A Wink from Manly P. Hall

[ecosophia]

Today's mail brought a small but welcome package from Los Angeles, courtesy of the Philosophical Research Society, the educational nonprofit founded most of a century ago by the redoubtable Manly P. Hall. In the package were two copies of the recent reprint of the Tarot deck that Hall designed and his friend and favorite artist Augustus Knapp painted, and three pamphlets adapted from Hall's godzillions of lectures. 

I never met Hall, which is a pity; our lives overlapped by some decades -- he died in 1990 -- and even in advanced old age, by all accounts, he was a brilliant speaker and a gifted teacher of occultism. It's a topic for a good brisk debate as to whether Hall or the equally redoubtable William Walker Atkinson (aka Yogi Ramacharaka, Theron Q. Dumont, and all three of the Three Initiates who wrote The Kybalion, for starters) was the most influential American occultist of the twentieth century, but The Manly One is certainly a robust contender. He combined an encyclopedic knowledge of Western occult tradition with something a lot of people talked about in his day but almost nobody actually had -- initiation into an Asian esoteric tradition. In his case it was Shingon Buddhism, one of the two Japanese esoteric sects -- think of Tibetan Buddhism with a Japanese accent and you won't be too far off. He knew a lot about Shingon, including the kinds of things that were very hard to learn at all back in the day if you were a white American guy; his writings on the two primary Shingon mandalas, the Kongokai (Diamond/Thunderbolt Assembly) and Taizokai (Womb Assembly), were as far as I know the most complete discussions of these in English until fairly recently. 

His most famous book, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, was a young man's book, brash and enthusiastic. The books of his I value the most come from later in his career: Self-Unfoldment Through Disciplines of Realization and Meditation Symbols in Eastern and Western Mysticism are among these. It was in these two books, more than anywhere else, that I caught the trail of bread crumbs he left. 

It used to be very common for occult teachers to hide their practical teachings in various ways, so that you could find them in their books if you worked at it but would skate right past them if you didn't. W.E. Butler, another occultist I studied eagerly in my youth, did this all the time -- for something like twenty years I read Butler's book The Magician: His Training and Work once every year or so, and every time kicked myself for having missed yet another round of obvious hints the time before! Most of what Butler had to teach has seen print, though, and that's not true of Hall. 

Hall had a method of meditation that, to my knowledge, he never put into print in any one place. Some of his mature books hint broadly at it, then veer away. That was why I ordered my copy of the tarot deck Hall designed. (Sara wanted hers because she trained as an art historian and has put many years into studying symbolic images.) The pamphlets were mostly for fun -- I enjoy Hall's writing, and even his lightweight stuff often has things well worth learning in them -- but the deck was serious. I have a copy of the older edition of the deck, and its LWB ("Little White Book") had a couple of crucial clues in it; the new edition is larger, better suited to meditative use...and the LWB has several more clues not found in the older version. 

Another nod and wink from Manly P. Hall duly picked up. The pieces come together...

Comments

Secrets

[tunesmyth]

If the Manly one's secret is spread across so many different places in his writings that it requires even access to unpublished materials to unlock, just who could he possibly expect to unlock it? Yes, unlocking puzzles is fun; and everybody likes them more, the harder they are to unlock, provided they're actually unlockable... but I mean, come on, give people a fighting chance here!!

Or did you mean that all the pieces you need are in the already available sources, but the new material clarifies things a little?

Re: Secrets

[ecosophia]

Oh, I'm sure he passed on his method via oral transmission to selected personal students. The bread crumbs in his writings were left to attract the attention of students. That was standard practice back in the day.

The old occult teachers were very worried about what would happen if occult teachings fell into the hands of the general public. Now that that's happened, we know that their worries were unnecessary, because the people who they feared would misuse the teachings have turned out not to have the patience and self-discipline to do anything with the teachings, and most potential abusers of magical teachings seem to be more interested in playing dress-up games and make-believe than anything else...

Re: Secrets

[violetcabra]

If I may, the few people I've known who I have know to work malefic magic were really, really heavily into drugs. Dion Fortune mentions this point, IIRC, in Psychic Self-Defense, so it is clearly nothing new. The psychonaut-occultists can definitely got powerful effects, but they were in my estimation, ultimately, mostly just interested in getting high, getting laid, getting attention, and getting cash, lots of quick cash. This of course imposes sharp limitations on the scope and scale of their workings. On a more personally painful note, several people I know have also noticed how junkies always seem to be able to manifest money and find junk. William S. Burroughs makes note of this in his early and readable books, and he by his own account was pretty involved with occult practice. I imagine that if all drugs were to suddenly disappear from earth we would see way more nasty and effective evil magic.

Re: Secrets

[ecosophia]

Of course junkies can always keep themselves provided with junk -- their will is absolutely single where that's concerned. If you desire one and only one thing will a whole mind, you're pretty certain to get it; it's because so many people flit from desire to desire, and especially because they desire contradictory things, that so often they accomplish nothing at all.

