What do you think?
Rate this book
Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall
“And for anyone wishing to learn more about Manly Hall, Louis Sahagun 's gripping biography is an insightful look at the life and times of one of the last century's most important mystical thinkers.”— The Fortean Times In 1919, a Canadian teenager with a sixth grade education arrived by train to the wilds of Los Angeles. Within a decade he had transformed himself into a world-renowned occult scholar. His name was Manly Palmer Hall, author of the landmark publication The Secret Teachings of All Ages , regarded as the best introduction to Western esoteric ideas, and the founder of the Philosophical Research Society, which houses one of the biggest occult libraries in the United States. Hall became the twentieth century’s most prolific writer and speaker on ancient philosophies, mysticism, and magic, and a confidant of Hollywood celebrities and politicians. In 1990, he died—some say he was strangled—in what remains an open-ended Hollywood murder mystery worthy of Raymond Chandler. Master of The The Life of Manly Palmer Hall offers an intimate portrait of this elusive luminary who set as his life’s work the daunting task of reconciling scientific reason with ancient wisdom—issues that seekers and scientists still struggle with today. Author Louis Sahagun draws from Hall’s massive archives and a wealth of interviews to provide an insider’s view of the birth of a metaphysical subculture that continues to have a profound influence on movies, television, music, books, art, and thought.
300 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2008
10 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 24, 2008
Pretty good overview of a great author and lecturer. For those who like Manly and his works however, this is too much information...yes he was flawed, his death tragic and mysterious....his books and lectures contain the better thrill for me.
September 19, 2014
Superficial.
Manly Palmer Hall may well be the most important mystic thinker of the 20th century; at least he's among the top. He synthesized Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Theosophical ideas--among others--into a relatively pragmatic standard of thought, appreciable by a 20th century America which itself was relatively pragmatic. Of course, he fell afoul of the more secular, scientific, and conventionally religious groups. He also was thought a bit too timid by those of an even more mystical explanation. But his books--and books and books--and essays--and essays and essays--were read by millions, and influential.
Sahagun came across Hall while he was at the os Angeles Times--actually, he heard of Hall just as Hall had passed away and he started to work up an obituary. Intrigued, he decided Hall warranted a book, which is true. But this is not the book that Hall deserves. A better one is yet tobe written.
This book is superficial and journalistic, in the worst senses of that word. Sahagun has done his due diligence. He's interviewed people, read around, and put all of that into the book. But there's no thesis, no direction. The book skips from one event to the next not because there's a story to tell, a point to be made, but simply because Sahagun has uncovered a fact or quote and needs to include it. At the end of three hundred pages, one knows hardly any more about Palmer than after reading Wikipedia. (Admittedly, the Wikipedia entry on Hall is mostly a summary of Sahagun's book.)
It is very superficial. Hall's ideas are not developed in any depth. Mostly we hear about his various fights and conflicts, and lots on his eating habits. Historical context, such as it is, is provided by potted histories of the era that Sahagun is discussing: the Roaring twenties, depressed thirties, war-torn forties, etc., etc. At times this is adequate-setting Hall against some of the excesses of the 1960s, for example--but mostly it provides no illumination whatsoever.
Probably not even for the Hall fanatic.
Manly Palmer Hall may well be the most important mystic thinker of the 20th century; at least he's among the top. He synthesized Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Theosophical ideas--among others--into a relatively pragmatic standard of thought, appreciable by a 20th century America which itself was relatively pragmatic. Of course, he fell afoul of the more secular, scientific, and conventionally religious groups. He also was thought a bit too timid by those of an even more mystical explanation. But his books--and books and books--and essays--and essays and essays--were read by millions, and influential.
Sahagun came across Hall while he was at the os Angeles Times--actually, he heard of Hall just as Hall had passed away and he started to work up an obituary. Intrigued, he decided Hall warranted a book, which is true. But this is not the book that Hall deserves. A better one is yet tobe written.
This book is superficial and journalistic, in the worst senses of that word. Sahagun has done his due diligence. He's interviewed people, read around, and put all of that into the book. But there's no thesis, no direction. The book skips from one event to the next not because there's a story to tell, a point to be made, but simply because Sahagun has uncovered a fact or quote and needs to include it. At the end of three hundred pages, one knows hardly any more about Palmer than after reading Wikipedia. (Admittedly, the Wikipedia entry on Hall is mostly a summary of Sahagun's book.)
It is very superficial. Hall's ideas are not developed in any depth. Mostly we hear about his various fights and conflicts, and lots on his eating habits. Historical context, such as it is, is provided by potted histories of the era that Sahagun is discussing: the Roaring twenties, depressed thirties, war-torn forties, etc., etc. At times this is adequate-setting Hall against some of the excesses of the 1960s, for example--but mostly it provides no illumination whatsoever.
Probably not even for the Hall fanatic.
