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By Root 431 0

Books of Moses theorized the existence of lost Mosaic works, including those that might reveal the magical systems used by Moses, the Great Emancipator. Gamache depicted Moses as a figure born from within the magical ferment of Egyptian and African antiquity. In so doing, Gamache developed a cultural argument that all the great Western faiths were philosophies raised up from the cradle of Africa. Moses, he reasoned, was “The Great Voodoo Man of the Bible,” a medicine man and miracle worker whose fingerprints could be found in the African-descended religious movements of Voodoo, hoodoo—and those that became Judaism and Christianity. “All across Africa and Egypt to the Sudan and thence to the Gold Coast is his influence manifest,” Gamache wrote. “In Haiti, in the Western Hemisphere, the greatest of all the gods is Damballa Ouedo Ouedo Tocan Freda Dahomey who is none other than Moses himself.”

It was a novel argument. In his analysis, Gamache previewed Afrocentrist and Garveyite perspectives that would begin to gain popularity twenty-five years later. And his perspective was not without subtlety. While anthropologists speculated over, and sometimes fiercely debated, the extent to which African cultural “retentions” could be found in America, Gamache—in an approach validated by later generations of ethnographers and religious scholars—showed an understanding that the most visible African retentions could be discovered in Haiti and the Caribbean, where older customs were more closely preserved.*

The person using the name Henri Gamache may have been the force behind other pseudonymous hoodoo-influenced books, including guides to magic and the occult under the bylines alternately spelled Lewis de Claremont and Louis de Clermont. Indeed, Gamache’s own works emerged from companies owned by the same or related retailers who controlled the de Claremont titles and a variety of other works on dreams, spells, and numerology. But a liveliness and originality that is absent from the usual supply-house fare permeates Gamache’s writing, suggesting the thought of a distinct, though unknown, individual. Gamache alone displays a broad interest in the religion, magic, and folklore of a vast range of cultures and belief systems, including Christian, Vedic, African, Judaic/Kabalistic, Voodoo, and Spiritualist. In an almost unheard-of device in hoodoo-oriented literature, Gamache in each of his books supplied bibliographies and cited scholarly and journalistic sources—many of which were available at the New York Public Library. “He seems to have been a man of mixed race,” notes Catherine Yronwode, the canniest contemporary observer of hoodoo history and practice, “possibly born in the Caribbean, who lived and worked in New York City.”

There is one further literary connection to Gamache that begs scrutiny, and it involves yet another magician who associated himself with the wonders of Moses. The figure who authored the Gamache books is sometimes thought to have ghostwritten the memoirs of the most famous African–American stage magician of the first part of the twentieth century. He could neither read nor write but enthralled thousands of followers under the stage name Black Herman.

Professor Black Herman

“I am proud to introduce you to one of the greatest men of our time,” the emcee would announce at the opening of Black Herman’s stage shows,

the President of the Colored Magicians Association of America, and the undisputed monarch of race magicians. All those present tonight are fortunate, because the territory he tours is so large that Black Herman only comes around once every seven years. This is the year for us all to remember. You will tell your grandchildren about this day. You know the legend of High John the Conqueror, now meet the legendary Professor Black Herman!

Although he had been born Benjamin Rucker in Amherst, Virginia, in 1892, the gangly, tuxedoed magician called Black Herman told his audiences a different story. He described a mythical childhood in a Zulu tribe and claimed great feats of magic and derring-do—including