America's Assignment with Destiny by Manly P. Hall

Today the Mayan-Egyptian–Art Deco campus has expanded to include the accredited distance-learning academy, University of Philosophical Research, as well as an innovative art gallery and robust public-events schedule. In fall of 2005, I had the privilege to deliver my first full-scale talk, “The Occult Philosophy in American Life,” at the school he founded in Los Angeles, the Philosophical Research Society.

Hall was the first writer who helped me understand that studying the metaphysical dimensions of history could be a vocation in itself.

My conviction turned out right: Not only has Hall’s work been pivotal to my own outlook, but the other longtime friend at the table, Joel Fotinos, is today the publisher of this anthology. I had to learn who was behind that stately name I felt an inner conviction that such knowledge would prove personally meaningful. I felt the kind of electrical charge you sometimes experience when you know you’re about to make a life-shifting discovery. One, named Pythia-the same name, I later learned from Hall’s work, as the oracle at Delphi-said: “Manly P. “Who should I be reading?” I asked my friends, both longtime seekers. It was early in my studies of occult and esoteric traditions. I was having lunch with friends in New York City, where Hall once lived and began researching his “Great Book,” The Secret Teachings of All Ages, at the city’s cathedral-like public library, where I am a writer-in-residence today. It was a summer day about twenty years before this writing. I’ll never forget the first time I heard the name: Manly P.

America's Assignment with Destiny by Manly P. Hall