In our lovely Deseret: Adding meaning to this name and Brigham's use of it

This post is a quick addendum in the Omar-Brigham story outline I said I was going to follow in my Omar Amillo post, but I think it is a good follow up to my most recent post where I mentioned the Deseret alphabet.

The name "Deseret" is an obscure word that is used by Moroni in Ether 2 as he recounts the history of the Jaredites.  Moroni actually gives the name its interpretation - "honeybee" - and then recounts how this group carried swarms of bees with them before they built their barges and sailed to a New World.

Omar-Brigham would go on to became the dictator in practice of the Mormons cast out to the wilderness of the American West.  I think this is fairly well understood, even if there are differences in opinion as to whether this dictatorship was with good or evil intent (you know my position by now, obviously).  He got his way with his own people.  We also know that he spent very little time with the Book of Mormon.  Besides mentioning it as the means of his conversion, it may as well not have existed in Brigham's life or teachings.  The only teachings I can really find from Brigham on the Book of Mormon were to emphasize that it existed to prove the Bible was true (a position I think is exactly opposite of what the Book was saying).  No stories, characters, or lessons from the book are found in his sermons.

It should be surprising, then, that the name "Deseret" became such a big thing among the Mormons.  Brigham gets what he wants, and using Deseret and its symbol (from a book he doesn't read) became a major focus for him.  As mentioned in my previous post, he commissioned and rolled out a script called the Deseret Alphabet, which he hoped would replace the Latin alphabet among Mormons.   Driving this name was the fact that in 1949 Brigham began an effort to get the United States to approve the formation of the Mormons' new lands under the name "State of Deseret".  The US Government, however, was not under Brigham's thumb and let him know this by not aligning with him on this matter, and instead named the region as "Territory of Utah".  

Brigham was Governor of this new territory, and continued to chafe at the Utah name.  As Governor and Church President, he built his mansion and office and called it The Beehive House.  He placed a gilded beehive on the top of the building, along with various other beehive etchings in the interior of the house.  Although called Utah, it was the State of Deseret for Mormons, with their newspaper, businesses, alphabet, and even currency named after Deseret.  Additional efforts would be made in 1856, 1862, and 1872 to have the US federal government officially recognize the State of Deseret, but each time these efforts failed.  At the death of Brigham, Deseret seemed to fade, and although the beehive symbol remained, the name (just as the alphabet) went out of common use.

This is clearly an obsession for Brigham, and it begs the question as to why?  Why latch so strongly onto this word for the duration of his life?

I have not found a good motive or explanation in traditional stories (the usual explanation is that bees are industrious and communal, which Brigham wanted to emphasize) but I do feel a possible answer lies in the story that has formed in my mind.  To explain, I will need to introduce a tale I was determined not to directly bring into this blog, but I don't see a way around it in order to connect dots for people not familiar with that tale.

Before doing so, I will note that I have been capitalizing Deseret throughout this post so far.  If you were to turn to Ether 2 in current editions of the Book of Mormons you would find it is not capitalized but simply written as "deseret".  I believe this is wrong, and both evidence from manuscripts and this alternative story support this.

The original manuscript for Ether 2 no longer exists, I don't believe, so the closest thing we have is the printer's manuscript that came from the original.  I have included the link below:

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/printers-manuscript-of-the-book-of-mormon-circa-august-1829-circa-january-1830/434

Here you will find that Deseret was initially capitalized, but the typesetter/ printer, in the course of adding the punctuation for printing, changed the word to a lower case.  Thus, the first print edition of the Book of Mormon had this word in lowercase.  In subsequent editions it would actually vary, in my understanding, with some editions bringing back the capitalization.  The current edition has it as lowercase, as mentioned.

What was lost when the typesetter made this change was that although Moroni might still be right in the literal translation of the word (and perhaps not!), it was meant to be a proper name or title, not just a generic honey bee.  This is important.  What I will introduce here is that this Deseret is actually a name or title for a person, and specifically a woman.

It is at this point that I turn to the tale that I have been avoiding, and hoping to not involve in these posts.  I do it because there is no connection between the woman in question and the symbol of the bee without it, unfortunately.  As to why I wish to avoid these works, and would suggest others do likewise, I think I will have to explain more clearly in another post.  I will summarize some aspects of the story as best I can for the purposes here, and then leave it be.  It was meant to be a book of good things and stories, but has become evil because it has passed through evil hands at some point in its chain of custody.

This book was published in 2017 as "Words of the Faithful:  As if it were from the dead".  Its claim was fairly remarkable, in that it was stated to be a true story about a woman named Izilba and a man named Zhera who lived in Tolkien's 2nd age.  Other characters would join in their adventures, and they would turn out to be the Jaredites, the same as mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  Thus, the story served to link the Book of Mormon and Tolkien's writings, and did so by means of the Jaredites.

