Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Magical Mormon

On the way to work today, I was inspired by an interview with that marvelous writer of Chocolat', Joanne Harris. She wrote about a very flawed, magical character, who made chocolate and magically changed a town.

It made me think about mormon magic. I've been investigating the magical elements of early mormonism and the views of the early mormons who used it. In Ms. Harris book, she presents the magic in a sort of ambiguous fashion so that the reader could infer that magic or the human heart is what really changed the hearts of the people. Her character believed it to be magic, and felt that that magic really set her apart from the rest of the people.

What if I wrote a book on a similar premise for mormon magic?
Setting: Modern day mormonville.

Protagonist: a 35 year old man: David, investigating early mormonism and the fundamentalism involved. He doesn't believe in magic, and begins to try it out, mockingly. He first buys a jupiter charm, exactly like the Jupiter Charm that Joseph Smith owned and had on his person at death. He begins to keep around a Cabala script, similar to the one found on Hyrum Smith's body at his death. As he does these things, 'magical things' begin to occur. Things begin to go 'very' well for him at work. Better than he had imagined. People begin to gather enormous respect him, and he is promoted. He gets promoted beyond his abilities, but, people assure him that he deserves the promotion, and he accepts the promotion. Because he doesn't have the ability to really do the job well, he fakes it. Harder and harder problems are presented to him to solve, and he solves them as best he can. He must investigate further into the magic to cope with solving these problems and produce results. Problems begin to pile up because with his success, come the women. At first, he shuns them away, but eventually finding that he is too attracted to them and he takes them in. He justifies them and convinces his wife that it is ok.

Antagonist(s): Others in the company begin to realize that our hero doesn't know what he is doing. They realize that he is sleeping with other women. One man, Peter, when he finds out his own wife falls for David, he becomes very upset and becomes determined to expose the massive fraud that David has created. He begins by trying to tell the right people of David's error and omissions. They won't listen, apparently blinded by his charm and good spirit. He considers undermining David, but none of his plans succeed in exposing David as a fraud. He confronts David and they fight it out.