"John Brooke takes a controversial romp over the field of previous Mormon scholarship. When he has done, he has managed to raise the intellectual pedigree of Joseph Smith by establishing his close kinship with European hermeticists and the subversive sectarians of the Radical Reformation. It is a fascinating argument that traces the influence of ideas through complicated social networks of neighbors and kin. The people 'prepared' for Mormonism are a surprising lot." R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University

• List of illustrations; List of maps; Preface; Part I. A Prepared People: 1. Dreams of the primal Adam; 2. The true spiritual seed; 3. Something of our ancestors; Part II. Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger: 4. A Urim spiritual; 5. Alchymical experiments; 6. I was born in Sharon; Part III. The Mormon Dispensation: 7. Secret combinations and slippery treasures in the land of Zarahemla; 8. The mysteries defined; 9. Temples, wives, bogus-making and war; 10. The keys to the kingdom; 11. A tangle of strings and the kingdom of God; 12. Let mysteries alone; Appendix: the sectarian and hermetic circumstances of Mormon origins in Vermont and New York; Abbreviations used in notes; Notes; Index.

"John Brooke takes a controversial romp over the field of previous Mormon scholarship. When he has done, he has managed to raise the intellectual pedigree of Joseph Smith by establishing his close kinship with European hermeticists and the subversive sectarians of the Radical Reformation. It is a fascinating argument that traces the influence of ideas through complicated social networks of neighbors and kin. The people 'prepared' for Mormonism are a surprising lot." R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University

• List of illustrations; List of maps; Preface; Part I. A Prepared People: 1. Dreams of the primal Adam; 2. The true spiritual seed; 3. Something of our ancestors; Part II. Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger: 4. A Urim spiritual; 5. Alchymical experiments; 6. I was born in Sharon; Part III. The Mormon Dispensation: 7. Secret combinations and slippery treasures in the land of Zarahemla; 8. The mysteries defined; 9. Temples, wives, bogus-making and war; 10. The keys to the kingdom; 11. A tangle of strings and the kingdom of God; 12. Let mysteries alone; Appendix: the sectarian and hermetic circumstances of Mormon origins in Vermont and New York; Abbreviations used in notes; Notes; Index.

"John Brooke takes a controversial romp over the field of previous Mormon scholarship. When he has done, he has managed to raise the intellectual pedigree of Joseph Smith by establishing his close kinship with European hermeticists and the subversive sectarians of the Radical Reformation. It is a fascinating argument that traces the influence of ideas through complicated social networks of neighbors and kin. The people 'prepared' for Mormonism are a surprising lot." R. Laurence Moore, Cornell University

• List of illustrations; List of maps; Preface; Part I. A Prepared People: 1. Dreams of the primal Adam; 2. The true spiritual seed; 3. Something of our ancestors; Part II. Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger: 4. A Urim spiritual; 5. Alchymical experiments; 6. I was born in Sharon; Part III. The Mormon Dispensation: 7. Secret combinations and slippery treasures in the land of Zarahemla; 8. The mysteries defined; 9. Temples, wives, bogus-making and war; 10. The keys to the kingdom; 11. A tangle of strings and the kingdom of God; 12. Let mysteries alone; Appendix: the sectarian and hermetic circumstances of Mormon origins in Vermont and New York; Abbreviations used in notes; Notes; Index.