Appearance
Seer Stones
The claim:
"Unlike the story I've been taught in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, Ensigns, Church history tour, Missionary Training Center, and BYU... Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat for translating the Book of Mormon. In other words, Joseph used the same magic device or 'Ouija Board' that he used during his treasure hunting days."[1]
The CES Letter argues three things at once: (1) the Church hid the seer stone translation method, (2) the stone itself is embarrassing — a "magic device" or "Ouija Board," and (3) it undermines the Book of Mormon because the gold plates weren't even used.
Did the Church actually hide this? And does the method undermine the Book of Mormon — or make fraud harder to explain?
What the eyewitnesses said
The people in the room during translation left detailed accounts. They don't agree on every detail. They converge on the basics.
Emma Smith (1879):
"He sat with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us."[2]
She added: "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from... If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me."
David Whitmer (1887):
"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."[3]
Martin Harris (recalled by Edward Stevenson, 1882):
Sentences would appear and were read by Joseph and written by the scribe. "If not written correctly it remained until corrected."[4]
Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery (1870):
"Joseph never had a curtain drawn between him and his scribe while translating. He would place the director in his hat, and then place his face in his hat, so as to exclude the light, and then [read] to his scribe the words as they appeared before him."[5]
These aren't hostile witnesses manufacturing embarrassing details. These are believers — the prophet's wife, his scribes, people who gave up years of their lives for the Book of Mormon. And they all describe the same basic process.
Two instruments, one process
Joseph used two instruments at different stages of the translation. The CES Letter collapses them into one.
| Feature | Nephite interpreters | Seer stone |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Two clear stones set in silver bows, attached to a breastplate | A chocolate-colored, egg-shaped stone |
| Origin | Found with the gold plates | Found by Joseph years earlier while digging a well |
| When used | Early translation (lost 116 pages) | Most of the surviving Book of Mormon text |
Emma confirmed the sequence: "The first that my husband translated was by use of the Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost. After that he used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color."[6]
Both instruments worked the same way: stone placed in a hat to block out light, words appeared, Joseph read them to his scribe. The hat wasn't the instrument. It was a light shield.[7]
For a detailed treatment of the terminology question — how both instruments came to be called "Urim and Thummim" — see Urim and Thummim.
"The Church hid this"
This is the CES Letter's emotional center — that learning about the seer stone feels like a betrayal because the Church concealed it.
The feeling is real. The claim isn't supported by the publication record.
| Year | Publication | What it said |
|---|---|---|
| 1939 | Improvement Era | Francis W. Kirkham quoted Martin Harris and David Whitmer describing the stone-in-hat method[8] |
| 1974 | The Friend (children's magazine) | "Joseph also used an egg-shaped, brown rock for translating called a seer stone"[9] |
| 1976 | The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Deseret Book) | James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard discussed Joseph's "smooth, dark-colored stone"[10] |
| 1977 | Ensign | Richard Lloyd Anderson discussed eyewitness accounts of the seer stone[11] |
| 1993 | Ensign | Elder Russell M. Nelson quoted David Whitmer's full description: "Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat"[12] |
| 2013 | Gospel Topics Essay | Church confirmed both instruments and the stone-in-hat method[7:1] |
| 2015 | Ensign / Joseph Smith Papers | First photograph of the actual seer stone published with "Joseph the Seer" article[13] |
An Apostle described the seer stone and the hat in the Ensign in 1993 — twenty years before the CES Letter. The Church's children's magazine mentioned it in 1974.
Nelson's article wasn't obscure. It was adapted from a talk he gave to over 100 mission presidents at the Missionary Training Center.[12:1] The people responsible for training every full-time missionary in the Church heard this directly from an Apostle.
The CES Letter frames the 2013 Gospel Topics Essay and 2015 seer stone photograph as the Church finally "admitting" what it had hidden. The timeline tells a different story: the Church published this information repeatedly, across decades, in its own magazines. What was missing wasn't the information — it was prominence in the correlated curriculum. That's a failure of emphasis, not a conspiracy of concealment.
