Page "First Vision" Paragraph 15

The family also practiced a form of folk magic, which, although not uncommon in this time and place, was criticized by many contemporary Protestants " as either fraudulent illusion or the workings of the Devil.

" Both Joseph Smith, Sr. and at least two of his sons worked at " money digging ," using seer stones in ( mostly unsuccessful ) attempts to locate lost items and buried treasure.

In a draft of her memoirs, Lucy Mack Smith referred to folk magic: I shall change my theme for the present, but let not my reader suppose that because I shall pursue another topic for a season that we stopt our labor and went at trying to win the faculty of Abrac, drawing magic circles or soothsaying, to the neglect of all kinds of business.

We never during our lives suffered one important interest to swallow up every other obligation.

But whilst we worked with our hands, we endeavored to remember the service of and the welfare of our souls.

D. Michael Quinn has written that Lucy Mack Smith viewed these magical practices as " part of her family's religious quest " while denying that they prevented " family members from accomplishing other, equally important work.

" Quinn also notes that the Smith family " participated in a wide range of magic practices, and Smith's first vision occurred within the context of his family's treasure quest.

" Jan Shipps notes that while Joseph Smith's " religious claims were rejected by many of the persons who had known him in the 1820s because they remembered him as a practitioner of the magic arts ," others of his earliest followers were attracted to his claims " for precisely the same reason.