November 30, 2025
It was fascinating to read about a famous figure from the burgeoning New Age movement. There is far more material about the scene and his beliefs than there is about his life. This isn't a deep dive into his life but you get the sense there wasn't much more; that he lived his life on stage lecturing to others and promising a better existence by adopting his world view. Still, there's a story here and a wild ending that raised questions over foul play. His wife was an interesting character in her own right.
"Hall stood apart like some Don Quixote, a little mad and steeped in old magical works, inviting others to join him on what he called “the road to inner light.”
Love the description of the scene here. Some of the characters from the New Age/Theosophy, we might be tempted to think of as bright lights and upstanding people. Think again.
“Huston, help me out here. Manly P. Hall had serious personal issues. Khalil Gibran was a chain smoker who died of cirrhosis of the liver. Madame Blavatsky was exposed as a fraud, and had such bad personal hygiene that there were ulcerous sores on both her legs. Alan Watts spent his last years in a stupor, guzzling warm vodka by the quarts. Carlos Castaneda was a fraud and a jerk. Edmond Szekely’s wife told me that he never discovered Essene documents in the Vatican—he made that up."
"The New Thought faith healing movement, borne in the late 19th century, spun off dozens of influential ministries that mixed traditional Christian religion with metaphysical principles."
Setting the stage for Oprah here:
"Hall wryly noted, “Everyone thought rich, and teachers of the doctrine prospered.” [29] “Self-appointed teachers arose without adequate backgrounds, knowledge, or credentials, and swept through the nation,” Hall wrote years later. “It is entirely wrong to assume that this was a West Coast phenomenon. It was distributed throughout the country, affecting all of the larger metropolitan areas. Glamorous ladies in thousand-dollar evening gowns, waving ostrich-plumed fans, taught prosperity to the hungry and poor at $25 a course, and those with adequate promotion counted their profits in the millions every year."
"Out of Hall’s studies emerged a nagging sense that the sacred history of the world was being supplanted by a new religion of science and engineering. Everything before 1900 was considered fallacy, superstition and myth. Everything after 1900 was profound, glorious and true."
True but you don't need a magic decoder ring to figure this out:
Hall said in one of the first issues, “have reached a great point in the growth of their being. But, above all, if we realize that the book gives to us that which we have given it, we then understand that mirrored in its pages are the thoughts and ideals of our own lives.”
Pulling from the stoics like Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius:
"Hall writes. “Self-analysis and self-correction will in themselves reward you for conscientious efforts even if you should go no further in metaphysical disciplines. After all, only self-mastery through discipline can bring you temporal security and those good things of life which everyone desires.”
"A man who does not discipline his appetites will become a glutton or an alcoholic and thus ruin his life. . . The majority of those in every generation who do go through military training and sometimes war also gain important experiences which can be of the greatest value in dedicating a career to useful and constructive pursuits. You will know in yourself that you have not failed your fellow men, and if you have the right internal insights, you will know in your heart that you have not failed yourself.”
“Adversity cannot be faced by the individual who is without a philosophy of life that really justifies the reason for living,”
Hall: “I am a wanderer upon the face of the earth. . . Strange places I have seen beyond the far horizon, and strange tales have come to me from wise men, and from old books, and in ancient places . . . Come, let us cross the threshold together into another world!”
And the wife....she was obsessed over this supposed vault of Francis Bacon that had the cypher, the magic decoder ring of magic decoder rings and devoted all of her energy to annoying everyone around her in her nonstop quest to be proven right for once in her life.
Bauer never hid her flaws from Hall, including that she was a lousy wife to her husband and a cold fish to her two small children: “Even to this day, I don’t know how to act normally affectionate with the children. I know it isn’t good for them, and might cause them similar troubles. It is the main reason why I think they are better off in schools than too much around me. Otherwise I wouldn’t let them go.” Hall, a grieving widower at the time, was intrigued. To him, she was attractive, energetic and hungry to absorb the most abstract notions of an occult universe, whose existence Manly P. Hall sought to describe and define.
Exactly what transpired may never be known. Decades later, Bauer confided to relatives and friends that “Manly never consummated our marriage. He preferred men.”
He closes the letter with three cartoon renderings labeled, in turn, Adam Duck, Eve Duck and Serpent Duck. Such humor speaks volumes about his devotion to a second mentally unstable wife with spiritual pretensions of her own.
Hurt by the allegations, Fritz told anyone who would listen that Marie had been institutionalized as mentally unstable, and had abandoned her children at a young age. He also told stories about Marie’s cruel treatment of Hall; how she turned up the television volume just to irritate him, screamed in his face that he was a fool, even knocked him down onto the floor at times. In a letter published in the August 1993 edition of Whole Life Times magazine, Fritz attacked Marie supporter Art Kunkin. Documents filed in the civil trial, Fritz reminded, said Marie had senile dementia, and he described her “history of multiple involuntary psychiatric commitments, one of which was instituted by Mr. Hall himself.”
