Manly Palmer Hall

Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born scholar and philosopher. Well known for his 1928 encyclopedic outline of symbolical philosophy The Secret Teachings of All Ages, he authored dozens of books and hundreds of essays and gave thousands of lectures in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Mr. Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society (PRS) in 1934 and was its first president, remaining so until his death in 1990.

Mr. Hall was a seeker and lover of wisdom, and the very definition of a philosopher. He lived a unique and profound life that centered on his search for meaning in the world’s wisdom traditions. An autodidact and polymath, Hall amassed an extraordinary collection of rare books and artifacts from his extensive travels and devoted himself to the study of these works and their application to the positive development of the individual and society as a whole. He was a consummate teacher who took his deep learning and translated it into an accessible and compelling presentation to readers and listeners for seventy years. Hall attained an amazing degree of scholarship in those branches of learning that bear upon the beliefs, ideals, and convictions of humanity.

Mr. Hall gave nearly seven thousand different lectures and talks and appeared on numerous radio and television stations throughout the United States. All of his lectures, many lasting two hours, were given extemporaneously and without notes. 
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In addition to these activities, Manly P. Hall traveled extensively and assembled a magnificent library.

Early life

Manly Hall was born on March 18, 1901 in the rural city of Peterborough, Ontario. His father was a dentist and his mother was a chiropractor. Hall’s parents had separated while his mother was still pregnant with him, and he soon came into the care of his maternal grandmother, Florence Palmer. When he was two years old, she brought him to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where they lived for several years. He was a sickly child, got little schooling but read voraciously on his own. There was a spark of some indefinable brilliance in the youth, which his grandmother nurtured on trips to museums in Chicago and New York. For a time, the two of them lived in the high-end hotel Palmer House in Chicago where Hall was mostly in the company of grown-ups, including a traditionally garbed Hindu maitre d’hotel, who taught him adult etiquette. Later on, the bookish adolescent was enrolled in a military school.

His grandmother died when he was sixteen and he traveled to California to be with his mother.

Lectures and teaching

Hall’s career as a mystic sage began in 1919, when he came to California to be reunited with his mother. He came under the influence of self-styled followers of Rosicrucianism in Oceanside, California. He lived at the Rosicrucian Fellowship founded by Max Heindel but grew suspicious of the order’s claims to ancient wisdom and soon moved to Los Angeles. There he fell in with metaphysical seekers and discussion groups. One day young Manly Hall was attracted by a sign advertising phrenology, the discipline that reads human psychology through the shape and contours of the skull. The proprietor of the shop, Sydney J. Brownson, quickly became Halls’ guru and explained magnetism, reincarnation, the aura, the wisdom of the ancients, the mysteries of India and the East and the secret teachings of the church to Hall, who proved to be an excellent student with a photographic memory and a talent for speaking. One year later Brownson invited Hall to speak to a select audience who met weekly in a room above a bank and he was a success.

Part showman, part shaman, Hall wore a dark tailored suit and sat mid-stage, his hands resting palms down on the arms of a baronial chair that was bathed in light. He spoke for 1 ½ hours – not a minute longer. Whether his subject was Egyptian initiation ceremonies or mythic water sprites, he concluded abruptly with the same sign-off: “Well, that’s about all for today folks.“

Theosophical Society connections

Hall was influenced by the Theosophical teachings. Joscelyn Godwin wrote:

Apart from a short spell at a military school, he was without formal education. In California he came under the influence of the Theosophical Society. He began his public career in 1920 in Santa Monica, giving a series of lectures on reincarnation. He became a lifelong admirer of H. P. Blavatsky and her Secret Doctrine.

Manly Hall was never a member of the Theosophical Society in America, and possibly never a member of any Theosophical Society. Nonetheless, he was heavily engaged with the TSA and lectured at the Besant Hollywood Lodge, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, and Oakland. The Theosophical Press distributed and reviewed his books, and members studied them in lodge meetings and listened to his lectures on recordings. His Philosophical Research Society also hosted Theosophical lecturers.

Manly Hall was a bit fanatical about anything relating to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky [H.P.B.] He was tremendously earnest about his particular view of Theosophy. He said that the original work of H.P.B. stands more or less unique even within the field of related literature, that her own particular insight makes her works unique, remarkable and valuable. He further said that many of the remarks which she made during her time, which were highly controversial, are now generally accepted and that many of the findings which she reported and which amazed her contemporaries, now belong to our common knowledge.

When Boris de Zirkoff assumed the role as editor of Blavatsky’s complete works after World War II, he worked with Hall to publish the fifth volume at the Philosophical Research Society in 1950. Subsequent volumes VI-XV were published thro
Philosophical Research Society (PRS)ugh the Theosophical Publishing House in Adyar, India and Wheaton, Illinois, and the PRS helped with distribution. Boris de Zirkoff conducted a long correspondence with Manly Hall.
Philosophical Research Society (PRS)

Philosophical Research Society (PRS)

It upset Hall that esoteric and occult teachings had no place in American universities and he decided to establish a spiritual center in Los Angeles of his own design and purpose with the mission to teach the “practical idealism” preserved in over 100,000 of the wonder-texts of antiquity, develop programs for the good of society, and excite his students’ desire to put them to work in everyday life.

On November 20, 1934, Hall’s nonprofit Philosophical Research Society bought a prime piece of real estate overlooking Los Feliz Boulevard and the hills leading to Griffith Park from Capitol Holding Company. On October 17, 1935, about 100 people assembled to break ground for their new headquarters.

PRS provided a cloistered setting where Hall spent the rest of his life teaching, writing, and assembling a remarkable collection of antique texts and devotional objects. His small campus eventually grew to include a fifty-thousand-volume library, a three-hundred-seat auditorium, a bookstore, a warehouse, an office, and a courtyard. It became one of the most popular destinations in Los Angeles for the spiritually curious.

After Hall’s death the campus barely survived simultaneous legal battles – one with Hall’s widow, who claimed it owed her money, and another with the eccentric con artist Fritz, who had befriended the ailing octogenarian to pilfer his antiques and assets in the estimation of a civil-court judge. Hall had signed over his estate to this shadowy “trustee”” just six days before his passing.

The financial damage from these difficult years was irreversible. Following a protracted court battle the nonprofit organization faced a $2 million legal debt, but the control was turned over to a group of longtime supporters. They were forced to sell of many cherished items to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and European collectors.

The PRS did regain fiscal health beginning in 1993 and continued to print different editions of the “Great Book.” PRS now offers a full calendar of lectures, online courses, workshops, wellness classes, concerts, and special events to the general public.

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