Sixth And Seventh Books Of Moses
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is an 18th- or 19th-century magical text allegedly written by Moses, and passed down as hidden (or lost) books of the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch. A grimoire, a text of magical incantations and seals, it purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create the miracles portrayed in the Judaeo-Christian Bible. The work was printed with annexes or reputed Talmudic magic names, words and incantation, many taken from Christian biblical passages. It shows diagrams of "Seals": magical drawings accompanied by incantations intended to perform various tasks, from controlling weather or people to contacting the dead or Christian 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 immigrants in the United States and eventually helped popularize the texts among African Americans in the South and Caribbean, and Anglophone West Africa. It influenced European Occult Spiritualism, as well as popular religious movements in the American South (Hoodoo), the Caribbean (Rastafarian), and West Africa.
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“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
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“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
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“No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao tse and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.”
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