The artwork problem
The CES Letter includes Church artwork showing Joseph studying the plates at a table — no hat, no stone. Fair observation. The artwork was inaccurate.
Anthony Sweat, a BYU professor and artist, addressed this directly at the 2020 FAIR Conference. Art "speaks a different language than history," he argued — it is meant to "express, provoke, and inspire," not serve as documentary photography.[14] Artists painted what they imagined. They hadn't read the eyewitness accounts. The result was artwork that reflected popular assumptions rather than historical evidence.
Since 2015, the Church has published historically accurate artwork depicting the seer stone method, displayed the stone at the Church History Museum, and produced videos with Church historians explaining the process.[15]
The artwork was wrong. It's been corrected.
The "Ouija Board" comparison
The CES Letter calls the seer stone "the same magic device or 'Ouija Board'" Joseph used for treasure hunting.[1:1]
This does two things: it links the stone to fraud, and it makes the instrument sound absurd.
On the treasure digging connection
Joseph did use a seer stone to search for buried treasure before the Book of Mormon translation. That's historical fact.[7:2] The CES Letter treats this as a disqualifier — same stone, same fraud.
The Bible doesn't support that logic. Moses's rod was a shepherd's tool before it parted the Red Sea (Exodus 14:16). The brass serpent was bronze sculpture before it healed the Israelites (Numbers 21:8-9). God has a pattern of repurposing ordinary objects for sacred work.
The Ensign's "Joseph the Seer" article frames this as progression, not equivalence: Joseph's gift of sight was authentic, and it was "redirected to a higher purpose."[13:1] Mark Ashurst-McGee's research traces what he calls "a pathway to prophethood" — Joseph's early experiences with seer stones were preparatory, a bridge from the folk culture he grew up in to his prophetic calling.[16]
On the comparison itself
A Ouija board is a parlor game marketed by Hasbro. The Urim and Thummim were instruments of the Israelite priesthood described in Exodus. The CES Letter chose the comparison designed to sound most ridiculous.
Physical instruments for divine communication are all over scripture:
| Instrument | Reference | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Urim and Thummim | Exodus 28:30 | Worn in the high priest's breastplate for divine revelation |
| Rod of Aaron | Exodus 7:9-12; Numbers 17:8 | Sign of divine authority |
| Brass serpent | Numbers 21:8-9 | Israelites who looked at it were healed |
| Liahona | 1 Nephi 16:10, 26-29 | Compass-like instrument that worked according to faith |
Revelation 2:17 promises the faithful "a white stone" — a seer stone motif in the New Testament itself. D&C 130:10-11 ties that white stone to the celestial kingdom. The concept has doctrinal roots, not occult ones.
The McConkie-Ostler objection
The CES Letter quotes a 2000 essay by BYU professors Joseph Fielding McConkie and Craig J. Ostler:
"What David Whitmer is asking us to believe is that the Lord had Moroni seal up the plates and the means by which they were to be translated hundreds of years before they would come into Joseph Smith's possession and then decided to have the Prophet use a seer stone found while digging a well so that none of these things would be necessary after all."[17]
The CES Letter uses this to argue: "How could it have been expected of me and any other member to know about and to embrace the rock in the hat translation when even these two faithful full-time professors of religion at BYU rejected it?"[1:2]
Fair point — to a degree. Some scholars were resistant to the seer stone evidence. That's a genuine failure of historical education within the Church.
But McConkie and Ostler's premise was wrong. The Nephite interpreters were used — for the early translation, including the 116 pages. They weren't bypassed. They were the starting point. Orson Pratt reported that Joseph explained the Lord gave him the Urim and Thummim "when he was inexperienced in the Spirit of inspiration. But now he had advanced so far that he understood the operations of that Spirit and did not need the assistance of that instrument."[18]
That trajectory — external instruments to internal spiritual capacity — appears throughout scripture. It isn't a scandal. It's how spiritual development works.
