Disputed Statements

Runes, Disciplines

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The Armanen runes used in some occult systems are an eighteen-rune invention of Guido von List (1908), not a historical futhark.

The eighteen-rune Armanen system used in some modern occult and esoteric circles is not a form of the historical runic futhark, but the invention of the Austrian writer Guido von List. Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), issued as a periodical article in 1906 and expanded into a monograph in 1908, is List's own account of the system, which he said was revealed to him during a period of blindness following cataract surgery in 1902; the atlas cites it only as the primary record of his own claim, not as independent evidence for it. The method available is comparative, checking List's eighteen Armanen signs and their assigned meanings against the historical Elder and Younger Futhark rows, which differ from his system in count, order and attested use. Because List's own account is the sole source for how the system arose, and no runic record before him contains it, the Armanen row is treated as his early twentieth century invention rather than a historical alphabet.

Source Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), Guido von List tier 3

Sabbatai Zevi's 1666 Messianic Expectation, Prophecies

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Claimed Fulfillment

Currently States National deliverance and the ingathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, anticipated for 1666. Ottoman authorities arrested Zevi that year, and rather than face execution he converted to Islam in September, an outcome the movement's own most basic expectation did not survive.

Source Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626 to 1676, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Sacred Prostitution, Doctrines

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns The Claim

Currently States That women in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean served as prostitutes in temples as an act of worship, and that the institution was general across the region.

Stephanie Lynn Budin's The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2008) tested the claim that women in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean served as prostitutes in temples as an act of worship, and that the institution was general across the region. Budin's method was philological and source-critical, tracing the category back to a small number of Greek and Latin passages that were assembled in modern scholarship and then read back into Sumerian and Akkadian sources that do not in fact describe any such institution, and on that basis the claim as stated is tested and found false.

Source The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Stephanie Lynn Budin tier 1

Sacred Prostitution, Doctrines

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Scholarly Verdict

Currently States Stephanie Budin's examination of every ancient passage adduced for the institution concludes that none of them describes it, and that the Greek reports are hostile ethnography about foreigners rather than description of cult.

Source The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Stephanie Lynn Budin tier 1

Sacred Prostitution, Doctrines

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Rejected, or not held, within this tradition

Stephanie Lynn Budin's The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (2008) records that the category has been demolished as a general institution by modern philological and source-critical scholarship; Budin and fellow classicist Julia Assante reject any such institution outright, though others hold some form of cultic sexual practice remains the best explanation of parts of the Mesopotamian evidence.

Source The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Stephanie Lynn Budin tier 1

Saffron, Plants

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1653

According To Culpeper, The Complete Herbal

Agnes Arber's Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670 (Cambridge University Press, 1938) surveys the printed herbals of that two-century period and documents how the doctrine of signatures, that a plant's form, colour or habit declares its medicinal use, a yellow flower for the Sun, a perforated leaf for light, a plant of wet ground for the Moon, was applied inconsistently from one compiler to the next. Comparing planetary and use attributions for the same plants across different herbals, Arber finds no agreement between authors, direct evidence the method is a theory of resemblance rather than one of observation or testing. Where a signature plant does have a real effect, as St John's Wort, willow and the poppy do, Arber traces that activity to the plant's chemistry, unconnected to its appearance. The instability she documents between compilers is why this atlas gives no single planetary attribution as settled.

Source Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670, Agnes Arber tier 1

Saffron, Plants

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1653

According To Culpeper, The Complete Herbal

Agnes Arber's Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670 (Cambridge University Press, 1938) surveys the printed herbals of that two-century period and documents how the doctrine of signatures, that a plant's form, colour or habit declares its medicinal use, a yellow flower for the Sun, a perforated leaf for light, a plant of wet ground for the Moon, was applied inconsistently from one compiler to the next. Comparing planetary and use attributions for the same plants across different herbals, Arber finds no agreement between authors, direct evidence the method is a theory of resemblance rather than one of observation or testing. Where a signature plant does have a real effect, as St John's Wort, willow and the poppy do, Arber traces that activity to the plant's chemistry, unconnected to its appearance. The instability she documents between compilers is why this atlas gives no single planetary attribution as settled.

Source Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670, Agnes Arber tier 1

Sage, Plants

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1653

According To Culpeper, The Complete Herbal

Agnes Arber's Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670 (Cambridge University Press, 1938) surveys the printed herbals of that two-century period and documents how the doctrine of signatures, that a plant's form, colour or habit declares its medicinal use, a yellow flower for the Sun, a perforated leaf for light, a plant of wet ground for the Moon, was applied inconsistently from one compiler to the next. Comparing planetary and use attributions for the same plants across different herbals, Arber finds no agreement between authors, direct evidence the method is a theory of resemblance rather than one of observation or testing. Where a signature plant does have a real effect, as St John's Wort, willow and the poppy do, Arber traces that activity to the plant's chemistry, unconnected to its appearance. The instability she documents between compilers is why this atlas gives no single planetary attribution as settled.

