Manly P. Hall: The Maestro of Esoteric Philosophy (I)
Part 1 | An Emissary of the Mystery Schools
1. Manly P. Hall: An Emissary of the Mystery Schools
This article is the first in a multi-part series on the life, career, and essential teachings of Manly P. Hall, the great philosopher, initiate, and prophet of 20th century America.
This project follows on the heels of another long multi-part series: one that covered the “secret history” of the 20th century. In this chapter, we will be following up that analysis by examining in greater detail the life and legacy of the century’s most significant spiritual teacher: philosopher Manly P. Hall.
As we will be discovering, Manly P. Hall was a crucial, albeit largely under-appreciated, figure in 20th century world affairs. He was born in 1901 and died in 1990, his life span extending through most of the century. His birthplace was in small town Canada, but he lived almost all of his life in America, moving here with his grandmother when he was 4 years old.
Hall’s home base for most of his life would be the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, where his headquarters, the non-profit “Philosophic Research Society”, was located. Here, he would give thousands of lectures, write hundreds of articles, and publish dozens of books - this accumulated catalogue representing perhaps the finest and most comprehensive outpouring of esoteric wisdom the world has ever seen.
During his lifetime, Hall put out a staggering body of work, all of it essential; none of it wasted. Through this output, Hall gave us an archive of teachings that are invaluable for informing us today about what the ancient wisdom tradition states and what the secret activities, plans, and agendas of the Mystery Schools are in our current age.
Hall was undoubtedly an initiate of these Mystery Schools, and emerged as their representative and ambassador during the 20th century, picking up the torch from Helena Blavatsky, who had occupied the role decades prior, toward the end of the 19th century.
Hall was a true prophet: a revealer of the Doctrine - i.e. the esoteric wisdom teachings - that have been passed down in an unbroken chain from the time of their first articulation, back during the lost era when the gods once walked with men.
Hall revealed the Doctrine to a modern audience, teaching it in a language that the commoner can understand, while also providing a level of depth and detail that even the most dedicated scholar of occultism could spend their lifetime studying and trying to unravel.
Hall’s life and career came at a crucial time in world history: during the rise of American Empire, which took place over the course of two world wars, after which time America consolidated its position as the dominant world “superpower” or imperial forces world affairs.
After establishing itself as the world hegemon during the first half of the 20th century, America, from 1945 on, would rise to extend its financial, corporate, and military power around the world, securing for itself a global economic “lebensraum” or fiefdom.
In the meantime, an entirely secret black projects superstate was built up within the US national security state, its primary purpose being to secretly coordinate the development of a covert arsenal of “exotic” alchemy-based energy technologies of the type Nikola Tesla foretold of back around the turn of the century.
It was during this crucial time period in world history that Manly P. Hall carried out his life’s work as missionary and ambassador of the Mystery Schools. And, as it turns out, he would have much to say on these topics and more.
While Hall is perhaps best known for his work dissecting and analyzing the inner meaning of ancient philosophy and religion, he was also an astute observer and commentator on current affairs.
He had much to say about the state of the world, the significance of global changes taking place during his lifetime, the meaning and purpose of these changes, how they fit into a larger cosmic plan, and how America had a larger destiny that it was gradually, in incremental stages, being pulled towards fulfilling.
Having to date dedicated numerous articles and podcast episodes to the task of breaking down and analyzing Hall’s essential teachings on ancient philosophy and religion, in this chapter I now want to turn our attention toward the investigation of his analysis of contemporary events, ones taking place during his lifetime in the 20th century.
My primary source for this analysis is the vast archive of quarterly journals Hall published throughout his life. These I drew from a database at manlyphall.info - a magnificent website I highly recommend to all Manly P. Hall enthusiasts out there.
Most students of Manly P. Hall’s tend to focus on his books and lectures; while these are priceless treasures, I find that many of his most significant teachings come from his journal articles and from rare, limited-edition manuscripts, ones initially shared only privately with small groups of students, but which now have been uploaded online (thanks again in large part to the work of Alan Harris at manlyphall.info).
In these often-overlooked works, Hall discusses a range of topics that he doesn’t cover in his books; in particular, those pertaining to the current operations and workings of the Mystery Schools. In addition, he also discusses contemporary geopolitical issues like World War II, the UFO phenomenon, the promise of breakthrough science, ongoing changes in world order, etc.
