Jean-Baptiste Pitois

As a young man, he moved to Paris, where he became the associate of Charles Nodier, one of the leading literary lights of the Romantic movement, which was then emerging on the continent.

Working with Nodier through the mass of uncatalogued material opened up a new level of interest in the occult, although it did not manifest for years.

In 1859 Pitois turned his attention to writing Historie de la Magie, du monde Surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les Temps et les Peuples (1870) (trs: History of Magic, the Supernatural World and Fate, through Times and Peoples).

Carefully written so as not to offend his largely Catholic audience, it immediately became popular public reading.

He left behind a still-unpublished work on astrology that reportedly contains numerous allusions to contemporary events as proof of the value of the horoscope.