“Shuddering Before the Beautiful”: Trains of Thought Across the Mormon Cosmos
If then th’ Astronomers, whereas they spie
A new-found Starre, their Opticks magnifie,
How brave are those, who with their Engine, can
Bring man to heaven, and heaven againe to man?
—John Donne
IF YOU TAKE the Green Line from the Salt Lake City International Airport to the Temple Square TRAX station downtown, you’ll be within walking distance of the Salt Lake Temple. If you decide to venture onto the temple grounds and cast your eyes up its lofty spires and battlements, the castle-like exterior will reveal a host of astronomical markings: sunstones, moonstones, Earth stones, and even Saturn stones adorn its granite face. Most captivating for me as a teenager—a starry-eyed wannabe scientist and scrupulously obedient Mormon—was the Big Dipper on the western face of the temple’s central tower. The seven stone stars are positioned so Dubhe and Merak, the two end stars of the cup, align toward Polaris, the North Star, just as they do in the night sky—an elegant tethering of Earth to heaven.
The architect of the temple, Truman O. Angell, said he included the Big Dipper to remind Mormons that the lost might find their way by the aid of the priesthood, the power of God given to men to do his work. When I was a teen, my exclusion from this priesthood—as a female—did not consciously bother me. But I did long for knowledge, for understanding, and yes, even for power: the power to heal the sick, to baptize the living, to raise the dead.
I was also excited to find out what exactly happened in the upper echelons of our temples, where many of my faith’s most sacred ordinances and rituals are held. Before they go on full-time church missions or marry in the temple, Mormons are expected to attend a ceremony called the Endowment, where they receive additional spiritual instruction and make covenants with God. Church leaders forbid members to disclose the details of this ceremony outside the temple, so I didn’t know what covenants I was expected to make. However, we were encouraged to learn about the temples, so to prepare, I consumed Hugh Nibley’s 1992 tome Temple and Cosmos. Nibley taught at Brigham Young University and was highly respected in Mormon circles as both a scholar of ancient cultures and a prolific—if esoteric—apologist for Mormonism.
In Temple and Cosmos, I learned that templum originally referred to any consecrated space. A Roman augur, or prophet, would find an open space and, with his staff, scratch an encircled cross into the ground, the urbs quadrata: With this earthy compass, the prophet could establish the precise direction in which prophetic birds flew. He’d wait at the point of origin between the cardo (N/S line) and the decumanus (E/W line), and he’d record when these winged messengers came, or failed to come. He’d then use these signs from heaven to understand the universe and his place in it. Nibley saw this practice as a parallel for modern temple worship, and I was enchanted with the idea. The temple was the faithful Mormon’s urbs quadrata, a place to get my bearings, the ultimate spiritual coordinate system.
Brigham Young, second prophet of the Mormon Church after Joseph Smith, also knew a thing or two about coordinates. An inspired planner, he oriented entire cities around the Salt Lake Temple. One block north of the temple was 100 North, one block east 100 East, and so on. I always knew how far away the temple was. My home in Sandy, Utah, was about 11 blocks east and 110 blocks south, at the foot of Lone Peak. Looking westward across the valley, I could see the Jordan River Temple, the temple where eventually I would promise to give myself to my husband and he would promise to receive me. At night the white glow from its one massive spire acted as