In addition to overviewing and outlining these less-appreciated aspects of Manly P. Hall’s teachings, in this series I also have a second aim: to spell out how I think Hall himself fits into the larger organizational pattern of the Mystery Schools - the “Invisible Government of the World”, which he writes and speaks so eloquently and knowledgeably about.
My goal here is to explore what Hall has to say about his own mystical capacities and esoteric connections. Certainly, he was an initiate of one or more esoteric orders, and speaks of the metaphysical planes surrounding the physical Earth as though he has had direct, personal experiences with them.
Other than his involvement with Freemasonry (Hall was awarded the highest honor Masonry bestows: the Grand Cross), Hall rarely spoke openly of his esoteric connections. But in his writings, he alludes to the contemporary existence of the Mystery Schools and gives important indications about where they can today be found.
Our concern is: what does Manly Hall have to say about how these esoteric orders operate in modern life, how one can come into contact with them, and do how they interface with a greater spiritual reality that metaphysically surrounds and enmeshes the globe? Furthermore, what does he have to say about his own place within the operational hierarchy of this enigmatic and elusive institution - the Mystery Schools? These are topics we will be exploring in this series, beginning with the contents of this article below.
2. An Encyclopedist of the Esoteric Tradition
Manly P. Hall’s core mission in life was to catalogue, outline, synthesize, and overview, in clear, unambiguous terms, the fundamental doctrine of wisdom teachings eternally taught within the Mystery Schools, modernizing them for the modern age. In this way he was what the Chinese call a “Lohan” - a preacher of the Doctrine.
Indeed, anyone who has listened to a lecture by the man can hear that he functioned something like an Oracle: he was a mouthpiece through which a well-organized and well-articulated explanation of the esoteric viewpoint was communicated to the world and made understandable to the layman.
Stephen Hoeller, a contemporary of Hall’s, called him a “sage” and “spiritual giant” and indicated that one of Hall’s primary missions in life was to become an encyclopedist of the esoteric tradition, picking up the torch from his predecessor and kindred spirit, Helena Blavatsky, and carrying it further.
This is a mission he fulfilled with great success, with his legacy of work including dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of lectures - all dedicated to the task of cataloguing, summarizing, and modernizing the core wisdom teachings of esoteric philosophy, communicating them in a way that they can be picked up and put to use in the modern age.
Perhaps the grandest and most seminal work Hall produced in his role as scholar and encyclopedist was his magnum opus “The Secret Teachings of All Ages”.
This massive encyclopedia of the Western esoteric tradition, first published in 1928 at the age of 27, remains a landmark in the field: an unsurpassed work of inspired genius that reveals, in one volume, the literal “secret teachings of all ages”, as they have been preserved through time and brought down to present day.
Notably, the Eastern lineage of the esoteric tradition is left out of this work; but in successive books, articles, and lectures, he would elaborate upon the Eastern tradition in great detail, giving it the same comprehensive encyclopedic treatment he originally offered the West in his “Secret Teachings” book.
Hall’s accomplishments as an encyclopedist of the esoteric tradition is further indicated by the massive collection of rare esoteric volumes he accumulated and enthroned in his “little Alexandrian research library”, which was located in the headquarters of the Philosophic Research Society, the non-profit philosophic organization he founded as the home base for his work.
Undoubtedly, most people are familiar with Manly Hall due to his well-publicized role as a scholar, teacher, author, and orator of the esoteric tradition. But during his life, Hall also performed other, less well-appreciated roles on behalf of the Mystery Schools he was an initiate of.
Notably, one of Hall’s other core life missions was to herald the coming of the Mystery Schools into the modern age - an initiative Alice Bailey once termed the “Externalization of the Hierarchy”.
Hall fulfilled this mission in a number of ways. One of these ways was to give, in certain key works, veiled indications that the Mystery Schools are still present and its initiates still active as the dominant driving force in world affairs. Not only that, but he also gives vital clues that point to where exactly it is within world society that their current operations are presently concentrated.
More specifically, Hall indicates that the Mystery Schools are now secretly operating within the scientific-industrial complex residing at the heart of American Empire.
The operations of these Mystery Schools were originally ported over to America at the beginning of the nation’s history as part of a long-term plan being carried out by descendants of Francis Bacon’s Rosicrucian Order.
