Reagan and the Occult

How a president echoed the writings of occult scholar Manly P. Hall

I have written several times about President Ronald Reagan’s interest in the occult, in particular his integration of writings by scholar of esotericism Manly P. Hall into his speeches. There is evidence that the two met, which I explore in my essay “Occult American” in Uncertain Places. Here is my earliest piece of writing on the topic, which appeared in the Washington Post on April 30, 2010.

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In spring of 1988, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged publicly what journalists had whispered for years: Ronald and Nancy Reagan were devotees of astrology. A tell-all memoir had definitively linked the first lady to a San Francisco stargazer, confirming speculation that started decades earlier when Reagan, as California’s governor-elect, scheduled his first oath of office at the eyebrow-raising hour of 12:10 a.m. Many detected an effort to align the inaugural with promising heavenly signs. Fitzwater also confirmed the president’s penchant for “lucky numbers,” or what is sometimes called numerology.

There was more to the story than the White House let on. In a speech and essay produced decades apart, Reagan revealed the unmistakable mark of a little-known but widely influential scholar of occult philosophy…