The Life and Lies of Manly Palmer Hall—
A Review of Master of the Mysteries—
New Revelations on The Life of
Manly Palmer Hall by Louis Sahagun
This volume, in its journalistic sensationalist superficiality—as is only fitting for an author who is an LA Times staff writer—that appears to neglect the soulful qualities of the man under consideration as opposed to his persona, strikes me a little as constituting a real-world equivalent to exploitative journalist Rita Skeeter's account of 'The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore', as related in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which, like the present book under consideration, was somewhat opportunistically published on the heels of the old wizard's murder, the circumstances surrounding Hall's death also being most suspicious.
Indeed, Hall was a magician of the first rank (just like Dumbledore was a wizard of the first rank), was the head of a philosophical (as opposed to wizardry) school, warned and, in his way, fought against the dark arts (in the form of black magic) in the real world, was as wise as can be and, by most accounts I have come across on the intertrap, as kind as can be, in addition to which, in a way that recalls Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's online claims about the headmaster of Hogwarts, Hall may well have engaged in homosexual activity (indeed, according to a helper who came to evolve in the inner circle of the elder Hall, and whose heartfelt account of the philosopher can be found on a blogsite named Newtopia Magazine, an account which in my opinion forms a wonderful corrective to the more pejorative portrayals of Hall that are in wider circulation, Hall rather cheekily kept an Aleister Crowley poem about buggery in one of his private drawers), and otherwise led an extremely adventurous, eventful, courageous, and tragic life.
Despite this book providing an essential background and backdrop to the thinker's career, I think that the proper entry into Hall's legacy, despite his inevitable shortcomings as a human being, is still to be gained through his written and spoken word.