Manly Palmer Hall's Biography (Books) (Photos)

Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 - August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his work The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, published in 1928 when he was 27 years old.

It is claimed that Hall was made a knight patron of the Masonic Research Group of San Francisco in 1953, although he was not raised as a Mason until 22 November 1954 into Jewel Lodge No. 374 , San Francisco. He later received his 32? in the Valley of San Francisco AASR (SJ). In 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33? Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite), at a ceremony held at PRS on December 8,1973.). Interestingly, the definitive Manly Palmer Hall Archive states that Hall received the 33?, "despite never being initiated into the physical craft."

In his over 70-year career, Hall delivered approximately 8,000 lectures in the United States and abroad, authored over 150 books and essays, and wrote countless magazine articles.

In 1934, Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society (PRS) in Los Angeles, California, a non-profit foundation dedicated to the study of religion, mythology, metaphysics, and the occult. PRS maintains a research library of over 50,000 volumes, and also sells and publishes metaphysical and spiritual books, mostly those authored by Hall.