Manly P. Hall

Quotes & References

People are eternally trying to walk out of difficulties, instead of trying to work out of them.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

We all want the good things of life; we all desire to be surrounded by friends; but we have no right to expect to attract any of these things except when our own lives have earned us the right to be honored, respected, and admired.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

What right has anyone to believe that man was born into the world to be happy? In the Arabian Nights, it is written, "Happiness must be earned." We are born with a divine birthright--a mind, a heart, two hands, and two feet. If any of these be missing at the time of our appearance, we have some other function proportionately developed to take its place. With these tools, we may go forth and earn happiness, but we have no right to assume that someone is going to thrust it upon us. We have come here for experience, as a child who goes to school. We may be happy in our studies, or we may curse them all the days of our lives. The wise are happy in doing the things that should be done. When we command the universe to make well the sick or to make the rich poor, we know not whereof we speak; for in our zeal and ignorance we may be doing an irreparable injury to the one we love, like a parent who cannot deny his children the sweetmeats that they want. In granting desires, we endanger both their lives and their future efficiency.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

No man who is sick should be healed merely because he is ailing. He should learn the lesson that accompanies the disease that he has brought upon himself. To affirm health is foolishness; to find out the reason for the ailment, make right the wrong, and become healthy again, is wise and proper. To be so moderate, so wise, so thoughtful as not to become sick, is still better philosophy.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

An aged and wise Chinese once set out to visit a distant place. He sent a messenger ahead to tell the good folks of the house to prepare him no food save rice; but when he arrived, he found a many-course dinner awaiting him, for the good family felt that they must so honor his presence. The philosopher reproved them, saying, "I asked for rice, you have given me fish; I asked for rice, you have given me corn; I asked for rice, you have given me meat; I asked for rice, and you have given me sweets; and among all these things you have given me no rice." Observing that the family was hurt by the words, the philosopher added: "I have lived these many years, and, after studying carefully this body which God has given me, I have found that it doth flourish nobly upon rice. It was with wisdom that I ordered rice; it was with folly that you insulted me by offering other foods. You say that I am a great philosopher, that I am wiser than all other men; and yet you did not think me wise enough to order my own mean." In the same way, when our brother asks for rice, we have no right to give him meat because we think he ought to have it. It matters not whether the meat be physical or spiritual, whether the rice be literal or allegorical.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

People who use these false systems vindicate themselves, for the most part, on two unsound hypotheses: (1) that God has intended man to have whatever his puny intellect desires; (2) that man knows what he needs. Both of these are false assumptions. Man was not intended by God to be rich, wise, beautiful, healthy, witty, of charming personality, or happily married. This does not mean that the Lord has any objection to any of these things or all of them. It merely means that if man desires these things, he must go forth, as Adam was directed to do, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow and not by the sweat of somebody else's.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

Evil will never cease to exist until selfishness and greed are overcome as factors in dictating the attitudes of men. It is the common thing for the concrete mind to sacrifice the eternal to the temporal. Man, concentrating upon the limited area of the known, loses sight of the effect of his actions upon the limitless area of the unknown. Shortsightedness, consequently, is the cause of endless misery. Moral shortsightedness results in vice, philosophical shortsightedness in materialism, religious shortsightedness in bigotry, rational short-sightedness in fanaticism.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

An occultist is an expert in the science of life. As an operative magician, he is able to manipulate the forces of nature to the gratification of whatever end he may desire but woe to him if those ends are not in harmony with the natural plan! By means of his knowledge, he may work miracles, like the magicians of India, but: his feats are miraculous only to those who do not know as much as he does concerning the subtle forces of nature.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

All who are not consciously fortified in the path of right are possible victims of these monsters of iniquity; all who are not consciously on the white path, and firmly established in the way of sincerity and truth, are in eternal danger of these Harpies who float like soulless specters on the tide of evolution.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

We must learn to realize that the greater the knowledge, the greater the penalty for abusing it. The sin that is excusable in the child is unforgivable in a man.

