Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [73]
Amid these forgotten offerings stands one study that eluded the empty promises of the day—a virtuoso guide to ancient and occult philosophies whose range and depth surpassed the holdings of many respected libraries. It was called by a breathless title: AN ENCYCLOPEDIC OUTLINE OF MASONIC, HERMETIC, QABBALISTIC AND ROSICRUCIAN SYMBOLICAL PHILOSOPHY—Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings Concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of the Ages. Or, as it became more simply known: The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Had it come from a retired classics professor or aged English antiquarian, the book might have been less surprising though still impressive. But it came from no such source. The Secret Teachings of All Ages was privately published in 1928 by the self-taught spiritual scholar Manly P. Hall, when he was twenty-seven years old.
From the start, The Secret Teachings was almost impossible to classify. Written and compiled on an Alexandrian scale, its hundreds of entries shone a rare light on some of the most fascinating and little-understood aspects of myth, religion, cosmology, and philosophy. Its breadth of subjects could astound: ancient mathematics; alchemical formulas; Hermetic doctrine; pagan rites; Hebrew number mysticism; the geometry of ancient Egypt; Native American myths; the uses of cryptograms; an analysis of the Tarot; the symbols of Masonry and Rosicrucianism; the esotericism of the Shakespearean dramas—these were just a few of Hall’s topics. Initially bound in tabletop-sized dimensions, The Secret Teachings featured myriad illustrations, charts, tables, and diagrams, with varying rows of text and inset type, making the volume as jarring to the eye as a page of Babylonian Talmud. For students and enthusiasts of the arcane, the book was like an answered prayer. It sold tens of thousands of copies, often for more than $100, all out of sight of mainstream critics and booksellers, making it one of the most popular “underground” works in American history.
Hall’s volume seemed the product of a whole lifetime—and a rare one at that—yet his twenty-seven years provided few clues to his virtuosity. He attended no university; his roots in rural Canada and the American West offered him little obvious exposure to higher learning; his youthful letters betrayed no special fluency with the complexities of the ancient world; his family tried to steer him into the more practical career of selling fire insurance; and one of his first forays into professional life was as a banking clerk—the “outstanding event of which,” he recalled, “was witnessing a man depressed over investment losses take his life.”
Even a generation later, the question reasserts itself on nearly every page of The Secret Teachings: How did this large-framed young man with little traditional education produce the last century’s most original and masterly book on the esoteric wisdom of antiquity?
A Philosopher’s Progress
During his life, Hall refused to discuss more than the most cursory aspects of his background. Although he wrote many thousands of articles, lectures, and pamphlets and dozens of books, his sole published biographical record is a thin volume called Growing Up with Grandmother, a tribute to the woman he called “Mrs. Arthur Whitney Palmer.” (Her name was Florence Palmer.) Often written in hagiographic singsong anecdotes, the pamphlet-sized work is notable for what it reveals about Hall’s reticence to broach virtually any intimacy of his childhood. Born at the close of the Victorian Era, he was a man marked by a period in which the details of private life were closely held.
Hall was born in the rural city of