Hey, so I'm feeling particularly pissed off today and thought I'd let off some steam here. Rather than talk about my problems I would like to just behave 'badly'.
Background info.
When you go to the temple for the first time you are given a 'new name' and are put under covenant never to divulge it except at a certain place shown to you in the temple. The women give their 'new names' to their husbands at a pivotal point in the ceremony. The men never reveal their 'new name' to their wives *#@*!
The punishment for revealing your name used to be having your throat slit anddisembowelment . If you were to visit the temple today you would find that the penalty has been removed. Now you just covenant that you will never reveal the secrets of the temple. I have friends who visited the temple prior 1990 (when this change occurred) and made the hand motions to slit their own throats and disembowel themselves. How serene!
My 'new name' is/was Deborah.
T revealed his 'new name' to me a few months ago when I remembered we still had this odd little secret to disclose.
So, which fine upstanding Mormon would like the honour of slitting my throat and disemboweling me?
Yeah, I always hated that my husband knew my name but I never got to know his. I was afraid we would forget them and be standing outside the gates throwing out random names hoping we would guess right:)
ReplyDeleteSo, mine is Phoebe. Bowies is Moroni (as in Captain Moroni). I think the guys got the shaft as far as temple names go:)
I went through the temple before the changes were made. Slitting our throats and simulating killing ourselves always creeped me out. I never did find the temple ceremony to be very uplifting, just confusing, frustrating, and threatening.
ReplyDeleteAnd boring; don't forget boring!
ReplyDeleteMine was 'Titus'.
ReplyDeleteTitus. Sort of like "tight ass".
I suppose it would have been all right if I could add 'Andronicus' after it. But no.
And I was there for the pre-1990 penalties. Weird stuff, especially when all my family was there in the hats and robes. It was like they were aliens from Neptune pretending to be normal humans.
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ReplyDeletehahahaha, that was a great mental picture, a whole bunch of us standing outside the pearly gates trying to get the names right!
ReplyDeleteSo far the the mens names are very easy to poke fun at - TightASs! Moron-i...
My first temple experience was all of those things. I would also add 'humourous' to the list. I really wanted to laugh but everyone was so serious I didn't dare.
I remember thinking at the time that I didn't like T having to keep his name secret from me. I just pushed the uneasy feeling aside and got on with things. I wonder how I would have fared if I'd been there during the throat slitting simulation times. It's amazing what we're capable of.
I wonder that more people didn't leave in droves with the craziness that was the previous endowment ceremony. My name was Judith.
ReplyDeleteSo Maureen, what exactly was your hubby's name? Unless I missed it, you didn't end up saying.
ReplyDeleteMine was Emma - along with a million or so other women who went through that day or previously or since. I always wondered how that worked. My husband calls out "Emma" and a million women come running, so does he pick and choose which one or ones he wants? Or if he is pissed off with me does he just refuse to call my name so I'm stuck?
Of course none of it is true so it doesn't matter, but it does make you wonder.
My opinion is that JS had no clue that the craziness he started would go on for so long, and therefore didn't think about all the names getting used over and over.
It alwasy pissed me off though that my husband knew my name but I wasn't allowed to know his. Just another example of Mormon misogyny1
When I was told my name there was a little flash in my mind that thought, "WTF? Is that really my name? That's stupid." And then I felt really guilty for thinking that and quickly repressed it.
ReplyDeleteMy name was Noah.
The next time I went, which was the last, was for proxy. The name given was Seth. I wondered how someone named Seth might react to find out that their "real" name was Seth when the got their endowments that day.
I had actually named this post using T's 'new name' but then he was worried about certain people reading it and giving him grief/stress that he really doesn't need right now. So, I removed his info. It was a funny one though. Maybe he'll share it here at some point.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding of the 'new name' was that it would be used just once to gain entry into the celestial kingdom and then we would find out (or remember) our 'real names' from before we came to earth.
Yeah anonymous... what a lame way for the men to exert their superiority eh! "you don't need to know our names but we must know yours" ugh!
My 'new name' also happened to be the same as my MILs real name, (except spelled differently) and she was my chaperone so that was ... interesting.
Hey TGD :) why were you surprised to get the name Noah?
@Maureen, for some reason, I was expecting these names to be special, as if they had actually come from the "other side of the veil" sort of thing. And that it would be a name that I would have never heard or seen before.
ReplyDeleteNoah, in my mind, was the subject of a famous Bill Cosby routine.
Ah, I see what you mean now. Hmm, that would have been cool to get a name that at least sounded like it was 'heavenly'. I think in many ways the temple experience really didn't live up to the hype, and then in many other ways it just kind of dumbfounded me.. but I was invested enough to file the irregularities away in some deep dark corner of my mind.
ReplyDeleteHuldah for me!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that anonymous. Let's get this stuff off our chests :)
ReplyDeleteI did laugh the first time I went to the temple. It was in Salt Lake so it was a live session... nothing like white haired oldies playing Adam and Eve.. and I didn't know about the green part of the costume so that really cracked me up!
ReplyDeleteYou know it is amazing to me now how I managed to push all of my incredulity out of the way because everyone else there was so serious about the whole thing. Why was I a sheep? I wanted to laugh but I just moved on and accepted it as bizarre, yes but as a part of my life. So glad I don't feel temple guilt anymore. Now I can go to the gym and not feel a twinge the whole time about where I 'should' be.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to share you 'new name' if you like. No pressure though, Rockstar isn't ready yet.