Collection: L. W. de Laurence

L. W. de Laurence (1868–1936) was a Chicago occult author, publisher, compiler, and mail-order entrepreneur whose books and catalogs helped carry hypnotism, magnetic healing, clairvoyance, ritual magic, divination, and practical occult instruction to an international readership.

His historical importance is larger than authorship alone. De Laurence, Scott & Co. issued original writings, compilations, adaptations, republications, and editions of older magical texts. For that reason, this collection distinguishes between works genuinely authored by de Laurence and works for which his importance lies chiefly in editing, packaging, publishing, or distribution.

That distinction is especially important for The Sixth & Seventh Books of Moses: de Laurence did not originate the grimoire tradition itself, but his Chicago edition became one of the most consequential vehicles through which the text circulated in the twentieth century.

Where to Begin

For de Laurence’s early psychological and magnetic work, begin with Practical Lessons in Hypnotism and Magnetism (1902), then continue with Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Suggestive Therapeutics & Magnetic Healing (1910). For his role in commercial grimoire publishing, turn to The Sixth & Seventh Books of Moses (1910). For clairvoyance and divination, explore Crystal-Gazing and Spiritual Clairvoyance Behind the Veil (1916).

The rare 1935 The Human Heart Shown as a Temple of God and the Holy Spirit or a Workshop of the Devil and Evil Spirits belongs to the later, more explicitly moral and spiritual side of the de Laurence catalog.

Continue the Research

Read L. W. de Laurence and the Machinery of Modern Occultism for the history of the mail-order empire, the catalog as an occult technology, questions of authorship and appropriation, and the international afterlife of de Laurence editions.

For the wider Chicago metaphysical environment, continue with William Walker Atkinson and the Hidden Architecture of New Thought and the William Walker Atkinson collection. Their subject matter overlapped substantially, but the surviving record does not justify treating that overlap as proof of a formal partnership.

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