something by a magician certainly does not tie God’s hands and prohibit him from using something similar.
Although Joseph Smith used the Jaredite interpreters (also known as the “Urim and Thummim”) to translate some of the original 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon, he used as single seer stone as well. According to Martin Harris, he used the single stone for convenience, perhaps because of its smaller size or because he didn’t have to worry about using it in the presence of others. Based on witness accounts, he most likely used the chocolate-colored stone in translating all of the Book of Mormon we have today. He also used this stone to receive some of the early revelations that are now found in the Doctrine and Covenants.
The Jaredite interpreters consisted of “two stones in silver bows . . . and use of these stones were what constituted ‘seers’ in ancient or former times” (Joseph Smith — History 1:35). In other words, the interpreters were themselves just two seer stones wired together! So why should we find it troubling for Joseph Smith to have used a single seer stone to translate, when it’s just fine that he used two seer stones? God can surely work through one stone as well as two.
A seer stone is the instrument of a seer. What is a seer? Seer (“see-er”) means, literally, “one who sees.” What a seer sees is visions (from the Latin viseo, “a thing seen”), as noted by Isaiah (Isaiah 31:10 NASB):
Who say to the seers, “You must not see visions”; And to the prophets, “You must not prophesy to us what is right, Speak to us pleasant words, Prophesy illusions.
Words for seer and visions in the Hebrew Bible are closely related to each other.
There is a close Biblical association between ancient prophets and seership, as noted in 1 Samuel 9:9 (NASB):
Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he used to say, “Come, and let us go to the seer”; for he who is called a prophet now was formerly called a seer.
Many prophets have had visions and thus would be considered seers. Some, like Lehi, even saw and read books in vision (1 Nephi 1:8-13). Some seem to have used stones to see their visions. Abraham apparently used the Biblical Urim and Thummim to see his great vision of creation as well as to receive an explanation of the vision from God (Abraham 3:1-4). We don’t know what the Biblical Urim and Thummim was or how it functioned, but several ancient traditions associate the instrument with light and stones. Cornelis Van Dam, arguably the foremost authority on the Urim and Thummim and author of The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, believes that it most likely consisted of a single stone. Urim is a Hebrew word that suggests “light” or “fire.” In Urim and Thummim, it may be referring to the physical light as well as the spiritual enlightenment produced by revelatory visions. Prior to Abraham’s time, the brother of Jared may have used the interpreters (two seer stones) to see a vision, as his vision appeared immediately after he received the interpreter stones (Ether 3:22-28).
Seer stones have been traditionally used by common people to see visions as well, in what is known as “scrying” or “seeing.” By Joseph Smith’s time, however, such “folk magical” ways were falling out of favor with most people. Joseph Smith is reported to have used seer stones to see visions of lost and hidden objects. For example, Martin Harris told of how Joseph Smith, by looking into the darkness of a hat containing his seer stone, was able to see a lost pin. Joseph Smith, he said, “reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me. I know he did not look out of the hat until after he had picked up the pin.”
According to witness accounts, Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon in a manner similar to the way he used it to see visions of lost and hidden objects. The witness accounts generally agree that he would place a seer stone in a hat, pull the hat over his face to exclude the light, and then look into the darkness to see the English translation (as described, perhaps, in Alma 37:22), which he then dictated to his scribe. Other people were often present as Joseph Smith dictated the text for hours on end. The gold plates, if in the room at all, remained covered with a cloth. The most detailed description of the translation process was given by David Whitmer, a special witness to the Book of Mormon who claimed that Joseph Smith described the process to him and others:
I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated by Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.
David Whitmer’s description of the translation process as a vision (“a piece of parchment would appear…”) is consistent with the use of the interpreters as described by Ammon in the Book of Mormon. Ammon’s words suggest that the very use of the interpreters consists of being a seer, or, in other words, seeing visions (Mosiah 8:13):
And the things are called interpreters…. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer.
In reality, all of these stones (the interpreters, the chocolate-colored seer stone, and even the Urim and Thummim) may have been just ordinary rocks or gemstones that nonetheless had special significance to those who used them. Jesus healed a blind man by anointing his eyes with clay (John 9). Similar methods of “folk magic” had been used by others before Jesus, but the clay wasn’t really magic at all. Its function was simply to encourage and focus the man’s faith so that he could be healed. Moses’s brass serpent didn’t magically heal anybody, but it provided a focal point for the faith of those who were humble enough to follow directions and look, and live (Alma 33:19-21). The Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:22) provided for communication with God, but surely God didn’t need it. It was for the benefit of the person who desired the divine communication. God works miracles when we have faith, or belief, that he can (see Moroni 7:37; Matthew 17:19-20). Objects and rituals can help elicit the required faith within us. We don’t use clay for such purposes in the church today, but we do make similar use of consecrated oil to anoint and heal the sick by the prayer of faith, as was done anciently (James 5:14, Mark 6:13). When someone is anointed with oil and healed, we don’t attribute the healing to the oil, as if it were magic, but rather to the faith of those involved and to the power of God. In fact, if oil is unavailable, we go ahead without it. It can be helpful, but it’s dispensable.
