According to biographical elements in the "Guide of radiesthesia", his career as occultist began the day before his first communion, when he found a 1902 brochure from a New York City correspondence course in hypnosis in his grandparents' attic. Following the instructions in the course, he succeeds in his attempt to put to sleep Fernand, the fifteen-year-old gardener helper of the family, but then he could not wake him up. At first he considered writing to the New York Institute of Science for help, but the answer would have taken way too long. So he skimmed feverishly through the rest of the course in the hope to find and answer, and it was finally lesson XVII, "How to wake up hypnotised subjects" that saved young Fernand from sleep therapy.