Manly Palmer Hall

According to original subscription agreements on file at the Philosophical Research Society, editions were sold by subscription for $75 on a pre-publication basis, but "the price of this edition after delivery by the printer is understood to be One Hundred Dollars." Under the subscription terms, $15 was due at signing of the agreement, and "the balance of Sixty Dollars in four equal monthly payments each." The H.S. Crocker Company of San Francisco agreed to publish the book "if Hall could secure the interest of book designer John Henry Nash, who once worked as a printer to the Vatican."

After The Secret Teachings of All Ages was published, "Hall's life would never be the same," noted a biographer. "Overnight, he went from being just another ernest young preacher in the City of Angels to becoming an icon of the increasingly influential metaphysical movement sweeping the country in the 1920s. His book challenged assumptions about society's spiritual roots and made people look at them in new ways." Hall dedicated The Secret Teachings of All Ages to "the proposition that concealed within the emblematic figures, allegories and rituals of the ancients is a secret doctrine concerning the inner mysteries of life, which doctrine has been preserved in toto among a small band of initiated minds." As one writer put it: "The result was a gorgeous, dreamlike book of mysterious symbols, concise essays and colorful renderings of mythical beasts rising out of the sea, and angelic beings with lions' heads presiding over somber initiation rites in torch-lit temples of ancestral civilizations that had mastered latent powers beyond the reach of modern man." Read Less

It is also noteworthy that Manly Hall wrote the original story for the film, (screenplay by Anthony Coldeway) and is also credited as the narrator.

Hall and his followers went to extreme lengths to keep any gossip or information that could tarnish his image from being publicized, and little is known about his first marriage, on April 28, 1930, to Fay B. deRavenne, then 28, who had been his secretary during the preceding five years. Read Less

John Henry Nash agreed with me."

More than 80 years later, "with more than a million copies sold, The Secret Teachings of All Ages remains one of the most popular introductions to esoteric traditions."

Because The Secret Teachings of All Ages is considered a classic example of the printing and bookbinding arts, and the reprinted versions in the original format are of considerably lesser quality, a description of the original 1928 edition is warranted.

PAPER: The original edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages was an elephant folio book whose pages were 12½" wide and 18¾" tall, printed on watermarked paper that reads "Alexandra Japan Made in U.S.A." These dimensions are the result of folding the 25" by 38" paper during the printing process of making 4-page signatures so the book could be sewn, trimming ¼" from the top and bottom pages in finishing the binding, and applying gilt to the top page edges. Printing the book required more than 150 miles of Alexandra Japan paper, "the largest order of this quality paper placed in America at the time." Read Less