Quick Answer
A nineteenth century German compilation of seals and spirit names, presented as two lost books of Moses, containing no ancient material and almost no real Hebrew. It then travelled to the Caribbean, the American South and West Africa and became one of the most consequential magical books on earth, which is a fact about distribution rather than about content.
Key Takeaways
- Moses had nothing to do with it. The material is early modern European, and the Hebrew in it is largely garbled or invented.
- Johann Scheible's Stuttgart printing of 1849 is the moment it moved from scattered manuscripts into mass circulation.
- The story is the distribution. Cheap Chicago reprints carried it into hoodoo, the Caribbean, Latin America and West Africa.
- It was banned from import into Jamaica, which almost no book of any kind has managed.
- Buy Peterson's edition if you want to know what you are holding, and skip the unattributed reprints.
🕑 15 min read
What the Book Claims to Be
The premise is simple and effective. The Hebrew Bible contains five books of Moses. This text presents itself as the sixth and seventh: the hidden volumes containing the actual operative knowledge behind the miracles in Exodus.
On that account, when Moses turned a staff into a serpent, parted the sea and called down plagues, he was using techniques, and those techniques were written down and kept from the public. The book claims to be that record, transmitted secretly and recovered.
The framing does a great deal of work. It supplies a source older than any competing magical tradition, an author whose authority is beyond dispute in three religions, and an explanation for why nobody has heard of the book before.
On what this article does: it treats the book as a historical object, describes what is in it, traces where it came from and where it travelled, and reports what communities have made of it. It offers no instruction in any operation the book contains and takes no position on whether ritual of this kind achieves anything, for which no evidence exists.
What It Actually Is
The attribution does not survive contact with the text, and the reasons are not subtle.
There is no ancient manuscript tradition. The text appears in German-language manuscripts in the eighteenth century and nowhere before. No Hebrew original exists, no ancient citation refers to it, and no Jewish tradition knows it.
The Hebrew is not Hebrew. Much of the lettering on the seals is decorative rather than linguistic. Where words are recognisable they are frequently misspelled, misdivided or transliterated through German in ways that show the compiler could not read the language he was invoking.
The seals have European ancestors. The designs descend from the recognised grimoire tradition of medieval and early modern Europe, the same family that produced the material we cover in the Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key. The pedigree is real and it runs to Latin Europe rather than to Sinai.
The theology is Christian. Names, invocations and framing assume a Christian magical worldview of the early modern period, not a Mosaic or Jewish one.
What Is Inside
Readers expecting a book are often surprised, because it is closer to a catalogue.
The bulk consists of seals: circular or rectangular diagrams filled with characters, geometric figures and pseudo-Hebrew script. Each is captioned with a purpose. Some govern spirits, some are said to protect, some to compel, some to reveal, some to obtain money or favour.
Alongside these are lists of spirit names arranged by hierarchy, and short invocations to be spoken.
Editions vary considerably in what they include. Material commonly bound with it, sometimes as separate treatises, includes the Semiphoras and Schemhamphoras, which concerns divine names, and various magical formularies of German folk origin. Two editions with the same title can have substantially different contents.
There is very little continuous prose and almost no instruction in the modern sense. It presumes a reader who already knows how such things are used, which is characteristic of the grimoire genre generally, as our overview of what a grimoire is describes.
Scheible and 1849
The decisive event in this book's life is a publishing decision.
Johann Scheible was a Stuttgart publisher who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, issued an enormous multi-volume collection called Das Kloster, gathering folk literature, chapbooks, magical texts, Faust material and curiosities that had previously circulated in manuscript or in cheap ephemeral printings.
His 1849 publication of the Sixth and Seventh Books took material that had been passing hand to hand in German-speaking Europe and put it into print, in a form that could be reproduced, translated and shipped.
Scheible was an antiquarian rather than a magician, and the effect of his work was to preserve a great deal that would otherwise have vanished. It also converted a scattered manuscript tradition into a commodity, and the commodity travelled in ways the manuscripts never could.
