The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses

The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses by Johann Scheibel - is an 18th- or 19th-century magical text allegedly written by Moses, and passed down as hidden (or lost) books of the Hebrew Bible. Self-described as "the wonderful arts of the old Hebrews, taken from the Mosaic books of the Kabbalah and the Talmud," it is actually a grimoire, or text of magical incantations and seals, that purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create some of the miracles portrayed in the Bible as well as to grant other forms of good fortune and good health.The work contains reputed Talmudic magic names, words, and ideograms, some written in Hebrew and some with letters from the Latin alphabet. It contains "Seals" or magical drawings accompanied by instructions intended to help the user perform various tasks, from controlling weather or people to contacting the dead or Biblical religious figures.Copies have been traced to 18th-century German pamphlets, but an 1849 printing, aided by the appearance of the popular press in the 19th century, spread the text through Germany and Northern Europe to German Americans and eventually helped popularize the texts among African Americans in the United States, the Caribbean, and Anglophone West Africa. It influenced European Occult Spiritualism as well as African American hoodoo folk magic, and magical-spiritual practices in the Caribbean, and West Africa.No first version of this work has been established, but early versions began to appear as inexpensive pamphlets in Germany in the 18th century. Elements of the "Seventh Book", such as “The Seven Semiphoras of Adam” and “The Seven Semiphoras of Moses” appear to have come from the seventh book of the earlier European copies of the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.The work came to wide prominence when published as volume 6 of Das Kloster in 1849 in Stuttgart by antiquarian Johann Scheible.Historian Owen Davies traces copies of the work from the 18th century in Germany. After circulating there, the work was popularized in the United States first in the communities of the Pennsylvania Dutch.