Master of the Mysteries. Louis Sahagun

disciples of Pythagoras always refer to the master as ‘The Man,’ as in the Bible we are enjoined to ‘Behold the Man.’ Why? Because in the old mysteries only the initiated were human—the rest were trying to get that way, and any greatness was measured by their accomplishment. Only the great initiated adepts were recognized as human; the rest were creatures crawling toward the light who, having eyes, see not, and are therefore blind; who, having ears, do not hear. It is in this manner that the Platonist tells us what they were trying to do at our stage of human development; not to make gods out of men, but to make men out of beasts, and so lift humanity up to its true estate of enlightened harmlessness, where men no longer prey upon each other.”

      He could have been talking about himself. Although he saw the validity of sacred truths, he was also swept away by questionable enthusiasms that were profitable and popular, like mental telepathy and the healing powers of gemstones. He could distill the salient principles of Neo-Platonism, but he enjoyed being the center of attention, and didn’t trust anyone but himself.

      For much of his life, Hall binged on cheap sweets such as donuts and malted milk balls, avoided physical activity, and sometimes cultivated relationships with followers by telling them, for example, that they had been close friends in a past life, or that secret societies had big plans for them. Putting himself in the role of a godlike man who could not be questioned opened the doors for idolatry and abuse.

      On August 23, 1990, Hall’s caretaker, executive officer and confidant, Daniel Fritz, who billed himself as a shaman and expert in alternative medical techniques, rushed to the ailing philosopher’s office in order to resolve an urgent legal matter. He needed Hall’s signature on a new will and living trust arrangement. It would help Hall’s survivors avoid probate. After Hall died, control over the Philosophical Research Society, the compound and its contents, then valued at about $5 million, would go to the successor trustee, Fritz.

      And why not? The old man had neglected the place for years. Buildings were in desperate need of repairs. The copyright on some of his writings had been allowed to lapse. His personal library of 30,000 volumes lacked even fire alarms to protect them. Valuables, including gold coins, were inexplicably missing from his walk-in vault. And Hall, who was beginning to show signs of senility, had yet to groom anyone to succeed him.

      Clearly, he told him, something must be done quickly. Hall agreed, and with a few strokes of his pen, he signed documents that essentially turned over his assets to Fritz, wedging out his second wife, Marie, and stepchildren who were to inherit everything, according to the last will and testament he had signed nearly two decades earlier.

      Six days later, on the morning of August 29, Fritz telephoned a local mortuary to report that his boss had died in bed of natural causes. The corpse collectors and the Halls’ family physician were alarmed by what they saw in the bedroom.

      Hall’s immense pale body lay on a bed without a single wrinkle; thousands of ants streamed from his ears, nose and mouth. A cleaning crew was attacking reddish-brown stains on the carpet near the bed. Fritz and his helpers were busily carting Hall’s clothes and valuables from the home to his car. The physician, growing increasingly suspicious, rescinded the death certificate he had signed a few hours earlier.

      Fritz insisted that his boss died peacefully in his sleep. Los Angeles Police Department investigators have a different theory: that Fritz murdered Hall.

      The case remains an open-ended Hollywood murder mystery.

       CHAPTER 1

       City of Angels

      IN THE EARLY 1900S, IT WAS EASY TO IMAGINE THE SUNNY CANVAS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AS A SORT OF PARADISE: A PLACE OF SPARKLING BEACHES AND IRISH-GREEN HILLS, VINEYARDS AND FRAGRANT ORANGE BLOSSOMS; A WESTERN OUTPOST EXPLODING WITH POSSIBILITIES AS A HOME TO THE FLEDGLING MOVIE INDUSTRY AND MYRIAD FRONTIER RELIGIONS. FABULOUS OIL WELLS WERE BEING STRUCK AND FERTILE VALLEY FARMLANDS ROLLED OUT LIKE CARPETS.

      A place of adventure and change was not what Manly Palmer Hall was looking for when he stepped off a train in downtown Los Angeles in the fall of 1919. For Hall, the lure of Southern California was the chance to reunite with his mother, who had abandoned him in infancy. The 18-year-old Canadian immigrant, who never knew his father, had spent a confused and insecure childhood bouncing from town to town with his maternal grandmother, Florence Palmer. They had been living in New York City when she died suddenly, leaving Hall with little choice but to quit his clerk’s job at a Wall Street firm, leave the city, and move into his mother’s home in the beachside community of Santa Monica. [1]

      Louise Hall, who had worked for 15 years as a chiropractic healer in the Alaskan gold fields, shared the modest house with her second husband, Charles Hall, a jack-of-all-trades who took her last name. [2]

      If there were hard feelings between Hall and his mother, he never spoke of them; that is, beyond gentle chiding for burdening him with an odd name. As for the father he never knew, Hall would only say that husbands who walk away from their families are irresponsible and inconsiderate men who antagonize their wives, polarize relatives and plague their children with lifelong “negative uncertainties.” [3] If anything, Hall thrived in his new home and soon shared his mother’s fascination with the emergence of utopian religious communities—from Ojai south to San Diego—all hoping to set the stage for a better way of life.

      Hall believed he was witnessing a westward expansion of visionaries and seekers into a territory laden with gold and oil and rich with potential to be the birthplace of a spiritual revolution. The Midwest and East Coast of the United States were sedentary landscapes inhabited by people for whom a pioneering spirit was a thing of the past. The wide open spaces of California, however, were ruled by astrological fire signs of courage and action: Leo, Aries and Sagittarius. In this greenhouse of ambitious immigrants and freethinkers, Rosicrucians, Vedantists, Freemasons, Theosophists and fringe Christians were already changing the landscape with striking meditation gardens, ashrams, temples, occult lodges and churches.

      If there was any place in the United States in which ancient wisdom would emerge and flourish it was here in the spiritual melting pot of Southern California. As Philip Jenkins writes in his Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, “Some of the new movements contributed to the cultural and economic development of the growing city of Los Angeles: in a sense Hollywood is built on occult foundations.” [4]

      Hall enjoyed exploring Santa Monica’s seaside restaurants, shooting galleries and fun houses and fortune-tellers’ booths. One day, he noticed a store sign advertising “phrenology,” the pseudo-science popular at the turn of the 20th century that divided the brain into areas responsible for noble traits such as heroism and despised ones such as cruelty. Stepping closer to the window, he studied a grid map of the surface of the brain. Through the glass, he could see anatomical charts tacked onto a wall inside.

      Curious, he ventured into the strange little studio presided over by Sydney J. Brownson, a diminutive horse-and-buggy doctor and Civil War veteran in his early seventies with a sweet smiling face, shoulder-length white hair, a full beard and thick spectacles. Hall casually asked, “Perhaps you would like to read my bumps.” [5]

      Brownson winced and sternly replied that phrenologists do not read bumps; they make “calculations by measuring the radial length of brain fibers from the pons of the medulla oblongata.” Then he regaled the tall young man for hours about human auras, the magnetic fields of the human body, and reincarnation.

      Hall was as enthralled by Brownson’s metaphysical topics as by the older man’s optimism and certainty of the human condition. Brownson was a private person and seldom discussed his personal life. But, taking a shine to his wide-eyed