Master of the Mysteries. Louis Sahagun

vision and a calling he received at the end of a Civil War battle that lasted all day and into the night.

      Brownson also confided that he was having marital problems.

      When Hall asked if he married the wrong woman, Brownson energetically replied he would gladly do it again if the choice were his because “we live in this world to learn, and I learned from her more about women than I ever thought there was to know.”

      Nearly two decades later, Hall would remember those words as a sneak preview of his own struggles at home.

      “All things work out well in the end,” Brownson assured him, and then cryptically added, “God does not make failures, but sometimes the Golden Age seems to be indefinitely postponed. But it will come when folks have stomachs as empty as their heads are now.” [6]

      Brownson saw the makings of a capable apprentice in his young friend’s exuberant curiosity, his photographic memory and persuasive intellect, and his burning desire to explore the secret teachings of vanished societies. Tall and handsome with black hair and a debonair mustache, Hall was also a confident speaker, rather like Brownson himself at his age, only better.

      The two began an intense mentor/student relationship that changed the way Hall thought about life. He was drawn deeper and deeper into the old man’s teachings of lost and hidden traditions, the golden verses of Hindu gods, Greek philosophers and Christian mystics, and the spiritual treasures waiting to be found within one’s own soul.

      Less than a year later, Brownson invited Hall to speak to a half-dozen free spirits who gathered weekly in a room above a Santa Monica bank. Hall’s topic that afternoon in 1919 was his new obsession—reincarnation.

      The audience of eight mostly elderly women showed their appreciation with offerings that totaled 65 cents. The philosophers—one five feet tall and weighing about 120 pounds, the other six feet four inches tall and on the heavy side—then splurged on chocolate sundaes at a drugstore down the street. [7]

      A few weeks later, Hall and Brownson took the Big Red streetcar from Santa Monica to the corner of Fourth and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles, where Mrs. Eleanor Reisberg managed a metaphysical lending library and a small lecture hall used by religious seekers. Reisberg’s guest speakers were allotted various hours based on the size of their anticipated audience. It was generally agreed that the 6 p.m. dinner hour was the least attractive time slot. [8]

      And so the untested Hall gave his first real lecture on the mysteries of life at 6:15 p.m. The few dozen listeners of mostly new Californians offered up a total of $1.65, a substantial take at the time. Within weeks, he drew audiences large enough to command the preferred 8 p.m. hour.

      After years of living without fixed points or a real family, the universe was going his way. He believed deeply in the arcane notions he spoke of at the lectern even if no one outside his tiny group of listeners did. Moreover, his mother swelled with pride over his improbable new career: a spiritual version of the California dream.

      Hall immersed himself in ancient myths and religious doctrines and punched up his lectures with current events and humorous asides. Gradually, by trial and error, Hall was developing an inspiring message and delivery.

      Hall believed in the remote past there was a core religious belief—the universe was a manifestation of an invisible creating principle, which can conveniently be called God—that had been deliberately hidden in the symbols, myths and rites of the world’s oldest societies. For a Hindu, that meant the universe and he or she are one. For a Muslim, God is as close as his jugular vein. Christians find Christ in their hearts; in essence, the search for God lies within. [9] [10]

       Hall c. 1920

      His sources ranged from Egyptian religion to the lives of Christian saints, and from classical Greek philosophy to the writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian mystic who claimed contact with ascendant masters whose wisdom shepherded the divine plan.

      The universe, he proposed, is a living, expanding entity of eternal laws. The simplest way to study these eternal laws of existence was to observe the consequences of conduct. When we overindulge, we get ill. When we manage our desires, we are not ill. When we spend more than we earn, we are burdened with debt. When we neglect children, they turn against us. When we are critical, we lose friends. Therefore, Hall concluded, the answer to man’s spiritual needs is self-discipline stemming from ideas that “impel the believer to remake his own life, correct his faults, strengthen his character, and deepen his knowledge.” Moreover, he proposed, nature, out of her infinite capacity, brings forth at various times and places exemplary souls dedicated to passing this great secret of life on to future generations. [11]

      Hall, his listeners assumed, was such a one.

      Hall concluded his lectures—which typically took 90 minutes and were delivered without notes or a break for so much as a sip of water—with homespun common sense about modern living drawn from the spiritual beacons of all ages and cultures he had gleaned from occult books he owned, borrowed, or had checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library.

      People were impressed by Hall’s confidence, his knowledge and extraordinary physical stature, a tall silver-tongued orator who carried himself with a distinct air of superiority.

      In late 1919, Hall was invited to address one of the most progressive religious forums in the city, the Church of the People, which met on Sunday mornings at the Blanchard Hall Building in downtown Los Angeles and followed up with lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway. [12]

      The church and its fellowship were founded by the broad-minded evangelist Benjamin Fay Mills, who had become a student of the transcendental philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the practical idealism of American psychologist and philosopher William James.

      Mills was a liberal, energetic and brash preacher. His motto: “If I can’t do it, and my wife can’t do it, and the children can’t do it, it can’t be done.”

      Eventually, however, Mills lost faith in the transcendental ideals he had championed for years, reverted to the Presbyterian faith and left town. In his place stepped Los Angeles accountant Reynold E. Blight, a gifted speaker who stood less than five feet tall and had to buy his suits in the children’s sections of department stores. Blight, a 33rd° Mason and student of comparative religion, became a bigger draw than Mills. He brightened the services with musical soloists and strengthened them with lectures on Greek philosophy and politics.

      When Blight took a sudden leave of absence, Hall, who had been a regular member of the audience, became temporary pastor of the church’s eccentric six-hundred-member congregation. Among its members were populists, intellectual socialists, utopians, single-tax enthusiasts, vegetarians, and young drifters seeking direction in life. “It takes a crank to make the world go ’round,” his congregants liked to say around this time. [13]

      Blight never returned to the pulpit. With Hall assuming increasing responsibility, the little church began to downplay political panaceas and emphasize practical philosophy. Hall charged a dollar to attend his Sunday lectures, a set fee that continued all his life.

      One adoring member of the congregation, an elderly Scotswoman, presented the young preacher with a rare and elegant four-volume 19th-century set entitled The Works of Jacob Behmen (Boehme). It was the start of a collection of rare and unusual books that would eventually to grow to 30,000 volumes. [14]

      Hall was enchanted by the woman’s curious personal life: she lived in an old-fashioned wood frame house, wore