The overarching goal of this secret society, which accomplished its labors through the use of various outer appendages, was to utilize America as the vehicle through which a larger global plan and purpose would be accomplished: the realization of Plato’s prophecy of a Philosophic Empire and Francis Bacon’s vision for a New Atlantis.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Bacon’s Rosicrucian Order, working through various outer vehicles and appendages such as Freemasonry, were each directed to play their part in setting the stage for a great reformation in human affairs. This was to be carried out through a global sequence of revolutions which would transform the world out of the medieval order dominated by Church and Crown and into a new age characterized by republican democracy, science, and industry.
As historical records indicate, it is clear that they were successful: beginning in the late 18th century, a worldwide age of revolution and transformation commenced, leading first to the American and French Revolutions and later to a wave of successor movements around the world, with the modern world order rising as a result.
During this period we also saw the rise of science, industry, urbanization, and world trade. The old hegemony the Church held over man’s mental development was broken and man was liberated to transform his social and material circumstances as never before.
One consequence of this was that the traditional pattern of agrarian society mankind had been living in for thousands of years was finally evolved out of. A new, science-based, industry-centered, capitalist-oriented economic order was coming into place, and the entire metastructure of world society was being transformed as a result.
With the onset of the industrial age, science rose to become the new dominant worldview-shaping institution in society, and the entire framework of human thinking began to be restructured as a result. This was the plan: one that Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian Order originally conceived and put into place back during the early decades of the 17th century.
The presence and influence of Francis Bacon and his secret societies on the founding of America and the onset of the scientific age is obvious: almost all of the original Founding Fathers were Masons, and the mark of his society can today still be found on the dollar bill. Furthermore, Bacon was the founder of the Royal Society - the first modern scientific organization in the West - and is still widely regarded as the godfather of the scientific method.
The question is, what happened to Bacon’s Rosicrucian Order after the Revolutions succeeded and the age of science, industry, and republican democracy was successfully set-up and installed around the world? This story is harder to track, but thanks to Manly Hall, we can piece together the puzzle.
Scattered within a series of articles, books, and lectures put out in the years before, during, and after World War II, Hall reveals that the Mystery Schools - originally brought to America by elite descendants of Bacon’s Rosicrucian Order - are presently centered somewhere deep within the heart of American Empire.
More specifically, the ultimate end-goal of Bacon’s “New Atlantis” archetype is still presently being pursued by secret societies operating in a highly concealed manner within the entity I’ve been calling the “technocratic superstate”,
The concept of the “technocratic superstate” references the existence of a hidden transnational governance superstructure comprised of large industrial combines, corporate cartels, central banks, defense contractors, intelligence agencies, and covert operations units.
Its highly compartmentalized portfolio of operations are centered within an extremely secretive “think tank” nested deep within the classified black projects world of the US national security state.
As I explored in my previous chapter on the “secret history” of the 20th century, the most important of the black projects being carried out within the technocratic superstate are ones premised upon “breakthrough”, “exotic” scientific research into the alchemical mysteries of Etheric Energy.
In short, the mission of this secret project is to probe the occult mysteries of alchemy and its reference to Etheric energy, the goal being to develop technologies and social engineering strategies designed to bring mankind into a new stage of evolutionary progression.
If we factor in the idea that, within the compartmentalized structure of the technocratic superstate, the Mystery Schools are secretly operating and quietly controlling the destiny of world affairs, then we come to appreciate that what the technocratic superstate is actually being used for is as a means to “initiate” mankind into a new, collective state of evolutionary development.
What the culminating end-state of this process is to eventually look like was originally previewed by Francis Bacon in his utopian novel “New Atlantis”: it is to be a new, scientific-age version of a Golden Age, one that will be centered around a global university system, which will orbit around a core Mystery School institution, whose initiates will be the leaders and guides of global civilization.
I previously discussed Francis Bacon’s vision for the "New Atlantis” in our previous series on him and his Rosicrucian Order; I also discussed it in the follow-up series I did on the secret history of America. Now, in this series, we will be exploring Manly Hall’s contemporary updates to Bacon’s vision, showing where and how Francis Bacon’s grand vision is playing out today.
Altogether, my aim is to demonstrate that Manly P. Hall was an initiate and ambassador of the Mystery Schools and in his writings and teachings is encoded certain vital clues necessary to unraveling the location of their whereabouts today. Hall also updates Bacon’s vision by articulating in further detail what the Mystery Schools’ plans are for the future evolution of world society, and what symbols and signposts we can discover that mark their secret presence on the planet.