Elder Nelson published David Whitmer's full seer-stone-in-hat description in the Ensign seven years before McConkie and Ostler rejected it.[12:2] Two professors being wrong doesn't mean the Church was hiding the truth. It means two professors hadn't caught up with what their own institution had already published.
What about the plates?
The CES Letter echoes Richard Bushman's question: "What in the world are the plates for?"[19]
It's a genuine question. Several answers.
The plates were a physical witness. Eleven people handled them. Three saw them in a divine vision. Eight hefted and turned the leaves. The plates gave witnesses something tangible to testify about — which they did, consistently, for the rest of their lives, including the ones who left the Church.[7:3]
The plates anchored the text to a real ancient record. Without plates, the Book of Mormon would be pure channeling — words appearing from nowhere. With plates, there's a claimed source text. The seer stone was the mechanism; the plates were what was being translated.[20]
The plates were sometimes present during dictation. Emma reported they "often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth."[2:1] They weren't removed from the process. They were simply not read from the way one reads a book.
The translation doesn't mean "reading." D&C 3:9 describes God giving Joseph "sight and power to translate." Mosiah 8:13 describes King Mosiah translating "all records that are of ancient date" — a gift from God, not a linguistic skill. The plates were the source. The stone was how the English came through.[21]
The hat method makes fraud harder to explain
This is the argument the CES Letter avoids. The translation method it finds embarrassing is the same one that collapses every naturalistic explanation.
No crib sheets. With his face buried in a hat, Joseph couldn't see any manuscript, Bible, or notes in the room. Emma confirmed: "If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me."[2:2]
Witnesses in the room. Translation occurred openly — Emma, Oliver Cowdery, the Whitmer family, Martin Harris, Joseph Knight Sr. — all present, all watching. No curtain between Joseph and his scribes. Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery made that explicit.[5:1]
No preparation between sessions. Emma testified: "When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off without any hesitation."[2:3]
Built-in error correction. Martin Harris reported the text would not advance until the scribe's writing was confirmed correct.[4:1] Royal Skousen's analysis of the Original Manuscript confirms this: the text shows virtually no compositional revision — no crossed-out alternatives, no inserted corrections, no reworked passages.[22]
Spiritual conditions required. David Whitmer recalled a specific incident in June 1829 when Joseph had quarreled with Emma and "could not translate a single syllable" until he went into the orchard, prayed, and reconciled with her.[23] A con artist's method doesn't break down when he's in a bad mood. A revelatory process does.
The result. 269,510 words. Approximately 60 working days. No outlines, no drafts, no substantive revisions. Hundreds of proper names. Complex internal geography. Chiastic structures. Hebraisms invisible to English readers. Isaiah readings confirmed by Dead Sea Scrolls discovered 117 years later.[24][25]
Every plagiarism theory — every claim that Joseph copied from another book — requires him to have consulted source material during dictation. The seer stone method makes that physically impossible.
The CES Letter mocks the hat. The hat is the evidence.
The real question the CES Letter avoids
The CES Letter spends four pages on the translation method — what instrument Joseph used, what it looked like, how the Church depicted it in artwork. Process questions.
The question that matters: Did the process produce something real?
Royal Skousen's decades-long study of the Original Manuscript shows Joseph received approximately 25-35 English words at a time on the seer stone and spelled out difficult proper names letter by letter.[22:1] The manuscript evidence is consistent with oral dictation — phonetic misspellings, scribal errors from mishearing — not with copying from a hidden text.
John Welch documented the pace: roughly 269,510 words in about 60 working days. He called it "a blistering pace."[24:1]
The seer stone is interesting. The book it produced is the evidence.