Marie Hall spent the last years of her life in front of a television set watching reruns of old screwball comedies such as I Love Lucy, speaking with imaginary visitors during psychotic episodes, and repeatedly begging forgiveness from her children for having abandoned them during her half-century search for the Bruton Vault. In a telephone conversation, she even told Jo Ann, ‘I love you.’”
(Manly) would be remembered most for his personality, rather than for his works. “His critics argue that he is not an original thinker and merely rewrites, in a smooth, diamond-clear style, the ideas of other men,”
"Hall stood apart like some Don Quixote, a little mad and steeped in old magical works, inviting others to join him on what he called “the road to inner light.”
Love the description of the scene here. Some of the characters from the New Age/Theosophy, we might be tempted to think of as bright lights and upstanding people. Think again.
“Huston, help me out here. Manly P. Hall had serious personal issues. Khalil Gibran was a chain smoker who died of cirrhosis of the liver. Madame Blavatsky was exposed as a fraud, and had such bad personal hygiene that there were ulcerous sores on both her legs. Alan Watts spent his last years in a stupor, guzzling warm vodka by the quarts. Carlos Castaneda was a fraud and a jerk. Edmond Szekely’s wife told me that he never discovered Essene documents in the Vatican—he made that up."
"The New Thought faith healing movement, borne in the late 19th century, spun off dozens of influential ministries that mixed traditional Christian religion with metaphysical principles."
Setting the stage for Oprah here:
"Hall wryly noted, “Everyone thought rich, and teachers of the doctrine prospered.” [29] “Self-appointed teachers arose without adequate backgrounds, knowledge, or credentials, and swept through the nation,” Hall wrote years later. “It is entirely wrong to assume that this was a West Coast phenomenon. It was distributed throughout the country, affecting all of the larger metropolitan areas. Glamorous ladies in thousand-dollar evening gowns, waving ostrich-plumed fans, taught prosperity to the hungry and poor at $25 a course, and those with adequate promotion counted their profits in the millions every year."
"Out of Hall’s studies emerged a nagging sense that the sacred history of the world was being supplanted by a new religion of science and engineering. Everything before 1900 was considered fallacy, superstition and myth. Everything after 1900 was profound, glorious and true."
True but you don't need a magic decoder ring to figure this out:
Hall said in one of the first issues, “have reached a great point in the growth of their being. But, above all, if we realize that the book gives to us that which we have given it, we then understand that mirrored in its pages are the thoughts and ideals of our own lives.”
Pulling from the stoics like Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius:
"Hall writes. “Self-analysis and self-correction will in themselves reward you for conscientious efforts even if you should go no further in metaphysical disciplines. After all, only self-mastery through discipline can bring you temporal security and those good things of life which everyone desires.”
"A man who does not discipline his appetites will become a glutton or an alcoholic and thus ruin his life. . . The majority of those in every generation who do go through military training and sometimes war also gain important experiences which can be of the greatest value in dedicating a career to useful and constructive pursuits. You will know in yourself that you have not failed your fellow men, and if you have the right internal insights, you will know in your heart that you have not failed yourself.”
“Adversity cannot be faced by the individual who is without a philosophy of life that really justifies the reason for living,”
Hall: “I am a wanderer upon the face of the earth. . . Strange places I have seen beyond the far horizon, and strange tales have come to me from wise men, and from old books, and in ancient places . . . Come, let us cross the threshold together into another world!”
And the wife....she was obsessed over this supposed vault of Francis Bacon that had the cypher, the magic decoder ring of magic decoder rings and devoted all of her energy to annoying everyone around her in her nonstop quest to be proven right for once in her life.
Bauer never hid her flaws from Hall, including that she was a lousy wife to her husband and a cold fish to her two small children: “Even to this day, I don’t know how to act normally affectionate with the children. I know it isn’t good for them, and might cause them similar troubles. It is the main reason why I think they are better off in schools than too much around me. Otherwise I wouldn’t let them go.” Hall, a grieving widower at the time, was intrigued. To him, she was attractive, energetic and hungry to absorb the most abstract notions of an occult universe, whose existence Manly P. Hall sought to describe and define.
Exactly what transpired may never be known. Decades later, Bauer confided to relatives and friends that “Manly never consummated our marriage. He preferred men.”
He closes the letter with three cartoon renderings labeled, in turn, Adam Duck, Eve Duck and Serpent Duck. Such humor speaks volumes about his devotion to a second mentally unstable wife with spiritual pretensions of her own.