Re: Secrets

[violetcabra]

That makes a lot of sense, and is quite useful to consider in terms of the broader implications. Thank you.

schools of thought in Tarot design

[(Anonymous)]

(Deborah Bender)

Your post prompted me to search the Internet for more information about the Knapp-Hall deck. I ran across this long essay by Christine Payne on different occult schools of thought about the design and use of Tarot decks.

http://www.tarotarkletters.com/2015/08/manly-p-hall-and-masonic-tarot.html

The beginning of the essay is a review of a book about this deck. It then delves into the different approaches of Continental and English occultists designing Tarot decks at the turn of the last century. At the end she talks about the influence of Freemasonry and about Masonic methods of communicating esoteric ideas. That links up with JMG's most recent weekly essay on the other blog.

Re: schools of thought in Tarot design

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this! I'll definitely need to pick up the book Payne reviews in that article.

Re: Secrets

[(Anonymous)]

We found exactly the same thing to be true with the Martial Arts. People were afraid that advanced techniques would be taught to people who would abuse them.

I have been practicing various Martial Arts for over 35 years, and teaching for almost three decades. The consistent pattern I have seen is that the people who would be most likely to abuse expertise in the fighting arts either drop out before they reach a high level of proficiency, or find that the style they are studying starts to push their buttons and so move on to a new style (which they then follow until it starts to push their buttons too).

--Ailin

Re: Secrets

[ecosophia]

Doesn't surprise me at all. In a certain sense, I suppose it's a good thing that so many people in today's society are such flakes -- it's safe to reveal the most astonishing things right out there in public, because the only people who will pay enough attention to them to matter are the ones who should be studying anyway.

The Manly One

[(Anonymous)]

I read a biography about Hall a couple years ago, "Master of the Mysteries", by Louis Sahagun and have often thought about taking a trip up to LA to visit the PRS library. But alas I hate going to LA! (I was born there, and can't stand it :)

My Mother used to tell me stories about her Grandmother who was a devout Spiritualist and LA had quite the alternative spiritual scene before the Second World War. By the time my Mother was a little girl (the early 50s) all that was coming to an end according to her, but she was exposed to the remnants by my Great Grandmother.

Back to Hall, I found a lot of inspiration in reading his biography, by what I remember of it he had a lot of challenging people in his life, his second marriage did not sound easy or happy, and yet his teaching and how be affected others was by the accounts I've read pretty amazing. Of the older Occult authors, I find he is probably my favorite.

P.S. The Cosmic Doctorine essay and discussion on the other site are turning out to be VERY good. Thanks for that!

Dean Smith

Re: The Manly One

[ecosophia]

That's fascinating. If my memories from my last incarnation are anything to go by, I was on the fringes of that scene in LA in the 1940s and 1950s, and what you heard from your mother meshes very precisely with the scraps that I can recall.

Hall's certainly my favorite American occult author; if we include British authors, I'm a bit more of a Dion Fortune fanboy, but only a bit. Glad you're enjoying the Cos. Doc. discussion!

It's a secret!

[(Anonymous)]

I don't suppose this tag includes a nod and wink to a character whose tagline is "Sore wa himitsu des"? 8-) - Dewey

Re: It's a secret!

[ecosophia]

I don't know the character in question, so it's even more of a secret than you expected. ;-)

Re: It's a secret!

[(Anonymous)]

By the Greater Beast Zelas Metallium, this is the last place I expected to see that kind of a reference. I guess scifi nerds aren't the only kind of nerds who hang around these parts.

On a slightly-more-relevant-to-this-blog note, while fictional magic is fictional, I have sometimes wondered if any Slayers fans ever got themselves into trouble by drawing goetic sigils and screaming, "In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness. Let all the fools who stand in our way be destroyed by the power you and I possess!" all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you hide secrets in your own writing?

[ecosophia]

If I did, would I say so?

Funny

[kimberlysteele]

I laughed so hard at this one, I almost choked on a cookie. Reminder to self... never eat while reading this blog...

Tarot and pop culture

[(Anonymous)]

(Deborah Bender)

Someone on one of my email lists posted a link to a BBC business news article about Tarot.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44471537

The first few paragraphs are about a famous feminist deck (Motherpeace) being used as inspiration for the Dior fashion house, which IMHO is similar to the way Sixties pop music got used in TV commercials. Then a series of people opine in a condescending way about why Tarot reading is popular, US Games sales statistics are referenced, and the commentary got into I Can't Even territory and I gave up. Some of the story seemed to illustrate or be relevant to recent posts by JMG, so I'm linking it here.

If the link doesn't work, let me know and I'll retrieve the article title and date.

[dufu]

My friend's grandmother was apparently one of Hall's many lovers. Good times were had by all, it seems.