On 24 November 2022 the Church placed an Angel Moroni Statue atop the Salta Argentina Temple. This event was significant because, even though there are 55 Temples currently under construction and an additional 9 temples that have had a render released, none of them are slated to receive a Statue unless they already have it. 35 of the temples under construction don’t have completed spires yet, either, and none of them are slated to receive a statue at this point.
This ends an era. With few exceptions, every temple built in the last 40 years has had the statue.
Because of this, I have taken the opportunity to make a definitive, final version of a couple of my long-running projects.
Know Your Moroni. A Free E-Book
My e-book about the Angel Statue history and usage is finally finished. Any temple that did not have a render released at the time of publishing has been removed to simplify the book over all, though they are mentioned briefly. Articles and stories are updated, including a mention of the final statue placement.
Now, there still may be small updates for grammar, phrasing, typos and the like, but there will not be another major edition of this volume.
The Book is still rather large, so I have once a gain broken it down into 2 parts. Part one is Bios, statue info, stories and myths. Part 2 is all the charts, graphs and lists.
The biggest change this time around, however, is that I have nearly completed my efforts to put the whole book into an online readable format, for those who have no desire to download. That can be found here:
Of an even more satisfying is what will be the final major update to My Moroni Direction infographic. I’m sure there are small errors and things I have forgotten, stuff I will need to change, but for the most part, this is now done. It will not be updated as new renders are released.
Should the Church once again commence the practice of adding statues to temples, even retroactively, It will, at this point, constitute a whole new Volume of my book, rather than an update to the existing. It may mean the same thing for the infographic as well. I haven’t decided on that one yet.
Back in 2015 I released my first Ebook, a 167 page work about the Angel Moroni statues frequently used on Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The book was inspired by a desire to see if I could identify who sculpted each of the statues then in use on the temple. After some investigation on the subject, I found that there was a lot of information on the internet, and it all basically said the same thing. I then found that it was all wrong.
I set out to correct the lack of information by writing what I thought then to be the definitive work on the subject, Know Your Moroni: A Fieldguide to Angel Moroni Statues.
A couple of years after it’s release, I learned that, while my information was better than what had come before, I still had it wrong in many spots.
So in 2018 I set out to do a small update to my book, intended to take a couple of months and result in the 2018 edition.
So here we are now in 2021. I have spent hours researching, looking up interviews, cross referencing info, losing data, finding it again, and generally re-writing the entire work from the ground up.
And after much consideration and thought,
It’s still free.
Update: Revision 3 released 11 March 2021.
In With the New
So here it is in all it’s reworked and redesigned glory. The new edition features expanded information, new artwork, and new sections.
The statue sections have now all been fully fleshed out with a history and description of not just the statue, but how it was made.
The biographies of the Sculptors have all been better researched, updated, corrected, and illustrated with examples of their other works.
The big news is that, with the help of the staff at the Church History Library, we were able to collect more accurate placement dates for most of the statues. Instead of having good information for 30-50 percent of the statues, there are firm dates for about 90 percent!
Or Learn more about the document below. Also find downloads of This book split into separate volumes for easier download below.
New Stories
The Stories section has been updated, most of the stories have been re-written, detail added and clarified, and new stories added:
2015
The Start of a Tradition
Tri-Temple Setting
Gold Leaf and Angel Replacements
Lightning Rods
Earthquakes
Tragedy and Return
Moroni that Might Have Been: Washington D. C.
Moroni that Might Have Been: Nauvoo
2021
The Rise and Fall of a Tradition
Tri-Temple Setting
Lightning Rods
Gold Leaf and Angel
Earthquakes
Tragedy and Return
Moroni that Might Have Been: Mesa.
Moroni that Might Have Been: Provo and Ogden
Moroni that Might Have Been: Washington D. C.
Moroni that Might Have Been: Nauvoo
Statues Turned After Placement
Rough Beginnings for Seattle
Coincidental Angel Placements
The Wooden Angel
Angel Gets a Shoulder Angel
Denver Placed and Replaced
Moroni Speaks
Moroni and Strobes
Spheres and Pedestals
Another Angel Flying
Unveiling Ceremony Foiled
Temple with the Living Angel
New Myths
Like the Stories Section, the Myths from the previous book, now in their own chapter, have been better researched, expanded, and added to:
2015
Myth #1: All Temples must have an Angel Moroni Statue
Myth #2: All Statues Must Face East
Myth #3: All Statues Must Face Independence Missouri
Myth #4: The White to Gold Angel
Myth #5: Replaced Because of Bullet Holes
Myth #6: Angels and Airplanes
Myth #7: Moroni and Mexico City
2021
Myth #1: All Temples must have an Angel Moroni Statue
Myth #2: All Statues Must Face East
Myth #3: All Statues Face the Same Direction as the Temple’s Front Doors.
Myth #4: All Statues Must Face Independence Missouri
Myth #5: The White to Gold Angel
Myth #6: Angels and Airplanes
Myth #7: Moroni and Mexico City
Myth #8: Moroni Once Had Wings
Myth #9: Nauvoo Statue ended up on Assembly Hall
Myth #10: World’s Fair Moroni used on [Seattle] Temple
Myth #11: Angel Moroni violates the Commandment against Graven Images
Myth#12: Angel Moroni Stolen from top of Temple by Helicopter
Myth #13: Moroni always marks the completion of the Exterior/1 year out to dedication
Myth #14: Angel Statues Are Very Expensive
Myth #15: Nauvoo Temple Moroni is the only one to face west because…
Myth #16: The sign of the fallen trumpets
Myth #17: Posthumous Addition
Bonus: Myth #?: Angel Moroni Replaced Because of Bullet Holes
New Charts, Lists, and Graphs
Similarly, the Charts, Graphs and Lists section has been expanded, updated and corrected as well:
2015
Identify Your Moroni
Height Comparison
Direction
Statue by Sculptor
Timeline
2021
Identify Your Moroni
Height Comparison
Moroni Always Faces East (Except When He Doesn’t)
Statue by Model
Construction Timeline
Moroni by Sculptor
Chronological by Dedication
Chronological by Placement
On top of all the reorganized chapters, the book now has an extensive set of appendices where a large portion of my research that did not fit in well with the other chapters is included. Information on other notable statues, Brief Biographies on Assistant Sculptors, collected information on Moroni as a man and an Angel, and collected information on Angels in General can be found in the large Appendices at the back of the book.
The Downside:
Instead of being 167 pages, the book now reaches a full 600 pages total. This is in large part to the artwork, appendices, and the large section listing every temple and every known statue event for that temple (previously an alphabetical reference as to which temple had which statue.)
For this reason, in addition to being able to download the whole book as a single file,