Hurt by the allegations, Fritz told anyone who would listen that Marie had been institutionalized as mentally unstable, and had abandoned her children at a young age. He also told stories about Marie’s cruel treatment of Hall; how she turned up the television volume just to irritate him, screamed in his face that he was a fool, even knocked him down onto the floor at times. In a letter published in the August 1993 edition of Whole Life Times magazine, Fritz attacked Marie supporter Art Kunkin. Documents filed in the civil trial, Fritz reminded, said Marie had senile dementia, and he described her “history of multiple involuntary psychiatric commitments, one of which was instituted by Mr. Hall himself.”
Marie Hall spent the last years of her life in front of a television set watching reruns of old screwball comedies such as I Love Lucy, speaking with imaginary visitors during psychotic episodes, and repeatedly begging forgiveness from her children for having abandoned them during her half-century search for the Bruton Vault. In a telephone conversation, she even told Jo Ann, ‘I love you.’”
(Manly) would be remembered most for his personality, rather than for his works. “His critics argue that he is not an original thinker and merely rewrites, in a smooth, diamond-clear style, the ideas of other men,”
January 10, 2009
This was more about what was happening around Hall, rather than what happened within Hall. I would have liked more snippets from Hall's writings and lectures scattered throughout the book, but perhaps there were copyright challenges. An interesting read, nonetheless, and it piqued my interest to read more of Hall's works.
March 12, 2019
A really engaging biography. Hall had a huge personality, ran in some very influential circles, and had a fascinating life (and death). Sahagun's account left me astonished that I'd barely heard of this person before.
April 19, 2020
THE LIFE AND LIES OF MANLY PALMER HALL
This volume, in its journalistic sensationalist superficiality—as is only fitting for an author who is an LA Times staff writer—that appears to neglect the soulful qualities of the man under consideration as opposed to his persona, strikes me a little as constituting a real-world equivalent to exploitative journalist Rita Skeeter's account of 'The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore', as related in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which, like the present book under consideration, was somewhat opportunistically published on the heels of the old wizard's murder, the circumstances surrounding Hall's death also being most suspicious.
Indeed, Hall was a magician of the first rank (just like Dumbledore was a wizard of the first rank), was the head of a philosophical (as opposed to wizardry) school, warned and, in his way, fought against the dark arts (in the form of black magic) in the real world, was as wise as can be and, by most accounts I have come across on the intertrap, as kind as can be, in addition to which, in a way that recalls Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's online claims about the headmaster of Hogwarts, Hall may well have engaged in homosexual activity (indeed, according to a helper who came to evolve in the inner circle of the elder Hall, and whose heartfelt account of the philosopher can be found on a blogsite named Newtopia Magazine, an account which in my opinion forms a wonderful corrective to the more pejorative portrayals of Hall that are in wider circulation, Hall rather cheekily kept an Aleister Crowley poem about buggery in one of his private drawers), and otherwise led an extremely adventurous, eventful, courageous, and tragic life.
Despite this book providing an essential background and backdrop to the thinker's career, I think that the proper entry into Hall's legacy, despite his inevitable shortcomings as a human being, is still to be gained through his written and spoken word.
This volume, in its journalistic sensationalist superficiality—as is only fitting for an author who is an LA Times staff writer—that appears to neglect the soulful qualities of the man under consideration as opposed to his persona, strikes me a little as constituting a real-world equivalent to exploitative journalist Rita Skeeter's account of 'The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore', as related in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which, like the present book under consideration, was somewhat opportunistically published on the heels of the old wizard's murder, the circumstances surrounding Hall's death also being most suspicious.
Indeed, Hall was a magician of the first rank (just like Dumbledore was a wizard of the first rank), was the head of a philosophical (as opposed to wizardry) school, warned and, in his way, fought against the dark arts (in the form of black magic) in the real world, was as wise as can be and, by most accounts I have come across on the intertrap, as kind as can be, in addition to which, in a way that recalls Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's online claims about the headmaster of Hogwarts, Hall may well have engaged in homosexual activity (indeed, according to a helper who came to evolve in the inner circle of the elder Hall, and whose heartfelt account of the philosopher can be found on a blogsite named Newtopia Magazine, an account which in my opinion forms a wonderful corrective to the more pejorative portrayals of Hall that are in wider circulation, Hall rather cheekily kept an Aleister Crowley poem about buggery in one of his private drawers), and otherwise led an extremely adventurous, eventful, courageous, and tragic life.
Despite this book providing an essential background and backdrop to the thinker's career, I think that the proper entry into Hall's legacy, despite his inevitable shortcomings as a human being, is still to be gained through his written and spoken word.
December 25, 2009
Excellent illustrations. Nothing new here that cannot be gained from the original writings.
April 29, 2012
Fascinating look at a prolific and polarizing author and the occult mystical renaissance of Southern California during the early part of the last century.
August 22, 2013
Really interesting read about a very interesting figure. Definitely worth picking up.
April 2, 2016
Manly P. Hall is a great mystic philosopher of 20th century!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews