Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [61]
He have helped me. He helps me an when ah wants bread ah call on him an’ he brings me a rap [answers by rapping]. Ah heard dat he was a man dat didn’t believe in no evil work; an’ he didn’t fool roun’ wit no kinda evil doin’ when he was on dis scene an’ he wus a true man an’ when he died he went tuh heaven.
The books stocked by hoodoo supply houses encompassed Christian inspirational classics, such as The Imitation of Christ (again, repackaged as occult fare), or modern guides to hexes, spells, and folk cures. Folklore from the German–American community of Pennsylvania—influenced by the Rhine Valley mysticism of the Kelpius and Ephrata communes—proved especially popular among hoodoo readers. A favorite was German–Pennsylvanian Johann Georg Hohman’s 1820 spell book Pow-Wows or Long Lost Friend, a volume that made its way into English in 1855. Pow-Wows was a haunting hodgepodge of myth, healing practices, and European folklore. The book referred to itself as a magic charm that would protect all who carried it. (So seriously was this belief held that soldiers of German–Pennsylvanian background were known to carry Pow-Wows on them in Vietnam.)
Far and away the most venerated book in hoodoo was another Germanic occult text, this one assembled from myriad sources in the mid-nineteenth century. Often considered the “hoodoo bible,” it was a beguiling patchwork called The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. The grimoire, or manual of magic, served up a mixture of Kabala (and pseudo-Kabala), supernatural seals, the “spells” used by Moses against Pharaoh, and—most popular of all—instructions on the magical uses of the Psalms. For hoodoo practitioners, who discovered the book in its first English edition in 1880, it became a source of endless fascination. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is cited more than any other single work in the interviews and oral records that survive of root workers. German–Pennsylvanian and Jewish influences grew so woven into hoodoo practice that a Louisiana-born conjurer living in Memphis in the 1930s told folklorist Hyatt about a love spell where: “Yo’d have to talk Hebrew-like. Yo’ realize de Hebrew language—some of dat’s in de ‘Six’ and Seven’ Books of Moses’ and den de balance is [in] de 91 Psalms of David.”
Indeed, to many root workers, Moses himself was the great medicine man and conjurer of the ancient past—a savior from the African continent who used his divine powers to free and protect his flock. To hoodoo practitioners, Moses and Aaron’s spells against Pharaoh revealed the true purpose of Africa’s traditional esoteric crafts. A former Georgia slave named Thomas Smith put it this way in another dialect-faithful interview, which appeared in the Georgia Writers’ Project guide: “Dat appen in Africa de Bible say. Ain’ dat show dat Africa wuz a lan uh magic powah since de beginnin uh history? Well duh descendants ub Africans hab du same gif tuh do unnatchal ting.”
“The Great Voodoo Man of the Bible”
The marriage of African cultural awareness, magic, and the emancipation brought by Moses found its greatest expression in the books of a man whose identity is lost to time. The 1930s and ’40s saw the arrival of Henri Gamache, a pseudonymous author and literary man of mystery. His books were the finest original fare put out by the hoodoo publishers and supply houses. Gamache’s works include an influential guide to candle magic called The Master Book of Candle Burning, as well as books of herb magic and protective spells. The centerpiece of the Gamache oeuvre is a little-known minor masterpiece. It is a work that has never gone out of print and that prefigured the African religious and cultural revival of later generations. Expanding on the themes of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, it is called Mystery of the Long Lost 8th, 9th and 10th Books of Moses.
Published in 1945, Gamache’s 8th, 9th and 10th