Here we come to an important point: not only did Manly Hall write about the present whereabout of the Mystery Schools, but he was also partly responsible for planing one of its key symbols onto one of the most significant objects in modern history: the American dollar.
Here, I’m referencing the placement of the All-Seeing Eye and the Eagle on the dollar bill - these two images being archetypal symbols and signposts of the Mystery Schools. Together, they form the Great Seal of the United States, first established in the late 18th century by the Bacon-connected Founding Fathers of the nation.
Hall first revealed and discussed these significant symbols in 1927 in the pages of his most famous and revered work, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages”. Less than ten years later, this important symbol would be enthroned on the US $1 dollar bill, where it remains to this day.
The conspiracy to enthrone these images on the dollar bill was orchestrated by a network of elite Freemasons in Washington, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vice President Henry Wallace, and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau. By this time, in the mid-1930s, Manly Hall was already widely-regarded within elite Masonic circles as a great initiate and master teacher, and there is direct evidence indicating that FDR was familiar with Hall’s work. VP Henry Wallace, meanwhile, was closely connected to an associate of Hall’s, the Russian mystic, artist, Mason, theosophist, and initiate Nicholas Roerich.
Due to these Masonic connections, and due to the fact that Hall had, almost ten years prior, previously been the one to first resurrect the Great Seal from obscurity and bring it back out into public awareness, we can safely assume that he was a major player responsible for spearheading the placement of these landmark esoteric symbols on the dollar bill.
For reasons like this, we discover that Manly P. Hall was secretly one of the central figures of the 20th century - someone who nearly all scholars of history, sociology, and geopolitics overlook.
It is only now, in the modern internet era, that Hall’s teachings have begun amassing a wide audience. He always had a following, but never on the scale of today.
His legacy institution, the Philosophic Research Society, has done a good job keeping his books in print, and archivists on YouTube (like The Manly P. Hall Society) and online (like manlyphall.info) have done excellent work posting his archive of lectures and journal articles.
Through these resources, his entire catalogue of books, articles, and lectures is finally available to be studied, analyzed, and synthesized by the dedicated student. This is exactly what I did for eight or so years, and the material presented in this chapter (and in my larger book on philosophy as a whole) demonstrate what I have come to conclude about the man, his teachings, and his important though under-appreciated role in modern world history.
Having toured extensively through Hall’s archives, one of the things I’ve discover is that Manly Hall sprinkled and scattered throughout his teachings certain key references and signposts indicating where in modern life the contemporary incarnation of the Mystery Schools can be found.
He presents these clues in a deliberately concealed and coy manner, spreading them around a variety of books, lectures, articles, and pamphlets, many of them (before the modern internet age) quite hard to find. But in truth he did reveal much, including certain key indicators about the where the current operations of the Mystery Schools can today be found, how its inner operations are structured and governed, and what its ultimate end goals are for the modern age.
These topics and more are what we will be covering in this chapter. Stay tuned: what follows is an original, groundbreaking analysis of Manly Hall’s life, teachings, and legacy, one that emphasizes several crucial areas of his teachings that as of yet have not been properly recognized, appreciated, or understood.
3. The Ordination of Manly P. Hall
Manly P. Hall was born in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada on March 18th, 1901. His biological parents would not play a significant role in his life; instead, he was raised primarily by his grandmother, Florence Palmer, an enigmatic widow who sold her husband’s assets after his passing and used the proceeds to finance a decades-long tour of the United States, which she conducted with a young Manly P. Hall at her side.
Hall would only live a few years in his birth town in Canada; beginning around age 4, he hit the road with his grandmother and travelled all around the United States, moving from town to town frequently.
Due to their constant travel, Hall had little formal schooling, but he always had an innate attraction to books and learning. As he recounts, by the time he reached school age, when other children were first learning their ABCs, “grandmother and I were deep into Victor Hugo.”
During this period, with none save his grandmother serving as a constant presence in his life, Hall developed his internal capacities to become self-driven, self-teaching, and self-knowing. These would become constant themes in his life: the self-driven pursuit of knowledge, paired with an active intuitive relationship with his own inner life and a deep-rooted desire to teach and serve his fellow man.
One of the formative experiences Hall had during his childhood he recounted in an essay titled “The Last of the Shamen”, which he wrote and published in his early 20s in a newly founded occult journal of his called “The All-Seeing Eye”.
