1901 - 1990
PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN SAGE
The 1920s and 1930s were times of great religious, philosophical,
and spiritual renewal and discovery in America—times much like our
own. A number of outstanding teachers emerged from this period.
Born on March 18, 1901 in Peterborough, Ontario,
Manly Palmer Hall was raised by his maternal grandmother
who brought him to the United States when he was very young. From an
early age, Mr. Hall studied the full range of the world’s ancient
wisdom traditions. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he
concluded that wisdom was not to be found on only one path or in
only one religion. Instead, he saw wisdom as the highest realm
where philosophy, religion, and science
come together without boundaries. Barely twenty years old, the
gifted young man began his public career in the fall of 1920 when he
was invited to speak to a small group in a room over a bank in Santa
Monica, California on the subject of reincarnation. The following
year he was asked to hold a lecture program in Los Angeles and
continued teaching and writing for another six decades. He showed
thousands how universal wisdom could be found in the myths,
mysteries, and symbols of the ancient Western Mystery teachings and
how to embody this wisdom in their own lives. Once
when a young student asked him to autograph one of his books, he
wrote the following:
“To learn is to live, to study is to
grow, and growth is the measurement of life. The mind must be taught
to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to labor. When these have
been educated to their highest point, then is the time to offer them
to the service of their fellowman, not before.”
Mr. Hall always felt that before the student could
embark on an esoteric career, they must first build a sound and sane
personality from which to launch such an endeavor, this he explains
in his book,
Self Unfoldment By Disciplines of Realization.
His first publications were two small pamphlets,
The Breastplate of the High Priest and Wands and Serpents.
(These are still in print as part of a booklet entitled
Symbolic Essays). Two books he wrote in the early 1920s,
The Lost Keys
of Freemasonry and
The Ways of the Lonely Ones, are also
available and have enjoyed numerous re-printings through the years.
During this period Mr. Hall began planning his large
volume on symbolical philosophy,
The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
He traveled extensively in 1923 and 1924, visiting many great
cultural centers in Europe, Asia, and Egypt. A favorite place of Mr.
Hall’s for searching out rare and ancient wisdom texts was the
British Museum in London.
“The great center of
learning in England is the British Museum, with its miles of
bookcases, which caused De Quincy to sit and weep because he could
not read all the volumes. In order to gain access to the two
principal departments of the museum-one of rare books, and the other
of manuscripts—it was necessary to be appropriately sponsored. I had
the good fortune of becoming acquainted with General Sir Francis
Younghusband, the man who led the British expedition into Tibet in
1903-1904, and camped his army at the foot of the Potola at Lhasa.
While dining one day at the Officer’s Club, Sir Francis confided to
me that he was known as the conqueror of Tibet, but he regarded this
as a dubious honor. The real fact, he said, was that Tibetan
religion and philosophy had conquered him. A note from Sir Francis
immediately gave me admission to the most valuable parts of the
British Museum, and I was able to examine the originals of many of
the world’s most priceless books and manuscripts.”
(from the PRS Journal Winter 1959)
These travels strengthened his convictions about the
importance of comparative religion and deepened his understanding of
significant contributions made in the interest of human spiritual
evolution. Immediately upon his return, he set seriously to work on
his encyclopedic outline of the Western esoteric tradition,
The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which describes in some
detail the most ancient theory of education, which was in the
keeping of the Mystery schools.
It took Mr. Hall six years to complete the work on
the book and raise the enormous sum of $100,000 in 1928 necessary to
print the first edition. During this time he had a brief career on
Wall Street, the outstanding event of which was witnessing a man
depressed over investment losses take his own life, of this period
he wrote.
“My fleeting contact with high
finance resulted in serious doubts concerning business as it was
being conducted at that time. It was apparent that materialism was
in complete control of the economic structure, the final objective
of which was for the individual to become part of a system providing
an economic security at the expense of the human soul, mind, and
body.
I felt strongly moved to explore the
problems of humanity, its origin and destiny, and I spent a number
of quiet hours in the New York Public Library tracing the confused
course of civilization. With a very few exceptions modern
authorities downgraded all systems of idealistic philosophy and the
deeper aspects of comparative religion. Translations of classical
authors could differ greatly, but in most cases the noblest thoughts
were eliminated or denigrated. Those more sincere authors whose
knowledge of ancient languages was profound were never included as
required reading, and scholarship was based largely upon the
acceptance of a sterile materialism.
Fortunately, since contemporary
scholarship had little regard for the wisdom of the past, there was
no premium on the earlier texts. As a result I assembled a fair
collection of the works of those forgotten sages to whose labors the
world owes a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
(from The Secret Teachings of All
Ages).
