Secrets, Ideals, and Myth
Manly P. Hall’s Vision of America
It can be argued that myth matters more than history. Myth captures the folds and failures, ideals and setbacks, that shape history. Events come and go; human nature is constant.
It is largely, but not wholly, in that vein that I approach the historical writings of Manly P. Hall: as a combination of myth and event. And, ultimately, as a record of principles, which, too, is a function of myth.
The lowest reading of Hall’s work seeks a politics in it. There is none, at least not in the factionalist forms to which we’re accustomed. Hall’s writing is idealistic but not prescriptive. His vision of America comports somewhat with the outlook of a figure he venerated, Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831–1891). In her 1888 opus The Secret Doctrine, the Russian occultist framed America, her onetime adopted nation, as a vessel for vouchsafing the individual search for meaning and related principles of free expression and assembly. For these reasons, Blavatsky said in interviews and letters, she decamped to New York City in 1873, departing five years…