Source Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670, Agnes Arber tier 1

Sage, Plants

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1653

According To Culpeper, The Complete Herbal

Agnes Arber's Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670 (Cambridge University Press, 1938) surveys the printed herbals of that two-century period and documents how the doctrine of signatures, that a plant's form, colour or habit declares its medicinal use, a yellow flower for the Sun, a perforated leaf for light, a plant of wet ground for the Moon, was applied inconsistently from one compiler to the next. Comparing planetary and use attributions for the same plants across different herbals, Arber finds no agreement between authors, direct evidence the method is a theory of resemblance rather than one of observation or testing. Where a signature plant does have a real effect, as St John's Wort, willow and the poppy do, Arber traces that activity to the plant's chemistry, unconnected to its appearance. The instability she documents between compilers is why this atlas gives no single planetary attribution as settled.

Source Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670, Agnes Arber tier 1

Salamander Letter, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Forger

Currently States Mark Hofmann

The Church Historian's Press account Hofmann Forgeries, published within Church History Topics in 2019, sets out the 1985 to 1987 investigation that identified Mark Hofmann as the letter's author. Forensic document examiners matched its ink, paper and hand to Hofmann's other confirmed forgeries once his forging equipment and materials were seized after the 1985 Salt Lake City bombings he committed to conceal the scheme, and Hofmann's own 1987 guilty plea and confession named the Salamander Letter among his fabrications. The method that settled authorship combined chemical and physical document examination with the criminal investigation into the bombings, not literary or doctrinal argument.

Source Hofmann Forgeries (Church History Topics), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tier 2

Salamander Letter, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Forger

Currently States Forged c. 1984, sold as an 1830 letter of Martin Harris

The Church Historian's Press account Hofmann Forgeries, published within Church History Topics in 2019, sets out the 1985 to 1987 investigation that identified Mark Hofmann as the letter's author. Forensic document examiners matched its ink, paper and hand to Hofmann's other confirmed forgeries once his forging equipment and materials were seized after the 1985 Salt Lake City bombings he committed to conceal the scheme, and Hofmann's own 1987 guilty plea and confession named the Salamander Letter among his fabrications. The method that settled authorship combined chemical and physical document examination with the criminal investigation into the bombings, not literary or doctrinal argument.

Source Hofmann Forgeries (Church History Topics), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tier 2

Salamander Letter, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Content

Currently States Recast the plates story in folk-magic terms, with a "white salamander" in place of the angel.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints's own Hofmann Forgeries entry in its Church History Topics (2019) documents that the Salamander Letter, purporting to be an 1830 letter from early Mormon witness Martin Harris describing a white salamander rather than an angel at the site of the Book of Mormon plates, was one of the documents forged by Mark Hofmann. The Church's method is historical, drawing on Hofmann's own 1987 criminal confession to forging the letter as part of a scheme that included murder to conceal his fraud, which establishes the letter's content as fabricated rather than a genuine historical account of the plates' discovery.

Source Hofmann Forgeries (Church History Topics), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tier 2

Salamander Letter, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Purported Date

Currently States 1830 (claimed)

Richard E. Turley Jr.'s Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, University of Illinois Press, 1992, documents that the letter's claimed 1830 date rests on the same forged material as its content. Forensic chemists examining the ink after Hofmann's arrest found it was a synthetic iron-gall mixture he had manufactured and artificially aged to mimic nineteenth century ink, not period ink itself, and traced that same manufacturing method across his other confirmed forgeries. The date is therefore not an independent claim to weigh against the forgery finding; it was fabricated as part of the same object.

Source Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, Richard E. Turley Jr. tier 1

Salamander Letter, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Purported Date

Currently States Actually forged c. 1984

Richard E. Turley Jr.'s Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, University of Illinois Press, 1992, documents that the letter's claimed 1830 date rests on the same forged material as its content. Forensic chemists examining the ink after Hofmann's arrest found it was a synthetic iron-gall mixture he had manufactured and artificially aged to mimic nineteenth century ink, not period ink itself, and traced that same manufacturing method across his other confirmed forgeries. The date is therefore not an independent claim to weigh against the forgery finding; it was fabricated as part of the same object.

Source Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, Richard E. Turley Jr. tier 1

SeaWater Pearl, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1970

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

SeaWater Pearl, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1990

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Sedona, Sacred Sites

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Status Today

Currently States In active religious use

The Sedona vortex sites are a New Age construction of the 1980s, popularised by Page Bryant and by the 1987 Harmonic Convergence. They are frequently presented as an indigenous tradition and they are not one: the Yavapai, Apache and Hopi peoples with a documented relationship to this landscape did not name these sites and do not recognise the practice. In use by New Age practitioners since the 1980s. The vortex sites are a modern construction and are not a Yavapai, Apache or Hopi tradition.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Selenite, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1970

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Selenite, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1990

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Seraphim, Angelic Choirs

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States The Celestial Hierarchy, which sets out the ninefold order of angels including this choir, circulated under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of Paul named at Acts 17:34. Bernard McGinn's The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (Crossroad, 1991) traces how this ascription gave the work the standing of a companion of the apostles.

Source The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, Bernard McGinn tier 1