The Chicago Connection
The second decisive figure is more troubling, and understanding him explains almost everything about where this book ended up.
Lauron William de Laurence ran a publishing and mail-order operation in Chicago from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth. He printed occult books, sold magical supplies by catalogue, and shipped worldwide.
His practice with texts was straightforward appropriation. He reprinted other people's translations under his own imprint, frequently without credit and sometimes with his own name attached, and issued them cheaply.
What matters here is reach. De Laurence's catalogue went to places no European occult publisher served: the American South, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and West Africa. His editions were inexpensive, they arrived by post, and they reached communities with limited access to any other printed magical material.
The result is a genuine historical irony worth stating plainly. A German compilation of European magical material, falsely attributed to Moses, reprinted without permission by a Chicago mail-order businessman, became a text of real significance in African diaspora religious practice across three continents. Nothing about that chain has anything to do with the book's claimed origins, and the chain is why anyone outside Germany has heard of it.
The German-Speaking Route
Before the book reached the Caribbean it reached Pennsylvania, and that leg of the journey is usually left out.
German-speaking immigrants carried their folk magical traditions to North America from the eighteenth century, and those traditions took root among the communities now generally called Pennsylvania Dutch. The practice is known as powwow or, in the dialect, Braucherei: a body of charms, blessings and healing formulas mixing German folk magic with Christian prayer.
Its central text is The Long Lost Friend, compiled by John George Hohman and published in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1820. It is a small book of remedies and charms, and it circulated widely in exactly the communities that would also receive Scheible's material later in the century.
Two things follow. The Sixth and Seventh Books arrived in America with an existing German-American readership ready for it, which is part of why English editions were commercially worth producing. And powwow practice and African American conjure were not sealed off from each other; they overlapped in the same regions and the same markets, and material moved between them.
So the route runs from German manuscripts to a Stuttgart publisher to German-American farm communities to English-language reprints to a Chicago mail-order house to the wider world. Every step is ordinary commerce and migration. None of it involves a secret transmission, and the result is a text present on four continents.
Practice: check the imprint before the contents
Pick up any occult or esoteric book and read the copyright page before the text. Who published it, where, in what year, and whose translation. In this field that page is frequently more informative than the introduction, because it tells you which commercial chain the book belongs to. A great many titles that present themselves as ancient resolve, on that page, into a nineteenth or twentieth century publishing operation with a catalogue.
Where It Went
The book's afterlife is more interesting than its contents, and it needs to be described with care because it concerns living traditions.
In African American hoodoo, or conjure, the book became a recognised source, valued particularly for its seals. It is important to be accurate about the relationship. Hoodoo is a practice with deep roots in West and Central African traditions, shaped by enslavement, and drawing on Indigenous American plant knowledge and on Protestant Christianity, above all the Psalms. This book was absorbed into an existing and coherent practice. It did not create it, and treating it as the source of hoodoo gets the history backwards.
In the Caribbean, the book entered the world of Obeah, where colonial law and popular belief were already in a long conflict.
In West Africa it acquired a formidable reputation, particularly in parts of Nigeria and Ghana, where it has been the subject of both serious use and periodic public alarm, and where it is frequently named in sermons warning against occult practice.
In each case the pattern is the same. An imported cheap printing arrived in a place with living traditions of spiritual practice, was absorbed, and acquired an authority in its new home that it never had in the country that produced it. Almost nobody in Germany has heard of it.
The Country That Banned It
The clearest measure of the book's perceived power is that a government tried to keep it out.
De Laurence's publications were prohibited from importation into Jamaica, and De Laurence material was named in the context of colonial legislation against Obeah. A Chicago mail-order catalogue became a matter for customs officers.
The ban tells you several things at once. That the books were arriving in sufficient volume to be noticed. That authorities regarded them as a threat to order rather than as harmless curiosities. And that a legal apparatus built to suppress African-derived spiritual practice found a printed European grimoire a convenient thing to prohibit.
The predictable happened. A banned book acquires an authority that a freely available one does not, and prohibition did more for the reputation of this text than any claim on its title page.