— Manly P Hall; Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics

All true occultists abide by the laws of the nations and the community in which they dwell. While in many cases they recognize these laws as imperfect, they abide by them lest by their moral example they should teach the less intelligent to break the restraining bonds of law and order. It is said that laws are made for those who break them. We may add that laws were not made for Initiates, but there is a very small minority of people intelligent enough to live together honestly without the assistance of law. No matter how bad these laws are, they are far superior to the lawlessness which would exist when the mental hazard of punishment is removed from the untrained and unregenerated man.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

A true occultist, be he student, disciple, or initiate, never discloses his position to any except those equally interested and equally sincere along similar lines.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

No one is born without responsibility. Each living thing is responsible for itself, and when it fails to assume its individual responsibilities others must suffer as well as the thoughtless one.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

The instinct of reverence for the Unknown is implanted in all human life.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

First, the majority of people do not know what they are looking for. If they should meet truth, they would not recognize it. The Masters they seek are about them every day, but like Sir Launfal they journey into distant lands, seeking for those things which are upon their own doorsteps. Secondly, they would not accept wisdom if they should find it. They would all be glad to have the power that the Masters have, but few would labor unselfishly and untiringly for ages to secure that power and then consecrate it unreservedly to the good of humanity.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

In a 1942 essay called "The Jew Does not Fit In," Hall suggested that anti-Semitism was the price Jews had to pay for being what he called "a peculiarly race-conscious people." The karma "of the Jew," he wrote, "holds a gradual dying out of racial persecution of Jews as a class in the degree and with the rapidity that the Jew forgets he is a Jew and remembers he is a human being." The same year he proposed that "millions and millions of entities who did not believe in competition or competitive systems in life were incarnated in India. The result is that the natural temperament of the Oriental is peaceful, not particularly ambitions; culturally static." In the same way, he said, in America entities of an almost intolerably possessive type had entered into incarnation together.

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

Hall adhered, for example, to Blavatsky's notion that there were three great systems of "racial karma" operating in the world: Lemurian, Atlantean and Aryan. Hall believed that remnants of what he described as "so-called Black peoples" were condemned to struggle against physical enslavement because they were the first humans to hunt and kill animals. Oriental nations and American Indians, he said, stemmed from Atlantean races paying for sins of arrogance and uncontrolled appetites by suffering through foreign invasions, internal corruption and perpetual poverty. The Aryan mind, he said, regarded complexity as synonymous with excellence. The result: dreams of empire, conspicuous consumption and blind faith in science.

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

Hall generally held a dim view of the lower classes of society and promoted birth control as a means of reducing the number of what he deemed the "mentally and physically unfit." By his logic, eugenics - controlling hereditary factors through selective breeding - would provide reincarnating souls with greater chances of being born into wealthier, happier, and more creative families. The world depends on leadership, he wrote in an essay on infant mortality in 1937, and constructive creative leadership can come into this world only when bodies of a fine organic quality can be produced. If some say it is unfair to keep out the waves of comparatively undeveloped egos by birth control, he reasons, it is also unfair that there be no class in society suitable to receive, nurture and culture the higher types of life waiting to bring the world knowledge and understanding.

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

As the parents of modern mankind, he advised Anglos to try to be more tolerant of the concerns being expressed by increasingly vocal oppressed minorities, whom he compared to adolescents experiencing growth pains.

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

For Hall supported the notion that Americans and British citizens were the most spiritually advanced people on the planet, and divinely appointed to lead lesser beings to the next level of development. "We have received with our Aryan birthright great spiritual and intellectual legacies," Hall said in a series of lectures on race and evolution in 1951. "We have the highest spiritual conviction of right, and also the highest evolved group of faculties ever bestowed upon living things, and these must continue and have their way, they must grow and unfold. There has been a great deal of question as to where the Sixth Subrace would come from. Some have felt it would come in an amalgamation of the American and British Empire. We do not know. Certainly the far-flung dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other parts of the Empire, plus the American way of life will be a spearhead of a common attitude, and possibly from this spearhead will be derived a new type."

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

Before walking away from it all, Hogart met with Hall one last time, seeking answers to pressing questions: "I asked about a biography, and he said. 'I don't want you to write about me. Let my enemies do it.' I asked if he had it to do all over again, would he emphasize the Great White Brotherhood and illuminati. He said, 'I would drop all the magical trappings and emphasize self-help.' I asked him if I should get a Ph.D. and come back to PRS. He said, 'No. This place is custom-made for me. You need to build your own life.'"