Bottom line: The Church published descriptions of the seer stone translation in the Friend (1974), the Ensign (1977, 1993), and the Gospel Topics Essays (2013) — decades before the CES Letter claimed the information was hidden. The "rock in a hat" isn't an embarrassment. It's a translation method that made plagiarism physically impossible, required spiritual worthiness to function, and produced a 270,000-word text that continues to withstand scrutiny.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," pp. 28-31. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Emma Smith, interview by Joseph Smith III, February 1879. Published in Saints' Herald 26 (October 1, 1879): 289-290. "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from... If he had had anything of the kind he could not have concealed it from me." ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: David Whitmer, 1887), 12. https://archive.org/details/addresstoallbeli00whit ↩︎
Edward Stevenson, reporting Martin Harris's account, in "One of the Three Witnesses," Deseret Evening News, December 13, 1881. Reprinted in Millennial Star 44 (February 6, 1882): 86-87. ↩︎ ↩︎
Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery, as recorded in her testimony, 1870. Cited in Richard Lloyd Anderson, "The Credibility of the Book of Mormon Translators," in Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1982). ↩︎ ↩︎
Emma Smith Bidamon to Emma S. Pilgrim, March 27, 1870. "The first that my husband translated was by use of the Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost. After that he used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color." ↩︎
"Book of Mormon Translation," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (December 2013). https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Francis W. Kirkham, "The Manner of Translating the Book of Mormon," Improvement Era 42 (October 1939): 630. ↩︎
"A Peaceful Heart," The Friend (September 1974): 7. "Joseph also used an egg-shaped, brown rock for translating called a seer stone." ↩︎
James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 40-41. ↩︎
Richard Lloyd Anderson, "By the Gift and Power of God," Ensign (September 1977): 78-85. ↩︎
Russell M. Nelson, "A Treasured Testament," Ensign (July 1993): 61. Adapted from a talk to mission presidents at the MTC. Elder Nelson quoted David Whitmer's description in full: "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." ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Richard E. Turley Jr., Robin S. Jensen, and Mark Ashurst-McGee, "Joseph the Seer," Ensign (October 2015): 48-55. Includes the first published photograph of the seer stone. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer ↩︎ ↩︎
Anthony Sweat, "History and Art: Mediating the Rocky Relationship," 2020 FAIR Conference. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/2020-fairmormon-conference/history-and-art ↩︎
Mason Allred and Mark Ashurst-McGee, "Seer Stones and the Translation of the Book of Mormon," Church History Department. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/video/2017-12-0120-seer-stones-and-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎
Mark Ashurst-McGee, "A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet" (MA thesis, Utah State University, 2000). ↩︎
Joseph Fielding McConkie and Craig J. Ostler, "The Process of Translating the Book of Mormon," in Revelations of the Restoration: A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants and Other Modern Revelation (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000). ↩︎
Orson Pratt, reported in Joseph F. Smith diary, cited in "Joseph the Seer," Ensign (October 2015): 50. "The Lord gave him the Urim and Thummim when he was inexperienced in the Spirit of inspiration. But now he had advanced so far that he understood the operations of that Spirit and did not need the assistance of that instrument." ↩︎
Richard Bushman, FairMormon Podcast, Episode 3 (2017), 47:25. Also quoted in Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon Translation," p. 28. ↩︎
Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011). Gardner argues the plates were the source text for the translation even when Joseph did not physically consult them during dictation. ↩︎
Scripture Central KnoWhy 145, "Why Was a Stone Used as an Aid in Translating the Book of Mormon?" https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-was-a-stone-used-as-an-aid-in-translating-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol7/iss1/4/ ↩︎ ↩︎
David Whitmer, recounted in MacKay and Dirkmaat, "Firsthand Witness Accounts of the Translation Process," in The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU). https://rsc.byu.edu/coming-forth-book-mormon/firsthand-witness-accounts-translation-process ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: 'Days and Hours Never to Be Forgotten,'" BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018). https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/timing-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon-days-and-hours-never-to-be-forgotten ↩︎ ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, "The Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon," FARMS Preliminary Report (1981). Multiple Book of Mormon Isaiah readings align with Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts discovered in 1947. ↩︎