Full Description
An intimate, funny, yet tragic portrait of extraordinary esoteric scholar Manly P. Hall and the occult scene of 1980s Los Angeles
• Details how the author and her boyfriend developed a close friendship with Manly Hall and how Hall at first mistook her boyfriend as his heir apparent
• Explains how Hall adopted the author as his "girl Friday" and personal weirdo screener, giving her access to the inner circles of occult Los Angeles
• Richly depicts the characters who worked and gathered at Hall's Philosophical Research Society, including Hall's wife, the famed "Mad Marie"
In the early 1980s, underground musicians Tamra Lucid and her boyfriend Ronnie Pontiac discovered the book The Secret Teachings of All Ages at the Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. Poring over the tome, they were awakened to the esoteric and occult teachings of the world. Tamra and Ronnie were delighted to discover that the book's author, Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), master teacher of Hermetic mysteries and collector of all things mystical, lived in LA and gave lectures every Sunday at his mystery school, the Philosophical Research Society (PRS). After their first tantalizing Sunday lecture, Tamra and Ronnie soon started volunteering at the PRS, beginning a seven-year friendship with Manly P. Hall, who eventually officiated their wedding in his backyard.
In this touching, hilarious, and ultimately tragic autobiographical account, Tamra shares an intimate portrait of Hall and the occult world of New Age Los Angeles, including encounters with astrologers, scholars, artists, spiritual seekers, and celebrities such as Jean Houston and Marianne Williamson. Tamra vividly describes how she used her time at the PRS to learn everything she could not only about metaphysics but also about the people who practice it. But when Tamra begs Hall to banish a certain man from the PRS--the same man who inherited Hall's estate and whom his wife Marie later alleged was Hall's murderer--Tamra and Ronnie are the ones banished.
Tamra's noir chronicle of an improbable friendship between a twenty-something punk and an eighty-year-old metaphysical scholar reveals Hall not only as an inspiring esoteric thinker but also as a genuinely kind human being who simply wanted to share his quest for inner meaning and rare wisdom with the world.
Contents
Foreword by Danny Goldberg
Cast of Characters
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary
The Big Book
My First Sunday at the Philosophical Research Society
First Lecture
The Inner Circle
Appointment with Destiny
The Japanese Altar
9 Pluto
At Home with the Halls
Jazz Cigarettes
The Alchemy of Baking
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Fabulous Creatures
The Pinch Hitter
Warnings from the Sybils
Book Hunting with the Halls
Midnight Archaeology
The Space Mother
Lost and Found
Two Funerals
A Wedding
The Society of Five Fellows
The Ice Cracks
Regulars
Among the Hungry Ghosts
The Yellow Sweater Cult
One Very Bad Apple
The Curtain Falls
Cassandra
Don't Look Back
False Sunrise
To the Strongest
An Olympian Goodbye
The Rest of Art
Applied Metaphysics
Epilogue
"Mad Marie's" Zucchini Pancake Recipe
About the Author