"I said, 'When I came here, I was a rock singer. I still feel drawn to it. I know you hate it,'" Hogart recalled. "He said, 'That's exactly what you should be doing.'"

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

A mother and daughter belonging to the Lloyd family , an oil dynasty of Ventura County, over the years would donate millions of dollars to Hall's projects. They helped underwrite his whirlwind tour of the world's centers of spiritual thought in 1923 and eventually helped establish his compound near Griffith Park in 1934.

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

"Hall was never about truth, which is a childish vanity. He was about seeking truth, which is a spiritual quest," Hutchens added. "He was a profound thinker and a skilled businessman and he knew what sold. So, on one day he wrote profound insights for those who could perceive them, and the next day he wrote trash for the mass marketplace. He earned a living doing this, and not very many people can."

— Louis Sahagun; Master of the Mysteries: The Life of Manly Palmer Hall

Wealth, therefore, impoverishes man, deprives him of time, absorbs his interests, depletes his strength, and leaves him incapable of becoming wise.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible

The man who hid his doctrine in the earth, that is, attempted to hold truth and prevent others from receiving it, was rebuked by his master and lost the very wisdom he had attempted to keep for himself.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible

Truth manifesting the material universe is hopelessly obscured by the inadequate vehicles of its manifestation. Perfection manifesting through the imperfect appears by very necessity to be imperfect itself.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible

Love is religion, and hate is atheism...ethics is philosophy.

— Manly P Hall; Back to Basics in Religion, Philosophy and Science

It has been said that wisdom lies not in seeing things but in seeing through things.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

As the spirit enters the human body when the embryo reaches a certain degree of unfoldment, so will the spirit of Truth enter the religious body when that structure has adequately prepared itself for such a coming.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

The world knows many religions, but Nature has but once Truth.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

All human beings are divided into four general classes...The lowest of these divisions is the physical nature, and those who dwell therein are of the earth, earthy; they live only for the gratification of their physical natures. Their idea of heaven is a place where there is food, feasting, and little or no work...Their minds are only partly active. Their bodies resemble prisons more than dwelling places...they live to labor, plodding along to a mediocre destiny...Give them opulence and they cannot retain it. Give them luxuries, and they do not appreciate them. They are the dark earthy ones who must ever bow before intelligence. They do not love God, for they cannot know Him.

The second division is made up of the artisans and those who labor both with mind and hand...They buy, sell, and exchange...Having a mind, they control the mindless...Not having the mental organism with which to reason, they fill the places of worship where thinking is done for them. They are the ones who allow their clergy to decide all spiritual problems for them, feeling themselves incapable of assuming the onus of heavy thinking...their credulity is utilized as a commercial asset by certain types of minds who consider it legitimate to capitalize on the ignorance of others.

The third class is made up of the scientists...they attack the boundary lines of the known...Those who wage this war in the cause of science are mostly concrete thinkers who follow as far as their instruments will lead them and then must wait for instruments still more powerful. Most of these minds are atheistic or at least agnostic...The miracles of theology are incapable of chemical analysis and are consequently taken cum grano salis by the scientific world.

The fourth and highest group embraces philosophers, musicians, and artists, all living in an abstract mental world surrounded by dreams and visions wholly unrecognizable by the other types. They have reached beyond the world of academic education to the world of creative idealism, which is at present the highest function of the human mind. This world is the dwelling place of genius, of invention, and of the things which lower mentalities can only accept but never analyze. Religiously, these minds are deistic. Most of them are monotheists - believers in one God. Many of them are mystics or occultists...