In this essay, Hall recounts having, as a child, befriended and become a pupil of an old Native American shaman nicknamed “Uncle Joe”, who stalked the outskirts of an unnamed desert town in the western United States, which Hall presumably lived in for a period with his grandmother during his early, formative years.
Regarding his early encounters with Native American peoples, Hall confides that “there is something very wonderful and fascinating in the study of the Indian and I must say that I have always liked them. An invisible cord, a mystic bond, drew me even in my childhood to these wandering nomads and I spent many years in the study of them. I lived not far from one of the greatest of the American Indian reservations and have been with them many times, and maybe I am just a little liked by them too.”
Describing Uncle Joe, Hall writes how no one knew where Uncle Joe came from, nor how old he was, and that the one thing that everyone agreed upon about him was that he “was a strange, lonely wanderer who belonged hundreds of years back when the Red Man was in his glory.”
Hall described this old Indian shaman as “a polished gentleman in temperament and nature. He was no fool either, nor was he lacking in education, for he spoke better English than the white men who scorned him. It seemed he had travelled widely, also, for he could tell you of distant countries and he spoke a dozen or more foreign languages.”
Hall reminisces how Uncle Joe “became very friendly with me and we had many talks on the future of the Red Man, his history, his government, and his philosophy.” He remarks how Uncle Joe was “a real scientist and philosopher whose knowledge and shrewdness of mind won my admiration from our first meeting.”
Describing his discipleship under Uncle Joe, Hall states that “I became in the course of three years his closest companion, for I was with him nearly all the time.” Then, “one day, as the third year of our acquaintance was drawing to a close, Uncle Joe laid his hand on my shoulder and his great black eyes seemed to look into my very soul. ‘I am going out in the desert,’ he said, and I shall never come back again, for my gods have called me and my father’s fathers have whispered to me in the night. In all the years that have passed I have never taken anyone with me on this trip, but today my gods have spoken and said that one at least of the coming race shall know the secret of my dying people.”
Hall then recounts a strange, mystical journey he took with Uncle Joe, one that began with a trip by horseback into the remote desert and ended with a mystical revelation of an ancient, divine priesthood, ones whose roots date back to the days of lost Atlantis and which was once responsible for guiding the destiny of the Native American peoples. Now, this priesthood was retiring, returning back to the Spirit realm, where they would await their next adventure in a future age. In the meantime, here on Earth mankind was entering into a new age of its evolutionary development, and it was time for new priestly order to take custodianship over mankind’s future.
Going into the specifics of his account, Hall recalls how, “as we rode along, Uncle Joe told me some of the wonderful things about the Indians, some of them I am not allowed to tell but others I may relate. He told me that among the Red Men was a mystic body who for thousands of years had kept the records of these wandering people. Little was known concerning them: they were hidden from even the Indians themselves, for they are a small body appointed by the Great Spirit to labor with his people.”
“This little band of Sacred Ones had come out from the silent East where the rising sun rose. They came from a wondrous city of shining lights that had vanished forever beneath the waters of the mighty ocean. They were the priests of Malkedek, the priest kings of the ancient Red Men, arrayed in robes of bird feathers and shining gold, possessors of the wealth of emperors and the wisdom of gods. These strange masters had brought out of the silent East the knowledge of the Great Spirit and had formed the Red Man into seven great nations like the planets in the heavens. For thousands of years these wise men had labored with the Indian who before that time had been a straying, savage race, dwelling on the outskirts of a more ancient civilization. They had brought with them, along the path of the sunbeam, the great serpent of wisdom and had guarded the Red Man’s destiny all through the years of his development. But now the Red Man’s work was done, the Manu was calling his people.”
After riding and conversing for an untold period, Hall writes that the two finally reached their destination - an outwardly unassuming location where Uncle Joe stopped, dismounted, and opened, as if by magic, the entrance to a secret gateway, one that lead to a sacred temple. At this point, Hall remarks how he, still a child, “remained spellbound at the strange miracle, for I had never believed in supernatural things up to that to that time.”
The old shaman told him “come, my son, child of another people, you are the first white man who has ever lived to enter the presence of the Red Man’s god. Taking me by the hand, Uncle Joe led me to a small opening”, one leading to “a great room dimly lighted by a blazing fire. … In a great circle sat a row of mummies robed from head to foot in the grandeur of the Red Man, preserved against decay in that subtle atmosphere by some force unknowing. Twelve of them sat crosslegged upon the floor and in the center of this ghastly circle was a great throne. … The great throne was empty and seemed of solid gold, with a glorious sun globe and the Thunderbird carved upon its back.”
