This study began in May 1985, when the newspapers first published accounts of startling documentary discoveries touching on the history of Mormonism. Letters purported to have been written in the 1820s conjured up a fascinating picture of popular magic, treasure-hunting, and ancient, alchemical salamander symbolism among the peoples of the Burned-over District. Piquing my curiosity as a historian, these images perhaps triggered childhood memories, memories of after-school expeditions to dig for garnets, or of coming upon red efts, summer salamanders, scarlet with delicate orange spots, in the moist, mossy woods below Lenox Mountain.

Not unlike these red efts, which always managed to escape when brought home to makeshift terrariums, the Mormon salamander vaporized between October 1985 and June 1986, as a series of bombings and careful forensic proof of forgery demonstrated that the “White Salamander Letter” and a host of other newly “discovered” documents were the work of a master counterfeiter, Mark Hofmann. But in the interval the salamander opened up a new view of the origins of the Mormon religion. Though the Hofmann letters were forged, they were rooted in documented behavior; Joseph Smith was indeed deeply involved in the popular magic of treasure-divining in the 1820s, the decade when he claimed to have discovered golden plates buried in the earth and translated them into the Book of Mormon. And beyond this story of divining and prophecy lies the content of the Mormon theology itself, developed by Joseph Smith and associates such as Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Orson Pratt.