Manly Palmer Hall

Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born author, lecturer, astrologer and mystic. He is best known for his 1928 work The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

Over his 70 year career, he gave thousands of lectures, including two at Carnegie Hall, and published over 150 volumes.

In 1934, he founded The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, which he dedicated to the “Truth Seekers of All Time”, with a research library, lecture hall and publishing house.

Many of his lectures can be found online and his books are still in print.

Mr. Hall was the Philosophical Research Society’s first president, a seeker and lover of wisdom, and the very definition of a philosopher. He had the courage and the raw intellectual energy to look for wisdom in places that most people had long since forgotten about or never knew existed. He lived in an era when other cultures were valued only for their exoticism, if at all, but in them he found ancient and profound wisdom.

Manly P. Hall began his public career in the related fields of philosophy and comparative religion at the age of nineteen and devoted his life to teaching, writing, and lecturing without interruption for over half a century. Uniquely endowed for the task to which he dedicated his life, he 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. His versatility was remarkable. He could discuss the Bill of Rights at the dedication of a public school, explain Socratic philosophy on the campus of a university, take the pulpit of a denominational church, give a sermon on Buddhism in a Buddhist temple, address the congregation of a synagogue, give the graduation talk for a medical college, or analyze the implications of space conquest before a chamber of commerce. In 1940 he received the Award of Merit for lectures given at the New York World’s Fair.
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In addition to these activities, Manly P. Hall traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Central America, and assembled a magnificent library which he presented to the Society. With countless calls upon his time and energy he was able to write over thirty-five books, scores of essays, and hundreds of articles. The Society continues to receive visitors and letters of appreciation from all over the world for the inspiration and guidance he shared over the course of his extraordinary life, and we continue his mission to provide practical and profound wisdom to seekers at all stages of life.

In 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33º Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite), at a ceremony held at PRS on December 8th, despite never being initiated into the physical craft.