Why Moses, of All People
The choice of attribution was not arbitrary, and it rests on a tradition much older than the book.
In the ancient world Moses had a reputation as a magician. Greek and Roman writers who knew of him at all frequently classed him among the great practitioners of Egyptian wisdom, and this was not meant as praise. The Exodus narrative supplies the material directly: a staff that becomes a serpent, a contest with Pharaoh's magicians in which both sides perform, water turned to blood, a sea divided.
Read from outside the tradition, that is a story about a man who out-performs the professional magicians of the most magically reputed nation on earth. Ancient magical papyri from Egypt invoke Moses by name, and texts circulated in antiquity under his authority.
So when an eighteenth century German compiler needed a name, Moses was available and had been for a long time. The attribution supplies three things at once: enormous antiquity, unimpeachable authority within Christian Europe, and a documented biblical record of the attributed author performing exactly the sort of operations the book contains.
There is a further piece of cover in the framing. Presenting the book as suppressed scripture explains its absence from the canon, turns the lack of any manuscript history into evidence of successful concealment, and makes scholarly rejection look like a continuation of the original suppression. That structure is not unique to this book, and it is worth recognising wherever it appears.
Why Authenticity Is the Wrong Question
Most writing about this book stops at the debunking, and stopping there misses what is interesting.
Whether Moses wrote it is settled and it was never really in question among people who examined the text. But a book's significance is not determined by the accuracy of its title page, and this one has demonstrably shaped practice across several continents for a century and a half.
The mechanism is worth understanding because it recurs. A text acquires authority through attribution to a revered figure, the attribution supplies what the contents cannot, and the borrowed authority carries the material into use. The Hermetic writings attributed to a legendary Egyptian sage worked this way, as our Hermetica comparison describes. So did the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha. So do most grimoires, which is why so many are credited to Solomon.
There is a further point that a purely debunking account misses. Practitioners in the traditions where this book took root have not generally been naive about it. Many treat the seals as effective because of how they are used and by whom, rather than because Moses drew them. A tool's provenance and a tool's function are different questions, and communities that use this book have often been clearer about the distinction than the scholars correcting them.
Which Edition to Buy
Joseph Peterson's scholarly edition is the one to own. It gives the text with its sources traced, the history explained, and the various versions distinguished, which matters in a book whose contents vary this much between printings.
Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, published by Oxford, is the essential companion and covers this book's global career specifically. If the story interests you more than the seals, read Davies and skip the grimoire.
The cheap unattributed reprints are generally De Laurence or Scheible material reset without notes, sometimes with contents added or removed silently. They are inexpensive and they will not tell you what you are holding or where any of it came from.
Two cautions. First, this article describes a historical text and provides no operative instruction; nothing here should be read as a recommendation to perform any ritual in it, and there is no evidence that such rituals produce their stated effects. Second, the traditions this book entered are living practices belonging to specific communities with their own histories of persecution. Reading about them is one thing. Treating a nineteenth century German pamphlet as a licence to appropriate African diaspora religious practice is another, and the distinction is worth keeping.
Who Should Read It
Read about it rather than reading it, unless you have a specific reason. Davies will give you more in an afternoon than the grimoire will.
Read it if you are interested in how printed texts travel and what happens to them on arrival, which is one of the better case studies available in any field.
Read it if you work on African diaspora religion, where it is a documented source and part of the record.
Do not read it as ancient wisdom, do not read it as Jewish mysticism, and do not read the free ebook editions expecting to learn anything about their own history.
Our position: a forgery of no antiquity and considerable consequence. The contents are a nineteenth century German compilation of European magical material with invented Hebrew, and saying so settles nothing important, because the book's actual life began when it left Germany. Buy Peterson if you want the text, Davies if you want the story, and notice that the most interesting thing here is a printing decision in Stuttgart and a mail-order catalogue in Chicago rather than anything on the title page.
Not by Moses, and it changed practice on three continents.