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

We would have much less trouble if our psychologists refrained from speaking for the first five years, for most of them are preaching with no more foundation for their eloquence than two weeks' study with someone no better informed than themselves.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

The true occultist wants nothing but wisdom. When Solomon raised his hands to his God, Jehovah spoke from the heavens asking him what he would have, and he answered, "God give me the gift of wisdom." Jehovah asked him if there were not other things he desired, but Solomon answered, "No, only wisdom." And God told Solomon that because he had asked only for wisdom that all the other things should be added unto him and that from this day to the end of the world there would never be another king so rich, so great, or so blest.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

Once men died for Truth, but now Truth dies at the hands of men.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

An intellectual fact is not necessarily a truth

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

As power is given to man commensurate to his wisdom and understanding, it is not safe at the present time to reveal to the world at large the methods whereby entrance to the invisible world is possible. If this knowledge were given to selfish people unprepared for their responsibility, they would be able to destroy the universe, either through perversion or ignorance. In order to protect this sacred wisdom obstacles have been placed in the way of its attainment which only the sincere and courageous would be strong enough to overcome. Years of service, self-purification and self-mastery must be passed through before any candidate will be admitted to the path of wisdom.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

In the remote past the gods walked with men and while the instructors from the invisible planes of Nature were still laboring with the infant humanity of this planet, they chose from among the sons of men the wisest and the truest. These they labored with, preparing them to carry on the work of the gods after the spiritual hierarchies themselves had withdrawn into the invisible worlds. With these specially ordained and illumined sons they left the keys of their great wisdom, which was the knowledge of good and evil. They ordained these anointed and appointed ones to be priests or mediators between themselves (the gods) and that humanity which had not yet developed the eyes which permitted them to gaze into the face of Truth and live.

Overshadowed by the divine prerogative, these illumined ones, founded what we now know as the Ancient Mysteries.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

WHEN confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed. While the former may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity.

There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed the esoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations. In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan (deities representing the procreative energies), the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths.

— Manly P Hall; The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Quinton's Opinion on Manly P. Hall

Manly P Hall is One of our Greatest Teachers

Manly P Hall has got to be one of the most well-read, deep, thorough, but yet still honest authors out there. His works are some of the best you will find.

By: Quinton Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Researchers

Parent: 

Manly P. Hall

Headline: 

Manly P Hall has got to be one of the most well-read, deep, thorough, but yet still honest authors out there. His works are some of the best you will find.

I have studied Manly P Hall's work for a while now and I have to say that he is without a doubt one of my favorite authors and lecturers. Not only is he a very spiritual and moral person, but he is very knowledgeable and wise as well. He is most well known for publishing "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" when he was just 27. This book is sourced by a number of authors in the occult area of research as the book takes an encyclopedic approach to outlining many of the world's mysteries.

Manly P Hall also has very many writings on other great topics such as philosophy and esoteric topics. His writing comes off with a very complete and thorough feel because, in my opinion, he has a very broad understanding in many different areas of research and is able to tie them all together intelligibly.

Perhaps a few quotes by him will further this message:

Few realize that man is responsible for the things he has not done. That is part of the law. It is just as wrong not to do the right things as it is to do the wrong things.

The white magician seeks to gain control over himself. The black magician seeks to obtain control over others.

For lack of interreligious understanding there has been very little religious understanding.

The majority of mankind neither desires to improve itself nor to support an organization which demands a high degree of integrity.

Hall was also a 33rd degree Freemason. I would suspect much of this knowledge further deepens his understanding of the many topics in which he writes on.

Something Manly P Hall should be applauded on

Manly P Hall is the first person I have found to do something of a rather curious nature. I am almost positive that Hall takes the Jesus / Resurrection parts of the Bible as allegorical and astrological as evident by almost all of his writings, however, during his lectures he puts this very touchy subject in the context of his listeners. I find this extremely important and big of him. He doesn't try to force what he knows down their throats, he is much too elegant to do such a thing. He uses their own terminology and their own understanding and goes along with it with them. He talks about Jesus, Christmas, Passover and all these other Christian things people are comfortable with rather than ramming down the sun, astrology and all these other deeper interpretations he holds. He doesn't go out of his way to make these people uncomfortable as SOOOOOO many people do these days due to ego. I take this as something that shows Manly P Hall's true character and something that so few people will ever achieve.

This is the equivalent of a Christian giving a Muslim a lesson in the Muslim's context for the sake of the Muslim receiving the greatest benefit out of it, despite a loss in accuracy. It is not always about proving others wrong as much as it is about helping them grow.

If you have not checked out his work I would greatly encourage you to do so as he hits on some of the most important topics and really gets you thinking. He also has some great videos you can watch online about basic living and philosophy. Some really great stuff I must say.