Master of the Mysteries. Louis Sahagun

ladies in thousand-dollar evening gowns, waving ostrich-plumed fans, taught prosperity to the hungry and poor at $25 a course, and those with adequate promotion counted their profits in the millions every year. Mysterious swamis, yogis, and the like, entranced audiences of from 2,000 to 4,000 at a meeting, and these were followed by food experts who draped the façades of our larger auditoriums with garlands of raw vegetables.” [30]

      Hall knew them all. But unlike some competitors, who he felt were selling dubious shortcuts to peace, power and plenty during the swinging 1920s, he wanted to be known as a philosopher and a shaper of a new world, one that would guide the nation through the “dark years” that he predicted “lie ahead.”

      “We need holy men and women,” Hall wrote, “to assist in the establishment of higher standards of right and wrong; to amend unjust laws on our statute books; to become the patrons of broader and nobler educational ideals; to foster the cause of world peace; to aid in the achievement of economic justice; and, most of all, to provide the millions of this generation with a workable, livable philosophy of life.”

      Hall’s writings at the time reflect the vibrant spirit of California after World War I. This was a semi-arid land of perennial sunshine, citrus groves and oil derricks pumping the fuel used by new automobiles on freshly paved highways. There was plentiful eastern Sierra water hauled south by an aqueduct, and electricity surging through miles of cables stretched across towering standards that went up in former orchards. Cottages and mansions arose from the brush of hillsides and mountains. The ambience of Mexico was pervasive. Exotic Asia seemed a stone’s throw farther east. The motion picture industry was spinning fabulous wealth from the dreams of average Americans.

      Historian Walton E. Bean noted the population of the Los Angeles metropolitan area in 1920 was five times larger than it was in 1900. A year earlier, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company built a major subsidiary in Los Angeles because the city could deliver the eight million gallons of water needed each day to run the factories. The U.S. Navy’s newly authorized Pacific Fleet docked at the bustling adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. A year later, Standard Oil opened an oil field in Huntington Beach, and Donald Douglas helped Los Angeles become a center for aircraft production.

      Over the next decade, the population of Los Angeles County exploded from less than a million people to slightly more than two million. The number of registered private automobiles quintupled to about 806,000. Los Angeles had more factory workers than San Francisco and Portland combined. [31]

      During the same period slightly more than a third of the city’s residents claimed membership in a mainstream religious denomination, according to Michael Engh, a Jesuit historian at Loyola Marymount University. Many of the rest of the spiritually inclined gravitated toward blends of Neo-Platonism and Egyptian magic, homespun interpretations of Darwin, Freud and Jung, and often watered-down and misguided notions about the esoteric traditions of Japan, China and India. Some teachers gained enormous followings by preaching certainty and success in the region they proclaimed to be the launch pad for the best that evolution had to offer.

      “Los Angeles is the greenhouse of America,” Hall wrote around this time. “It is a place of experimentation in which we are combining facts and producing new species. . . . It is primarily fitted to be the greatest cultural center of the world. A city that is sacred in being a nucleus where the finer principles of life can come into expression.” [32]

      Los Angeles was a sleepy agricultural center no more. Plans were being laid to build the world’s longest and largest water system from the Colorado River to the western coastal plain. Two-lane roads were being replaced with broad highways. Housing subdivisions were poised to expand in all directions. Downtown was buzzing with proposals for massive industrial development. Radio was opening new windows on the world. The 22-year-old Hall hoped to help infuse the emerging civic life with the highest ethical standards and a conscience. Whenever Hall found a book he liked, he’d recommend it. If he found a lifestyle that worked, he told about it. His growing reference library informed his personal interests: religious, philosophical and occult books and manuscripts—the older and more arcane the better. [33]

      Out of Hall’s studies emerged a nagging sense that the sacred history of the world was being supplanted by a new religion of science and engineering. Everything before 1900 was considered fallacy, superstition and myth. Everything after 1900 was profound, glorious and true. [34]

      “All that didn’t make sense to me,” Hall said. “It seemed as though in the effort to be modern we forgot that wisdom was neither ancient nor modern. The truth didn’t belong to any century. It belonged to all time.” [35]

      Vowing to set the record straight—and return dignity to centuries-old beliefs—Hall began making plans for a comprehensive survey of “secret teachings concealed within rituals, allegories and mysteries of all ages.” His proposed “big book” would lend to metaphysics and myth the same nobility and heft otherwise reserved for classical works.

      In the meantime, Hall chronicled his adventures in ideas in booklets and newsletters.

      In May of 1923, Hall began publishing a periodical, The All-Seeing Eye, out of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Young, followers who lived on West 20th Street, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. [36] Hall, who had been renting a small room in an alley off of Hill Street, moved in with the Youngs after the untimely death of their son. [37]

      The unschooled but widely read publisher displayed an ability to write with surprising confidence and depth. “Those who have found joy in reading and bringing into play upon their lives the wisdom of past ages as it is immortalized in ancient tomes,” Hall said in one of the first issues, “have reached a great point in the growth of their being. But, above all, if we realize that the book gives to us that which we have given it, we then understand that mirrored in its pages are the thoughts and ideals of our own lives.” [38]

      The Youngs’ spacious home became a hive of activity. It was there, with the assistance of a dozen volunteers from his Church of the People, that Hall produced his first literary efforts—a series of illustrated mystical booklets with titles such as Initiates of the Flame, The Maker of the Gods, The Face of Christ and The Last of the Shamans. [39]

      At the end of each workday, Hall and his workers gathered in Mrs. Young’s expansive red dining room over casseroles of pink beans baked with onion, garlic and cheeses. Under shelves festooned with the Young family’s china, Hall entertained them with theories about “truths which the mind can never know.” [40]

       Caroline Lloyd

      Hall stood apart like some Don Quixote, a little mad and steeped in old magical works, inviting others to join him on what he called “the road to inner light.” His newspaper’s advertisements reached out to an emerging subculture in a city where the most popular dance was the “Feather Flutter” and a ham sandwich with trimmings and apple pie à la Mode went for 10 cents. [41] The Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside advertised a new occult boarding school for children between four and seven. Dawson’s Bookshop in the 600 block of South Grand Avenue offered “the most complete stock of occult books in the West.” The Eutropheon restaurants on Olive Street and Hill Street promised “fresh raw foods.” The Reed Brothers Company funeral home in the 700 block of Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles announced “a unique method of caring