Manly Palmer Hall (18 March 1901 – 29 August 1990) was a Canadian author, lecturer, astrologer and mystic. Over his 70-year career he gave thousands of lectures and published over 150 volumes, of which the best known is The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928). In 1934 he founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. Early life Hall was born in 1901 in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, to Louise Palmer Hall, a chiropractor and member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, and William S. Hall, a dentist. Hall is said to have never known his father. In 1919, Hall moved to Los Angeles to reunite with his birth mother who was living in Santa Monica. After moving in with her, he very soon after became drawn to mysticism, esoteric philosophies and their underlying principles. Career In 1919, Hall took over as preacher of the Church of the People, located at Trinity Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Less than a year later, Hall booked his first lecture on the topic of reincarnation. Hall was ordained a minister in the Church of the People on May 17th, 1923. Only a few days after his ordainment, he was elected "permanent pastor" of the church. His first publications consisted of two small pamphlets, The Breastplate of the High Priest (1920) and Wands and Serpents (1927). Between 1922 and 1923 he wrote three books: The Initiates of the Flame (1922), The Ways of the Lonely Ones (1922), and The Lost Keys of Freemasonry (1923). During the early 1920s, Caroline Lloyd and her daughter Estelle, members of a family who controlled an oil field in Ventura County, California, began sending a large portion of their income to Hall. With these funds, Hall traveled throughout Europe and Asia to study the lives, customs, and religions of the people in those regions. While visiting London in the early 1930s, Hall acquired from an auction agent at Sotheby's, a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts about alchemy and esotericism. Owing to economic conditions resulting from the Great Depression, he acquired the collection for a price much lower than normal. Caroline Lloyd died in 1946 and in her will left Hall a house, $15,000 in cash, and an annual percentage of her family's oil field shares, valued at approximately $10,000 per year, for the next 38 years. The Secret Teachings of All Ages By 1928, Hall had become sufficiently known and