Master of the Mysteries. Louis Sahagun

an “unseen guest” who might be the presence of Christ one day, and the spirit of her long dead husband on another. [15]

      Hall had no experience whatsoever in running a church—or anything else. But the 19-year-old was naïve and enthusiastic enough to take on the duties, which included counseling in a small office people old enough to be his grandparents. [16]

      “This is something that has to happen to you before you can fully appreciate it,” he said years later. “Factually, I had little to offer them. I had not solved any problems of my own. I didn’t know exactly why I was leading a church, but it was one of those accidents or circumstances of fortune that you do not question. [17]

      “So when these people came to me with their problems, I sat back with the supreme wisdom of a teenager and told them what I thought common sense would dictate, what seemed to me reasonable. And it worked in many cases.” [18]

      Peppered with a wide variety of personal questions from people seeking immediate answers, Hall began boning up on comparative religion, philosophy, sociology and psychology. He reported back with the warm, reassuring words and admonishments of Confucius or some other sage. Seemingly overnight, Hall became a one-stop source of an astonishing range of eclectic spiritual material that resonated with the intellect, and the subconscious.

       Los Angeles, c. 1915

      It was a time when many civic and business leaders, judges, architects, physicians, engineers and entertainment industry figures were members of Masonic lodges, whose Neoclassical temples were among the most imposing buildings on the Southern California landscape. Among them was developer Charles E. Toberman, often referred to as the “father of Hollywood.’” Al Ridenour, in a May 2002 Los Angeles Times article, wrote, “Master of the Hollywood Lodge in 1914, Toberman was not only responsible for enticing Sid Grauman into Hollywood to create the Egyptian, Chinese and El Capitan theaters, but also for construction of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood Bowl, Pantages Theater and Max Factor Building. Before any of these developments stood along the boulevard, however, Toberman built the new lodge headquarters there, in 1922. At the time, the temple was one of the most substantial structures in Hollywood’s sparse mix of buildings and citrus groves. [19]

      “In those days when Hollywood was an independent city, the city attorney, city marshal, city treasurer and first mayor, George Dunlop, all were Masons,” Ridenour wrote. “Arthur Letts, founder of the Broadway department store, and artist Paul de Longpre, whose gallery and gardens drew many to the community, both were members along with prominent judges and a significant number of bankers. The city’s first newspaper and doctor’s office were established by members, and the city’s electric trolley car service was owned and operated by brothers of the lodge.” [20]

      Hall hoped to catch their attention.

      As a gateway into the world of ancient religions, Hall encouraged his congregants to explore Theosophy, a philosophical system founded in the late 1800s by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky that embraced notions of reincarnation, karma, the cyclic nature of creation and the interconnectedness of all life. According to Blavatsky, this Wisdom, in its pure form, existed before the dawn of civilization, but was given to and understood by only a handful of initiates and great minds throughout the ages.

      “It was Blavatsky’s contention that the Wisdom could be partially recoverable from a ‘comparative study and analyses of selected philosophers,’” wrote James Santucci, a professor of religious studies and linguistics at California State University, Fullerton, in his A Brief Overview of Theosophy.

      By those Blavatsky meant Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, or schools of philosophies such as Neo-Platonism, Vedanta, Taoism, Kabbalah and the sacred writings of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism.

      “A study of these philosophers, schools and religions by Blavatsky,” Santucci wrote, “under the guidance of two Masters of this Ancient Wisdom—one usually identified by the initials K.H. (Koot Hoomi), the other by the initial M. (Morya)—led to the writing of her two great works, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, works that partially revealed the Ancient Wisdom in a modern form.”

      Her Theosophical Society’s mission included investigating higher powers she believed were innate in man, and teaching that everything in the universe, even human souls, races and nations are subject to progressive and cyclical evolutionary development.

      One of the most prolific writers within the broader Theosophical movement was Max Heindel, a Christian mystic and German immigrant who established a spiritual commune in 1907 on a scenic bluff called Mt. Ecclesia in Oceanside, about 80 miles south of Los Angeles. Heindel subscribed to a mystical interpretation of human evolution that placed blacks and Jews behind Anglo-Saxons. Such views hardly raised an eyebrow among California’s new immigrants, most of whom were white like Hall and much of the rest of the country at the time. [21]

      Dedicated to Jesus, astrology, the power of prayer and providing an explanation for the origin, evolution and future development of the world and man, Heindel’s Rosicrucian Fellowship soon became a favorite vacation spot for young Hall and his mother.

      Their first trip to Mt. Ecclesia was in 1920, a year after Heindel’s death. [22] His widow, Augusta, was struck by Manly’s talent as a writer, his youthful pastoral work at the Church of the People, his graciousness and his intense interest in her husband’s complex books, which essentially taught that Earth is a great school to which ever-evolving individuals come by way of reincarnation, life after life.

      At Mt. Ecclesia, Hall grew so attached to Heindel’s temperamental heavy-set widow that he started calling her “mother.” She and her followers taught him astrology and the fundamentals of typesetting, printing and binding. From them, he also learned to avoid writing in longhand with an ink pen because it siphoned off one’s vitality, an admonishment he obeyed for most of his life, preferring instead to dictate his books. He showed her how to play backgammon, and was her connection to prospective younger converts. Together, they wrote numerous articles for the fellowship’s newsletter, Rays from the Rosy Cross, which compared life on the bluff to heaven on Earth.

      “Why does this spot seem so beautiful?” Hall wrote under the title “Echoes from Mt. Ecclesia” in mid-1921. “There are many other places where the stars may be seen and studied, and thousands of people see the same glorious sunsets, and enjoy the same wonderful climate. But there is something here that is not to be found in any other part of the world. There is something here that is restful and different; it seems almost like holy ground. It is because of the love that is sent here by thousands of members and the lives of self-forgetting service that the workers are living day by day, that makes this the beauty spot of the earth.” [23]

      Mrs. Heindel would become distressed by Hall’s active interest in hypnotism, which she considered one of the “black arts.” [24] None of that, however, reached the ears of Hall’s own Los Angeles congregation, which regarded his ties to the Rosicrucian Fellowship and its founder’s widow as impressive spiritual credentials.

       Hall’s cross necklace

      The mainstream press responded