The stone may have served a similar function for Joseph Smith that the clay did for the blind man, that the brass serpent and Ark of the Covenant did for Israelites in ancient times, and that oil does for the sick who seek miraculous healing today–something of a meditative focal point. The translation of the Book of Mormon was a miraculous process, and could have only been accomplished by someone with unusual faith. Joseph Smith’s prior experiences of seeing visions with seer stones would have likely strengthened his faith that God could show him the translation of the Book of Mormon in the same way. Those prior visions may have been used (or even provided) by God to grow Joseph Smith’s faith so he would be able to see greater visions, including visions of the translated texts of ancient writings. Although his first experiences with seer stones were in a folk magic tradition, when it came to receiving the translation of the Book of Mormon and other revelations through the stone, Joseph Smith knew that it was “the gift and power of God,” not magic, that he was dealing with. Soon after finishing the translation of the Book of Mormon, according to David Whitmer, Joseph Smith gave his seer stone to Oliver Cowdery because he didn’t use it anymore. He had learned how to receive revelations (and perhaps see visions) without it. Having enough experience riding the bike, he no longer needed the training wheels. The stone had been helpful, but like oil for healing the sick, it was, in some measure at least, dispensable.
Joseph Smith’s later experience “translating” the Book of Abraham also suggests that, once he had enough experience with visions, he no longer needed the stone to see them. A Philadelphia periodical reported a conversation with Joseph Smith’s mother describing how he translated the Book of Abraham (Friends’ Weekly Intelligencer, 3 October 1846, 211):
She said, that when Joseph was reading the papyrus, he closed his eyes, and held a hat over his face, and that the revelation came to him; and where the papyrus was torn, he could read the parts that were destroyed equally as well as those that were there; and that scribes sat by him writing, as he expounded.
According to this report, Joseph Smith could see (read) and dictate the translated text of the Book of Abraham without a stone, but he still needed to block out the ambient light. This suggests that even when he used a stone while translating the Book of Mormon, the text he saw did not necessarily appear on the stone, or even in the stone, but was a vision that appeared before his eyes or in his mind’s eye, independent of the location of the stone.
It is certainly plausible that the chocolate-colored seer stone had special qualities that made it a useful tool for spiritual communication. But more likely, it was just an ordinary rock that, because of its meaning to Joseph Smith, helped inspire in him the faith he needed to see visions in a hat, just as a bit of ordinary clay or a figure formed of brass once helped others find the faith they needed to be healed. Like the brass serpent and Ark of the Covenant, the interpeters and chocolate-colored seer stone didn’t need to have any mechanical function, but only to inspire the faith to experience miracles.
Some wonder why Joseph Smith was given the gold plates in the first place, if he didn’t use them in translating. Perhaps they were given to him as evidence that there were ancient writings waiting to be revealed, and, like the stone, to inspire the faith he would need in order to see those writings in vision. The Egyptian papyri may have served a similar purpose for the revelation of the Book of Abraham.
After learning how Joseph Smith translated, some have been troubled and supposed that “the church” has been hiding the truth, since we have been taught in the past that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with the Urim and Thummim and gold plates, not with a stone in a hat. We are “the church.” We don’t have a professional clergy–we teach each other. Even the apostles learned most of their church history in Sunday school, from teachers who learned it the same way. Artists created paintings depicting the translation of the Book of Mormon based on their own limited understanding. Much of that understanding, it turns out, was incorrect. Part of the reason for the confusion was that Joseph Smith and other early Mormons used the term Urim and Thummim to refer to both the interpreters and to Joseph Smith’s other seer stones. After a few generations, however, people came to assume that the term only referred to the interpreters. Because of this faulty assumption, they understood Joseph Smith’s statement that he translated the Book of Mormon with the “Urim and Thummim” to mean that he used only the interpreters. Meanwhile, the early witness account describing his use of a stone and hat were ignored or believed to be in error. Historians are still trying to sort out what happened, so it’s not surprising that artists and authors of Sunday school manuals got some of the facts wrong. We don’t believe in inerrancy of scripture or infallibility of prophets, much less inerrancy of paintings and infallibility of those tasked to write and approve the manuals.
Anyway, it’s pretty cool to see a picture of a real seer stone!
Looks a bit like a chocolate Easter egg.