Master of the Mysteries. Louis Sahagun

      “Symbols consequently change the meanings according to the level of intelligence upon which their interpreter functions. . . The purpose of symbols is to uncover the limitations of mortal consciousness by continually emphasizing the insufficiency of the interpretations placed upon them.” [11]

      Hall freely sorts through a tossed salad of spiritual imagery from disparate times and places and discovers common ground, and patterns: the universe is alive and consists of a network of mathematical connections between different levels of reality. “In the Ancient Wisdom it was also declared that the sacred mountains of the world rose in seven steps or stages (as the Meru of the Hindus),” Hall writes, “and it was from the high place, or the seventh step, that offerings were made to the Lord whose name is Blessed. Not only did the holy place rise in seven platforms or levels, but upon its topmost level was usually erected a triform symbol of the Divine Nature itself. Thus, the seven steps, complemented by this three-fold figure, became the mysterious Pythagorean decad, or the symbol of the tenfold order of the universe. Jacob’s ladder then actually becomes the symbolic mountain or pyramid.”[12]

      Conventionally-minded skeptics dismissed that kind of talk as nonsense. Believers figured Hall was onto something profound and exciting. But the festive prosperity of the 1920s was about to implode into a decade of depression that would bring unemployment and personal hardship to millions. When the stock market crashed in the fall of 1929, Hall watched as many who got rich by exploiting pioneer dreams quietly disappeared or retired to enjoy their gains, while their adherents were left sadder, wiser and poorer.

      Hall, with books like his Secret Teachings of All Ages, was more in demand than ever. Hailed as one of the world’s most promising young thinkers, Hall was called Maestro by his congregation. In a magazine article, Hindu author Basanta Koomer Roy referred to Hall as “the greatest sage in America” and compared his mind to Albert Einstein’s. A feature article published in the Los Angeles Examiner in 1930 described him as “an original. Distinct. In a class by himself.”

      “I do not recall anyone who resembles him in appearance, in personality, or in mental viewpoints,” the article said. “He is positive. He is poised. He is an orator. He spurns manuscripts or notes. He has a clear, vibrant voice. Fluent of speech, his style is epigrammatic, and is marked by the frequent employment of striking antithesis.”

      Hall was still in his twenties and he was chumming with the rich and famous. That made him a sort of icon for Hollywood hangers-on who imagined their chances of grabbing a piece of the action would be vastly improved by knowing him. Hall was also an unlikely sex symbol, given that a few years earlier he had preached against intimacy, even in marriage, as an obstacle to reaching the highest levels of human consciousness.

      That didn’t stop Caroline Lloyd’s lesbian daughter Estelle from proposing marriage to the philosopher, who let her down gently. “Her infatuation with Manly was not so much physical as intellectual,” recalled physicist Donald Lloyd, Estelle’s nephew.

      Then 28, the high-profile, eligible bachelor expressed a change of heart on the issue of celibacy in a little book of essays published in 1929 under the title The Child’s Place in the Plan.

      “Among the early pagans, celibacy was not regarded as a priestly virtue, yet their standards of ethics far surpassed that of our own day; nor were their aesthetics in any way compromised,” he wrote. “Nearly all the renowned philosophers and World Saviors were married men.” [13]

      He pointed out that the Egyptian Hermes; the fire prince of Persia Zoroaster; the Greek philosophers Pythagoras, Socrates and Aristotle; Gautama Buddha and Mohammed were all fathers. “The individuals who fear that a family may retard their progress toward perfection may be well satisfied if they reach a degree of excellence comparable with those here listed,” he wrote, “and at the same time give other unfolding lives an opportunity to bask in the sunlight of their superior wisdom.”

      On April 28, 1930, Hall married his secretary of five years, Fay B. de Ravenne, a strikingly attractive petite 28-year-old brunette astrologer from Texas with fine features and big plaintive eyes, perhaps expressing the sadness of the pain of her inner life. It was Hall’s first marriage, and Fay’s second. The ceremony was conducted without fanfare at the Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside and officiated by Hall’s friend, mentor, and frequent guest lecturer Augusta Heindel. She announced the marriage in the June 1930 edition of the fellowship’s Rays magazine under the banner: “Wedding bells are ringing, mocking birds are singing.” “The writer was not a little surprised to have Mr. Hall and his lady, Fay B. de Ravenne, call on her on Monday, April 28, when she had the honor of performing the marriage ceremony,” Heindel wrote. “The bride has been associated with Mr. Hall as his secretary for about five years. We know that all their friends join us in wishing this bride and groom much joy and a long and successful life.”[14]

      Not much is known about the dark beauty. Fay rarely appeared with her husband in public, and all references to their life together were mysteriously excised from Hall’s voluminous archives after her death. Then, too, Hall’s closest friends were fiercely protective of his public image and never gossiped about his private life. All that can be said about Fay exists in available census data, a wedding certificate, a few photographs, a coroner’s report and a handful of sketchy anecdotes.

      Hall’s young wife was plagued by various illnesses, and grew jealous and angry as his popularity soared and the lecture circuit took him away from home on lengthy trips. It didn’t help that Hall had failed to credit Fay for her help in completing his Secret Teachings of All Ages, or that his personal valet had a serious crush on her.

      Close friends recalled Fay acting sullen and resentful at Hall’s lectures while sitting beside a small table and taking money for his books. “I only saw Fay a few times,” recalled Pat Levitt in an interview. “But I knew there were troubles there.”

       Manly and Fay Hall. Photo by William Mortensen

      Initially, the Halls lived with Mr. and Mrs. Walter Young on West 20th Street, then hopscotched from one modest apartment to another on the north side of downtown. Among their closest friends were William Mortensen, one of Hollywood’s most famous photographers, and his ravishing wife and principal model, Myrdith. Based in a cottage tucked in Laguna Canyon, Mortensen was a darkroom artist best known for his highly stylized portraits of celebrities including actresses Fay Wray and Marlene Dietrich and musician Jascha Heifetz. He was set photographer for director Cecil B. DeMille’s 1926 movie King of Kings. [15]

      During their years together, the Halls and the Mortensens shared mutual interests in the occult, magic, and parlor magic, according to Anson and Peggy Beman, who were students of Mortensen in 1951. Hall, for example, liked to stand in Mortensen’s yard and appear to pluck silver dollars out of the air, then toss them in a bucket. “Some of the best times were after dinner when Bill would sit in his favorite chair, smoking his ever-present pipe and we would have discussions about psychic phenomena, magic, old Hollywood,” Peggy Beman recalled decades later in a memoir entitled Memories of Our Friends in Laguna Beach. [16]

      “Bill and Myrdith were great friends with Manly Hall, a well-known magician in the 1930s,” she wrote. “They, along with other friends, experimented with Oujia boards, séances and table tipping at their little adobe house in a big orchard in the canyon. The house was built over an old Indian burial ground and they swore they contacted one of the Indians, and that Myrdith actually saw him. I don’t know if they were drunk or sober at the time. I do know that they both firmly believed in such things.”

      Beman added that Mortensen “always said, ‘Don’t get involved with psychic phenomena of any kind, it’s too dangerous.’”

      Hall