Uncle Joe said “these, my son, are the Chiefs of the Red Men. They were the last of the line of priest kings who dwelt here and who came out of the land of the sky-blue waters. One by one, they have passed beyond to the land of their ancestors. … They were the Order of Malkedek, the Priest Sachems of the roving nomads of the world. Here you see all that is left of them, my son, their spirits have returned to the Great Father for their work is done.”
After leaving the temple, the two went back into the sunshine of the day and sat on the ground on the edge of a cliff and talked for many hours, where the old shaman told Hall “the glories of his dying people, and begged that some day I would tell the world of the wonderful labors of his race.”
Here, he told Hall that “I am old for I have lived since the Red Man was born, I was with him in the days of his youth, I was with him in the years of his glory, and one by one I have laid their wise to rest. … I know, for I am the Spirit of the Red Man. None know where I came from, for I came not - I am. … The pyramid builder speaks through me this night, the Pharaohs of Egypt are still alive in my blood, the phantom of the Manu, he too, is with me, and in my soul is the heart of the dying Montezuma. … Yes, I am the Spirit of the Red Man. … I am the last of the Shamen, the last of the priest-kings who came out of the lost Atlantis, I am the last who was ordained in the Temple of the Rising Sun, I am the last to bear the mark of the serpent.”
Uncle Joe then revealed to Hall the mark of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, ornamented upon his breast. Hall writes that, at that moment, he realized that he was “gazing not at a man but a god.”
The two returned to the throne room, where Uncle Joe took up his rightful place at the center of the circle of twelve. “He was robed from head to foot in the garb of the Red Man. … On his forehead was a cross of living gold and from his breast the snake (Quetzalcoatl) gleamed forth in many colored lights.”
He then declared to Hall: “My son, the last of the Red Men, the last of the priests, has been called to rest. … You shall see me no more, for I go to the Land of the Setting Sun. The Manitou has called me, and I obey. But remember, my son, there is no death. I go on to other works.” He then stated: “somewhere in the bonds of the Infinite we shall meet again, you and I, for you, too, are chosen of your gods.”
Therein entails Hall’s account of his discipleship under Uncle Joe. Moving forward now to the later years of his adolescence, we discover that, after traveling extensively throughout his childhood and early teen years, once Hall hit high school age he and his grandmother relocated to the East Coast, first to Washington, DC and then to New York City.
In New York, as a teenager, Hall briefly worked as a bookkeeper and clerk on Wall Street. Here, he also frequented the New York Public Library, where he deepened his researches into the occult, having already, previously in childhood, consumed (and immediately understood) Blavatsky’s voluminous work “The Secret Doctrine”.
After his grandmother died unexpectedly in 1919, Hall, still a teenager, relocated to Santa Monica, California to reunite with his mother, who had spent the previous fifteen years estranged from her son, working instead in Alaska as a chiropractor.
In California, Hall’s career as a philosopher and teacher would formally begin and rapidly blossom. After quickly establishing connections within Southern California’s burgeoning mystical, metaphysical, and new age communities, at age 18 Hall began his lecturing career in the field of esoteric philosophy, starting out with presentations given to small gatherings of mystically minded connoisseurs on topics like karma and reincarnation.
Later that same year (1919), Hall began speaking regularly at a progressive religion organization called the Church of the People, featuring a congregation of around 600 people. At the time Hall became affiliated with it, the Church’s main pastor, Reynold Blight, was a 33rd degree Freemason.
This is perhaps the first instance of Hall developing formal connections to Freemasonry. At the time, many key figures in Los Angeles politics, business, and culture were Masons, as were many notables persons in burgeoning Hollywood. It was therefore an important network for Hall to break into. And when he did, he was prepared: already by this early point, decades before he would formally become a Mason himself, Hall was already writing and teaching on the esoteric secrets and history of Freemasonry.
Freemasonry is one of the main topics Hall would explore in his work during the 1920s, including in his magnum opus, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages.” Further, less than a decade after its publication, Hall would leverage his Masonic connections as part of a secret campaign to place the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar bill, with the other major conspirators involved - FDR, Henry Wallace, Henry Morgenthau, Nicholas Roerich - all being prominent Masons.
