The name invites a simple question: where are these two books in the Bible? The answer for this historical object begins in print culture. The dated witnesses are modern compilations presenting magical material under Mosaic authority, and their titles and contents changed as publishers issued new editions.
- Genre
- Printed grimoire compilation
- Earliest witness here
- Scheible, Stuttgart 1849
- Reference approach
- Edition by edition
Why the title adds two books to Moses
The conventional first five books attributed to Moses form the Pentateuch. Calling this work the sixth and seventh books does more than attach a famous name: it imagines a supplement beyond the public biblical sequence. In the 1910 Chicago witness, an opening “Instruction” says that God revealed two books to Moses on Sinai and that they passed through Aaron, Caleb, Joshua, David, Solomon, and the high priest Sadock. The chain joins biblical succession to secrecy. It gives the compilation an internal history before any seal or table appears.
That story is part of the work’s argument, not an independently documented transmission. Scheible’s 1849 German title likewise promises magical spirit art faithful in word and image to an old manuscript. The printed book asks readers to treat its diagrams as remnants of withheld revelation. The dated objects tell a different, narrower story: a short Stuttgart printing in 1849, enlarged German and English editions, and a Chicago reissue. The tension between those two histories; the ancient chain narrated by the text and the modern chain preserved by libraries; is central to what the book is.
Seven seals and twelve tables make a visible argument
The opening “Conversation of God” grants Moses authority over elemental and planetary spirits, then promises seven seals and twelve tables. Each Sixth Book “mystery” joins a named angelic class, conjuration, figure, names, and stated use. Heading, prose, and caption turn every seal into one indexed unit.
The Seventh Book changes the organizing device from seven seals to twelve tables. Four tables correspond to air, fire, water, and earth; seven more follow Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon; the final table invokes the Schemhamphoras. The arithmetic is the argument: four elemental regions plus seven planets lead to a concluding form of divine-name authority. The series makes the plates appear exhaustive, as if the whole created order has been sorted into a portable archive. That editorial structure is visible whether or not a reader accepts any promised effect.
Worked reading: the burning bush becomes an index
At the beginning of the named books, the voice at Sinai speaks directly to Moses. The passage moves from “hear the voice of thy God” to the gift of seals and tables, so the burning-bush and Sinai traditions authorize the collection from above. The first mystery then shifts grammatical person: a generic speaker marked “N. N.” addresses a spirit, asks for an appearance, and points toward the first seal. Biblical revelation has become a reusable printed frame in which an unnamed reader can occupy the speaking position.
Much later in the 1910 volume, a “Treatise of the Sixth Book of Moses” returns to the same biblical material as a chapter list. One chapter labels the spirit’s appearance in the burning bush; the next labels the staff changed into a serpent; another labels water changed into blood. The following Seventh Book sequence similarly turns pillars of fire and cloud and the plagues into discrete signs. The narrative order of Exodus is retained just enough to be recognized, but each episode is detached and made parallel to the others. What began as the origin story for Moses’s authority now works as a table of operations.
The comparison explains why the volume can repeat apparently familiar material without simply retelling scripture. The first appearance of the burning bush legitimizes the speaker and the whole collection. The later appearance classifies one unit inside a numbered technical sequence. The same biblical image therefore does two editorial jobs: it supplies antiquity at the front and order in the later treatise. Reading only the seal plates misses that change in function.
The Schemhamphoras passage treats scripture as a letter system
Near the later discussion of divine names, the 1910 edition describes a method built from three verses of Exodus 14. It says the verses contain seventy-two letters, arranges one line in reverse direction between two others, and derives a sequence of seventy-two names by adding divine endings. The passage then aligns those names with angels, nations, languages, bodily functions, and disciples. Here scripture is not quoted chiefly for narrative meaning. It is treated as patterned material whose letter count and direction disclose a hidden order.
That combinatory explanation clarifies the final place of the Schemhamphoras in the twelve-table sequence. The last table does not add a fifth element or an eighth planet. It claims a naming system able to authorize and coordinate the preceding categories. The book moves from the physical world, through the heavens, to a divine vocabulary generated from scripture. The etymologies and historical claims in the printed passage should not be assumed accurate, but its internal logic is consistent: names are presented as the mechanism that makes the tables command rather than merely describe.
The 1910 volume changes genre as it proceeds
The Chicago book does not stop when its seven seals and twelve tables end. It adds prefatory material, a “Vestibule” and “Laws of Entrance,” repeated treatments of the Sixth and Seventh Books, an appendix of characters associated with seven spirit princes, a discussion of the Schemhamphoras, the “Magic of the Israelites,” the “Magical Uses of the Psalms,” and material on amulets and reported customs. A continuous reading therefore moves among revelation narrative, diagram series, procedural rubric, antiquarian commentary, and alphabetical or psalm-based reference material.
Those shifts matter because different sections make different kinds of claims. A first-person divine speech constructs authority; a seal caption assigns a function; an appendix gathers extra characters; a historical essay tries to explain a tradition. Treating every page as one ancient Mosaic text erases the compilation’s seams. The contents page and repeated headings instead show a publisher arranging several modes of occult literature under a successful title.
A shared title does not guarantee shared contents
The 1849 German record describes a short item of 31 numbered pages plus 23 plate leaves, while another catalogue view summarizes it as 46 pages. An 1854 enlarged German edition reaches 400 pages and advertises the same number of plates with an appendix. The 1880 English record gives 192 pages, and the 1910 Chicago object is catalogued at 190 pages. These measurements use different counting conventions and do not form a complete textual genealogy, but their scale shows that later books could wrap extensive commentary around a recognizable illustrated core.
A careful comparison therefore begins with a named witness and a named sequence. The seven-seal and twelve-table architecture can be followed in the early Scheible scan; the burning-bush repetition, later treatises, and long appendices discussed here belong securely to the 1910 Library of Congress copy. An earlier date cannot be used to backdate every paragraph in a later volume. What survives is a changing print compilation whose visual core, biblical authority story, and appended explanations were repeatedly repackaged.
Source records and witness notes
- Bavarian State Library copy of Scheible’s 1849 German printing, via Google Books ↗The catalog gives the Stuttgart publisher, year, 46-page length, and series position. The old-manuscript claim is on the historical title, not independently verified.
- Bavarian State Library copy of the enlarged 1854 German edition, via Google Books ↗The catalog describes a 400-page edition with 23 plates and an important appendix. Its length differs sharply from the 1849 item.
- University of Michigan copy of the 1880 English edition, via Google Books ↗The catalog identifies an English text, a “word for word” translation claim, and a 192-page volume.
- Library of Congress, de Laurence, Scott & Co. 1910 edition ↗A 190-page Chicago edition with a digitized 202-image sequence. The Library marks this book public domain and free to reuse.
- Owen Davies, “The dissemination of magical knowledge,” in Beyond the Witch Trials ↗Scholarly study of Scheible’s print history, variant forms, Pennsylvania circulation, and the 1880 English translation.