In 1934 Mr. Hall founded the Philosophical Research
Society, dedicating it to the ensoulment of all arts,
sciences, and crafts, and devoted to the one basic purpose of
advancing the brotherhood of all that lives, to meet all lovers of
wisdom on a common ground. The society still hosts a wide range of
lectures, seminars, workshops and performances on philosophical
subjects and runs a bookstore and library. Located in the Los
Feliz area of Los Angeles since its inception, it has for
decades been a place of learning for all spiritual traditions and
was designated a Cultural Site by Los Angeles City Council in
1994.
In 1973 Mr. Hall was recognized
as a 33º
Mason (the highest rank possible in the Scottish Rite), at a
ceremony held at PRS on December 8th. No doubt this honor is due to Mr. Hall’s
lifelong study of the philosophical basis of Freemasonry, writing
several books on the subject, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry,
Masonic Orders of Fraternity,
Freemasonry of the Ancient
Egyptian,
The Secret Destiny of America,
and his belief our continent was set aside for a great experiment of
enlightened self-government by ancient philosophers, and that the
seeds of this plan for the founding of America were planted one
thousand years before the Christian era and is partly revealed in
the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States.
“Thousands of years ago, in
Egypt, these mystical orders were aware of the existence of the
western hemisphere and the great continent which we call America.
The bold resolution was made that this western continent should
become the site of the philosophic empire. Just when this was done
it is impossible now to say, but certainly the decision was reached
prior to the time of Plato, for a thinly veiled statement of this
resolution is the substance of his treatise on the Atlantic
Islands.” (from his book, The Secret
Destiny of America).
However to allay any conspiracy enthusiasts, it
should be clearly stated that PRS is an entirely
separate and independent organization with no links to the
Masonic movement. Surely it must be a measure of the man, that Mr.
Hall never used PRS as a recruiting station for Masonic membership,
and what he held important was the inner philosophical tradition of
Masonry.
Of all the adepts in history perhaps Mr.
Hall’s favorite was Sir Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, whose
genius still shines down to us through the centuries. It was his
sincere belief that Bacon, a Rosicrucian Initiate, was the real
author who penned the Shakesperean plays, for what has come to be
known as the Bacon-Shakespeare-Rosicrucian Controversy.
“The philosophic ideals
promulgated throughout the Shakespearean plays distinctly
demonstrate their author to have been thoroughly familiar with
certain doctrines and tenets peculiar to Rosicrucianism; in
fact the profundity of the Shakespearean productions stamps their
creator as one of the Illuminati of the ages. Most of those seeking
a solution for the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy have been
intellectualists. Notwithstanding their scholarly attainments, they
have overlooked the important part played by transcendentalism in
the philosophic achievements of the ages. The mysteries of
superphysics are inexplicable to the materialist, whose training
does not equip him to estimate the extent of their ramifications and
complexities. Yet who but a Platonist, a Qabbalist, or a
Pythagorean could have written The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet,
or the Tragedy of Cymbeline? Who but one deeply versed in
Paracelsian lore could have conceived A Midsummer’s Night’s
Dream?” (from The Secret Teachings of
All Ages).
Writing about the life of Manly P. Hall is no simple
matter, as he was unremittingly prolific in all his endeavors. Mr.
Hall authored over two hundred books on occult subjects ranging from
works on astrology, the Bible, Tarot, dreams, mysticism, Eastern and
Western philosophy, religion, psychology, symbology, and
reincarnation, plus hundreds of essays and a monthly magazine
published called the PRS Journal. Over the course of
six decades he delivered eight thousand lectures. He spoke for up to
two hours extemporaneously, weaving a mesmerizing tapestry of
wisdom. He was recognized both in the United States and in Europe by
rare book-dealers as a knowledgeable collector of philosophical
treatises and hermetic/alchemical manuscripts, some dating back to
the fifteenth century. His collection of books brought about the
creation of the PRS Library, which is still visited by
scholars today and is perhaps unique in the US. Mr. Hall loaned
books on Alchemy from his collection to Professor Carl Jung when he
was writing his now famous book entitled Psychology and Alchemy.
Many people admired and respected this man for many
individual reasons. He was well-traveled, having trekked and
collected throughout the Far East; it was fun to hear his marvelous
travel stories. Some knew him as an internationally famed stamp
collector, many were charmed by his childhood memories from his book
Growing up with Grandmother; but always he spoke to
people with dignity and respect, never trying to overwhelm them with
his encyclopedic knowledge of the spiritual traditions. He
championed the value of an idealistic philosophical education for
all in the classical tradition of Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Lord
Bacon, Plato, Socrates, and all the philosophers of history who
believed in a rational world soul. He wanted nothing more than to
assist the great philosophers of history to fulfill their honorable
plans for the nation and the planet.
"Hence the disciple of the Ancient
Wisdom is taught to realize that man is not essentially a
personality, but a spirit."—Manly
P. Hall
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