Returning back to Hall’s career, we note that, later in 1919, Blight took a sudden leave of absence. Hall, still a teenager, stepped in to take his place, becoming temporary pastor of the Church. Seemingly, the Universe had conspired to place him in his pre-destined occupation: a teacher and lecturer on esoteric philosophy.
Hall retained the post for several years, becoming ordained the Church’s minister in 1923. Upon receiving this ordination, Hall received a gold, platinum, and diamond pendant as a gift from his congregation, it featuring an esoteric Cross custom-designed by Hall as a mandala to encode the foundational teachings of the esoteric doctrine.
Also around this time, Hall published his first works on esoteric philosophy. Two of these works are regarded as early classics: “Initiates of the Flame”, published in 1922, and “The Lost Keys of Freemasonry”, published in 1923.
Also in 1923, Hall began publishing a regular periodical called “The All-Seeing Eye”, which featured further articles, stories, and illustrations on esoteric philosophy from the young genius. To give examples of the type of content it covered, its first few issues feature articles on Chinese Cosmogony, Mystic Masonry, Astrology, and “the Mysteries of Initiation.”
Having read through much of Hall’s early work and compared it with his later output, I can personally attest that, even at this early stage, the quality of Hall’s work is top notch and not in any way inferior to or contradictory of the work he would put out later in his career. It is as through, by age 21 or 22, he emerged onto the scene almost fully formed as a teacher. He was a prodigy, to say the least. His closest followers even took to calling him “Maestro.”
To give an example of the extraordinary knowledge and wisdom Hall possessed even at an early age, consider his history with Freemasonry: although Hall would not become a Mason until the mid-1950s, already by the early 1920s he was writing masterfully on the fraternal order, revealing deep secrets about the history of its founding and the profound philosophic wisdom contained within its rituals and symbolism.
Freemasonry is an order that reveres age and experience. Unsurprisingly then, the upper hierarchy of the order is comprised predominately of aged, learned men. For this reason, it was highly unusual and uncharacteristic for Manly Hall, a young man still in his early 20s, to be giving these aged Masons private discourses and lectures on the philosophy of Freemasonry, teaching them about its hidden secrets and deeper meaning. But that’s exactly what Manly Hall did, soon gaining a reputation as Freemasonry’s greatest philosopher. And, remember, he wasn’t even a Mason for much of that time!
One prominent Mason, Harold S. Stein, Jr., of the 33rd degree, would later remark that “the greatest work (Hall) did in Masonic research he did before he was a Mason. And I was present on occasion, prior to him being a Mason, where he would teach Masonry to officers and students of Masonry. And the fact that he could do so made us recognize that what we possessed and thought was uniquely ours in terms of wisdom was also available to others who dedicated their lives in a certain manner.”
Stein reverentially remembers Hall as a “uniquely enlightening and inspiring individual.” Another fellow 33rd degree Mason who had come to know Hall called him an “old soul” on a “long journey”, noting that “he lived his myth with an extraordinary integrity and honesty. This gave him that particular attraction that he had. That magnetism. He was there, living the fact of his inner life.”
4. A True Initiate
Returning to our timeline, we note that another pivotal development in Manly Hall’s life also took place during the crucial years of the early 1920s: this was the period when Hall first began attracting wealthy, influential, and dedicated patrons and benefactors. The financial and material support they would provide him allowed Hall to pursue his life’s work relatively unimpeded by financial restraints.
One especially notable benefactor was Caroline Lloyd, a wealthy oil baroness who bankrolled much of Hall’s early work during the 20s and 30s. In particular, she helped fund the build-out of Hall’s headquarters in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, along with the vast archive of occult works that would be featured in its library.
One of Hall’s primary missions in life was to establish in Los Angeles a library of rare occult and esoteric works from around the world. His ambition was to create what he thought of as “a little Alexandrian library”. This he would formally accomplish in 1934 with the founding of the Philosophical Research Society, whose headquarters came to feature one of the finest occult libraries in the world, with its archive of material eventually stretching into the tens of thousands of volumes.
In order to build-out this library, Hall, over the course of his life, took several trips around the world. The first and most extensive of these trips took place in the early 1920s, with donations from benefactors like the Lloyds financing the trip. His goal for it was to begin amassing materials for his library, while also meeting with and establishing connections to various secret societies, esoteric orders, and wise men from different nations and cultures, including China, Korea, India, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Italy.