This was actually my first exposure to the idea that Joseph Smith and JRR Tolkien were writing about a shared world, and that Tolkien's works ought to be considered more history than fiction.  I hadn't considered this before, and as crazy as it initially sounded, I found myself accepting the possibility.  My first blog I wrote in 2018 and 2019 was actually my attempts to determine whether this concept was correct and explore the idea for myself.

Anyway, in this story, Izilba would have lived on the island of Numenor before being rescued by Zhera (Jared).  It is in that setting on Numenor that we learn of Izilba's connection with bees during the very first few pages of the story.  As quoted:

Never at rest save in the garden of the royal house, and there even learning the song of bees and the keeping in honey of the pollens of every bush and flower, Grey Izilba would often drape herself naked in a cloak of honey bees, sweet and yet full of sting, when affairs of state required her attendance at the Tables of Council.

Here, we have Izilba literally dressing herself up in bees - becoming in body and person a literal swarm of them.  

It is this woman that I believe is also named or titled Deseret.  Further, I believe that this Izilba-Deseret is also the same Being I have identified as Ilmare-Eowyn (and also that we have here one additional identity for Eonwe-Faramir in the person of Jared, her spouse).

I turn to Tolkien's languages to perhaps give additional insight into the name of Deseret, and even suggest that Moroni's interpretation of the word was not completely accurate or comprehensive.   My reasoning in turning to Tolkien's etymology in looking at the name is because if this Izilba-Deseret was actually living in Middle Earth during the 2nd age, there would be a chance that this name might be interpreted using some language from that world.  This, of course, assumes that the name hasn't been altered, or it hadn't been wholesale replaced, either before it reached Ether, or in Moroni's reading of it.  For this, we will assume that it is close to right (and I admit selfishly assuming this because, as it happens, the name works out really well... if it didn't, I am sure I would come up with some justification as to why not!)

Also, keep in mind that I am not a linguist, so my methods are suspect.  And I mix and match Noldorin and Sindarin, and probably other things - which is all of the stuff I don't think you are supposed to do.

Undaunted, however, we proceed...

'Deseret' in Tolkien's language can probably be converted to something like:  Dess-ireth.  Phonetically, I believe this is equivalent or similar to the Deseret as spelled in the Book of Mormon.  These roots break down as follows:

Dess:  Young Woman (would later become "Bess" in Elvish, meaning woman but also "Wife")

Ireth:  Desirable (Sindarin form of the Quenyan "Irisse", which is basically the word "desire" with a femine ending)

So, we have "Desirable Woman" as the potential meaning of this proper name or title.  This is obviously much different than "Honeybee" that Moroni says it means.  However, this is why I felt a bit forced to share the part of Izilba-Eowyn's story about the bees.  Moroni (or Ether before him) may be misunderstanding the word.  In the Jaredite company, there is a woman associated with bees - it seems the cause, actually, of the group's ability to carry large swarms of bees with them in the wilderness, if one takes the tale that I shared from that cursed book at face value - and Moroni assumes when reading the tale that Deseret refers to the bees and not a woman. 

It is one possibility.  Might be a stretch for some, but it makes sense to me.  Interestingly, "Ireth" the second root of the name outline above, was the original name of Turgon's sister before being replaced with Ar-Feiniel, which means "White Lady".  As readers might recall, Faramir refers to Eowyn as the White Lady.  Just to be clear, I am not saying Eowyn was also Turgon's sister (she isn't, I don't believe), but just illustrating that this name Dess-ireth/ Deseret might have multiple layers of meaning.

OK, so what does this have to do with Brigham?

Eowyn-Deseret is the woman that Brigham, as Wormtongue, desired.  I believe that this actually extends far back to his time as Omar if not before.  No matter how many wives or concubines this Being would take for himself in a given life, in the terrible practice of polygamy, it would not replace this desire to have Eowyn be his wife, even if he can't consciously remember it as Brigham.  Psychologists look to our childhood trauma to explain our actions, and they should really be looking much earlier than that!  Something about that name stuck with Brigham, and I think this is why.

But Eowyn and Faramir are meant for each other, and Brigham has no place there.  The 'fairest lady of a house of queens', as Aragorn mentioned of her, won't ever be within his reach.  He has no place anywhere, anymore, after he bent his soul past an ability to be redeemed.  And, as I will write about in my next post, it is Faramir-Eonwe (the Holy Ghost) that Brigham feels he ought to have been, the very seeds of his bending were planted there.  It is Faramir's life, including his relationship with Eowyn, that Brigham sought for, and he has employed secret combinations and deception to try and attain it.

It is also a mockery of Deseret-Eowyn for Brigham to have introduced and practiced his abominations in a land he attempted to name after her.

For additional details and a more complete story of Deseret, Utah, and the beehive, you can go to this link:

https://rsc.byu.edu/salt-lake-city-place-which-god-prepared/beehive-deseret