Affiliate disclosure: Thalira earns a small commission on purchases made through the link above, at no additional cost to you. We recommend books we have read and think are worth your time, and we say plainly when we think parts of them are weak.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses?
A grimoire consisting mainly of magical seals, spirit names and formulas, presented as two lost books of Moses containing the secrets behind the miracles in Exodus. It circulated in German manuscripts in the eighteenth century and was published by Johann Scheible in Stuttgart in 1849.
Did Moses write it?
No. It is an early modern European compilation with no connection to any biblical or ancient Jewish text. The seals derive from earlier European magical traditions, the Hebrew in it is frequently garbled or meaningless, and no manuscript tradition connects it to antiquity.
Why does it matter then?
Because of where it went. Cheap English editions carried it into African American hoodoo, into the Caribbean, into Latin America and into West Africa, where it became a genuinely significant text in living practice. Its influence has nothing to do with its authenticity.
Was it really banned?
Editions published by the De Laurence Company of Chicago were prohibited from import into Jamaica, and De Laurence's material was targeted by colonial anti-Obeah legislation. A publisher's mail-order catalogue became a customs matter, which is unusual for any book.
What is actually in it?
Pages of seals and pentacles with pseudo-Hebrew lettering, each assigned a purpose, together with lists of spirit names, invocations, and material often published alongside it under titles such as the Semiphoras and Schemhamphoras. There is very little continuous prose.
Who was Johann Scheible?
A Stuttgart publisher who issued an enormous collection of folk, magical and curious literature in a series called Das Kloster in the mid nineteenth century. His 1849 printing is the point at which this material moved from scattered manuscripts into wide circulation.
Who was De Laurence?
Lauron William de Laurence, a Chicago publisher and occult entrepreneur who reprinted magical texts, frequently without credit to their translators, and sold them by mail order across the Americas and beyond. His editions are how this book reached most of the communities where it became important.
Is it used in hoodoo?
It became a significant text in African American conjure practice, valued for its seals, and it is not the origin of that tradition. Hoodoo draws primarily on African, Indigenous American and Christian sources, and this book was absorbed into an existing practice rather than founding one.
Which edition should I buy?
Joseph Peterson's scholarly edition for anyone who wants the text with its sources traced and its history explained. The cheap unattributed reprints are generally the De Laurence or Scheible material reset without notes, and they tell you nothing about what you are holding.
Does the magic work?
There is no evidence that ritual instructions of this kind produce their stated effects, and this article makes no claim that they do. What is documented is that many people have believed they do, and that this belief has had real social consequences in several countries.
Why do fake ancient books spread so well?
Because an attribution to a revered ancient figure supplies authority that the contents cannot. The same mechanism produced the Hermetic corpus, the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha and a large part of the grimoire tradition, and readers repeatedly find the claimed pedigree more persuasive than the text.
What should I read to understand its history?
Owen Davies's Grimoires: A History of Magic Books is the standard scholarly account and treats this book's global career directly. It is the best single source on how European magical texts travelled and what happened to them when they arrived.
Follow one book's route instead of its claims
Take any text you have been told is ancient and trace its distribution rather than its pedigree. Who printed it, when, in what language, at what price, and who could afford to buy it. That route usually explains the book's influence far better than its contents do, and in this case it explains everything: a Stuttgart antiquarian, a Chicago catalogue, and a customs ban in Kingston.
Sources & References
- The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, ed. J. H. Peterson. Ibis Press.
- Davies, O. (2009). Grimoires: A History of Magic Books. Oxford University Press.
- Scheible, J. (1849). Das Kloster, the Stuttgart series in which the text was published.
- De Laurence, L. W. Publications of the De Laurence Company, Chicago.
- Chireau, Y. (2003). Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. University of California Press.
- Colonial Jamaican legislation and customs prohibitions concerning Obeah and De Laurence publications.
- Hohman, J. G. (1820). The Long Lost Friend. Reading, Pennsylvania. The central text of Pennsylvania powwow practice.
- Hurston, Z. N. Fieldwork on hoodoo practice in the American South.