On May 3, 12:02 pm, "Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com> wrote:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/04/reagan_an...
Political Bookworm - Reagan and the occult
Ronald Reagan had an interest in lucky numbers and newspaper horoscopes.
Less known is that a certain scholar of occult philosophy had a lifelong
influence on the 40th president of the United States. Mitch Horowitz,
editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin and the author of "Occult America:
The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation," reveals the
details.
By Mitch Horowitz
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, Manly
P. Hall. Judging from a tale that Reagan borrowed from Hall, the
president's reading tastes ran to some of the outer reaches of esoteric
spiritual lore.
Hall, who worked in the Reagans' hometown of Los Angeles until his death
in 1990, attained underground fame in the late 1920s when, at the age of
27, he published a massive codex to the mystical and esoteric
philosophies of antiquity: The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Exploring
subjects from Native American mythology to Pythagorean mathematics to
the geometry of Ancient Egypt, this encyclopedia esoterica won the
admiration of readers ranging from General John Pershing to Elvis
Presley. Novelist Dan Brown cites it as a key source.
After publishing his great work, Hall spent the rest of his life
lecturing and writing within the walls of his Egypto-art deco campus in
L.A.'s Griffith Park neighborhood. He called the place a "mystery
school" in the mold of Pythagoras's ancient academy. It was there in
1944 that the occult thinker produced a short work, one little known
beyond his immediate circle. This book, The Secret Destiny of America,
caught the eye of the future president, then a middling Hollywood actor
gravitating toward politics.
Hall's concise volume described how America was the product of a "Great
Plan" for religious liberty and self-governance, launched by a hidden
order of ancient philosophers and secret societies. In one chapter, Hall
described a rousing speech delivered by a mysterious "unknown speaker"
before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The "strange
man," wrote Hall, invisibly entered and exited the locked doors of the
Philadelphia statehouse on July 4th, 1776, delivering an oration that
bolstered the wavering spirits of the delegates. "God has given America
to be free!" commanded the mysterious speaker, urging the men to
overcome their fears of the noose, axe, or gibbet, and to seal destiny
by signing the great document. Newly emboldened, the delegates rushed
forward to add their names. They looked to thank the stranger only to
discover that he had vanished from the locked room. Was this, Hall
wondered, "one of the agents of the secret Order, guarding and directing
the destiny of America?"
At a 1957 commencement address at his alma mater Eureka College, Reagan,
then a corporate spokesman for GE, sought to inspire students with this
leaf from occult history. "This is a land of destiny," Reagan said, "and
our forefathers found their way here by some Divine system of selective
service gathered here to fulfill a mission to advance man a further step
in his climb from the swamps."
Reagan then retold (without naming a source) the tale of Hall's unknown
speaker. "When they turned to thank the speaker for his timely words,"
Reagan concluded, "he couldn't be found and to this day no one knows who
he was or how he entered or left the guarded room."
Reagan revived the story in 1981, when Parade magazine asked the
president for a personal essay on what July 4th meant to him.
Presidential aide Michael Deaver delivered the piece with a note saying,
"This Fourth of July message is the president's own words and written
initially in the president's hand," on a yellow pad at Camp David.
Reagan retold the legend of the unknown speaker - this time using
language very close to Hall's own: "When they turned to thank him for
his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who
knew who he was or how had come in or gone out through the locked and
guarded doors."
Where did Hall uncover the tale that inspired a president? The episode
originated as "The Speech of the Unknown" in a collection of folkloric
stories about America's founding, published in 1847 under the title
Washington and his Generals, or Legends of the Revolution by American
social reformer and muckraker George Lippard. Lippard, a friend of Edgar
Allan Poe, had a strong taste for the gothic - he cloaked his mystery
man in a "dark robe." He also tacitly acknowledged inventing the story:
"The name of the Orator.is not definitely known. In this speech, it is
my wish to compress some portion of the fiery eloquence of the time."
Regardless, the story took on its own life and came to occupy the same
shadow land between fact and fiction as the parables of George
Washington chopping down a cherry tree, or young Abe Lincoln walking
miles to return a bit of a change to a country-store customer. As with
most myths, the story assumed different attributes over time. By 1911,
the speech resurfaced in a collection of American political oratory,
with the robed speaker fancifully identified as Patrick Henry.
For his part, Hall seemed to know almost nothing about the story's point
of origin. He had been given a copy of the "Speech of the Unknown" by a
since-deceased secretary of the occult Theosophical Society, but with no
bibliographical information other than it being from a "rare old volume
of early American political speeches." The speech appeared in 1938 in
the Society's journal, The Theosophist, with the sole note that it was
"published in a rare volume of addresses, and known probably to only one
in a million, even of American citizens."
It is Hall's language that unmistakably marks the Reagan telling.
Biographer Edmund Morris noted Reagan's fondness for apocryphal tales
and his "Dalíesque ability to bend reality to his own purposes." Yet he
added that the president's stories "should be taken seriously because
they represent core philosophy." This influential (and sometimes
inscrutable) president of the late-twentieth century found an
illustration of his core belief in America's purpose within the pages of
an occult work little known beyond its genre. Lucky numbers and
newspaper horoscopes were not Reagan's only interest in the arcane.
By Steven E. Levingston | April 30, 2010; 5:30 AM ET