Friday, November 03, 8:30 am–10:00 am
Galleria II
This live event will not be recorded.
Chair: Christopher James Blythe (Brigham Young University)
8:30 am
“Comfort, Counsel, Money, and Livestock: Mormon Women’s Divination Communities”
Millie Tullis (Utah State University)
9:00 am
What Happens When Smokers Die? Latter-day Saint Folklore on the Afterlife
Christopher James Blythe (Brigham Young University)
9:30 am
Miraculous Healing Narratives and the Latter-day Saint Missionary
Christine Elyse Blythe (Folklore Society of Utah)
This panel examines spiritual gifts and vernacular ritual in the Latter Day Saint tradition, often referred to as Mormonism. From the foundations of the religion in the 1820s, a belief in visions, dreams, glossolalia, the gift of healing, prophecy, and various kinds of divination were common. The “routinization of charisma” took place in the second and third generations of the faith, systematizing practices and discouraging public performances of the more charismatic traditions. This panel focuses on this visionary world from the nineteenth century, into the period of transition, and to the vestiges of this tradition preserved in the folklore of modern missionaries.