I don’t doubt that JFS believed that Satan exists and exercises power (“the evil one has great power on the earth”), whether through a supernatural imitation of priesthood or through cunning and deception makes little difference.

I think it’s saying too much to call it a “rampant exercise of supernatural power” and I think it’s reading too much into this particular article to see it as an in-depth theological analysis of the powers of evil. It seems to me to be a warning against belief in the kind of superstitious folk magic that was being practiced in “—–,” wherever that was, more than a warning against submitting to Satan to receive whatever power he might have to share. That is, I don’t see that JFS claims that the “witch of —–” has received genuine supernatural evil power from Satan — rather, he rebukes her and her gullible victims as fools who are toying with something that can lead to no good and has in the past led to great harm — in this case, the damage is to good people’s reputation rather than the fear and mayhem of his historical examples, but it’s a matter of degree rather than kind.

I think you are unwisely trying to collapse the degree. The “unhappiness” of the middle ground disappears if you acknowledge a sliding scale of superstition based on gullibility and deception at one end and whatever real supernatural power Satan may grant to one aspiring to be Master Mahan at the other.

So I think President Smith (and Mormons in general) are stuck on the unhappy middle ground of being unwilling to affirm the rampant exercise of supernatural power unaffiliated with the priesthood (withcraft, etc., whether formally linked to Satanic origin or not), but also unable to deny that Satan exists and exercises supernatural power.

As a teenager I knew devote LDS adults who feared for the “very real” power of witchcraft that was leading their children away from them.

I think his position is pretty clear.

Hadn’t thought about his exposure to magical practices in Hawaii, J. — I’ll bet you’re right.

But then he also says that practitioners “do possess a power” and are “leagued with [the devil] in the work of deception among their fellows.” So it is just a little unclear what his position on witchcraft is: Did he think the the couple in the ward was falsely accused of practicing witchcraft because witches, etc., are all simple deceivers and employ no supernatural power? Or did he think they were wrongly accused because they weren’t, as a matter of simple fact, witches (but someone else could have been)?

I just liked this piece, partly because it shocked me that any Mormon ward could have believed in classic witchcraft at the turn of the last century, and partly because JFS appealed to so many types of evidence, as David Y. said, to make his case. I was also impressed that he gave not a hint that witchcraft was a female thing, either as believers or practitioners — his opening example may have been a woman, but there’s no whiff of making the issue one of controlling or objecting to women’s behavior, when modern proponents of the occult frequently claim that suppression of witchcraft is a feminist issue.

Thank you for your comments, funny and serious. The breadth of topics that fall into Mormon history is amazing, isn’t it?