The Secret Teachings of All Ages Quotes

“To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Man's status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“It was apparent that materialism was in complete control of the economic structure, the final objective of which was for the individual to become part of a system providing an economic security at the expense of the human soul, mind, and body.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“The criers of the Mysteries speak again, bidding all men welcome to the House of Light. The great institution of materiality has failed. The false civilization built by man has turned, and like the monster of Frankenstein, is destroying its creator. Religion wanders aimlessly in the maze of theological speculation. Science batters itself impotently against the barriers of the unknown. Only transcendental philosophy knows the path. Only the illumined reason can carry the understanding part of man upward to the light. Only philosophy can teach man to be born well, to live well, to die well, and in perfect measure be born again. Into this band of the elect--those who have chosen the life of knowledge, of virtue, and of utility--the philosophers of the ages invite YOU.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Though the modern world may know a million secrets, the ancient world knew one - and that was greater than the million; for the million secrets breed death, disaster, sorrow, selfishness, lust, and avarice, but the one secret confers life, light, and truth.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Esoterically, the Hanged Man is the human spirit which is suspended from heaven by a single thread. Wisdom, not death, is the reward for this voluntary sacrifice during which the human soul, suspended above the world of illusion, and meditating upon its unreality, is rewarded by the achievement of self-realization.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Plato defined good as threefold in character: good in the soul, expressed through the virtues; good in the body, expressed through the symmetry and endurance of the parts; and good in the external world, expressed through social position and companionship.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages - Reader's Edition: Unabridged

“When confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed. While the former may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity. There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed the esoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations. In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan (deities representing the procreative energies), the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths. In all cities of the ancient”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“Man’s threefold lower nature—consisting of his physical organism, his emotional nature, and his mental faculties—reflects the light of his threefold Divinity and bears witness of It in the physical world. Man’s three bodies are symbolized by an upright triangle; his threefold spiritual nature by an inverted triangle. These two triangles, when united in the form of a six-pointed star, were called by the Jews “the Star of David,” “the Signet of Solomon,” and are more commonly known today as “the Star of Zion.” These triangles symbolize the spiritual and material universes linked together in the constitution of the human creature, who partakes of both Nature and Divinity. Man’s animal nature partakes of the earth; his divine nature of the heavens; his human nature of the mediator.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages - Reader's Edition: Unabridged

“They proved that it was possible to produce beauty in life by surrounding life with
beauty. They discovered that symmetrical bodies were built by souls continuously in the presence of
symmetrical bodies; that noble thoughts were produced by minds surrounded by examples of mental
nobility. Conversely, if a man were forced to look upon an ignoble or asymmetrical structure it would
arouse within him a sense of ignobility which would provoke him to commit ignoble deeds. If an illproportioned building were erected in the midst of a city there would be ill-proportioned children born in
that community; and men and women, gazing upon the asymmetrical structure, would live inharmonious
lives. Thoughtful men of antiquity realized that their great philosophers were the natural products of the
æsthetic ideals of architecture, music, and art established as the standards of the cultural systems of the time.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illumined faith, and fear into love.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“Briefly stated, the true purpose of ancient philosophy was to discover a method whereby development of the rational nature could be accelerated instead of awaiting the slower processes of Nature.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“It is difficult for many to realize that they are actual universes; that their physical bodies are a visible nature through the structure of which countless waves of evolving life are unfolding their latent potentialities.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“THE NINE WORLDS OF THE ODINIC MYSTERIES.      The Nordic Mysteries were given in nine chambers, or caverns, the candidate advancing through them in sequential order. These chambers of initiation represented the nine spheres into which the Drottars divided the universe: (1) Asgard, the Heaven World of the Gods; (2) Alf-heim, the World of the light and beautiful Elves, or Spirits; (3) Nifl-heim, the World of Cold and Darkness, which is located in the North; (4) Jotun-heim, the World of the Giants, which is located in the East; (5) Midgard, the Earth World of human beings, which is located in the midst, or middle place; (6) Vana-heim, the World of the Vanes, which is located in the West; (7) Muspells-heim, the World of Fire, which is located in the South; 8) Svart-alfa-heim, the World of the dark and treacherous Elves, which is under the earth; and (9) Hel-heim, the World of cold and the abode of the dead, which is located at the very lowest point of the universe. It is to be understood that all of these worlds are invisible to the senses, except Midgard, the home of human creatures, but during the process of initiation the soul of the candidate—liberated from its earthly sheath by the secret power of the priests—wanders amidst the inhabitants of these various spheres. There is undoubtedly a relationship between the nine worlds of the Scandinavians and the nine spheres, or planes, through which initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries passed in their ritual of regeneration.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“The fool lives but for today; the philosopher lives forever.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“Hegel further believed that all things owe their existence to their opposites and that all opposites are actually identical.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“The Great Pyramid was not a lighthouse, an observatory, or a tomb, but the first temple of the Mysteries, the first structure erected as a repository for those secret truths which are the certain foundation of all arts and sciences.”
― Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages — Unabridged 1928 Illustrated Edition

“What was knowledge, what was truth, beauty, love, idealism, philosophy, or religion when compared to man's desire to control an infinitesimal spot in the fields of Cosmos for an inestimably minute fragment of time?”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“Man is thus surrounded by a supersensible universe of which he knows nothing because the centers of sense perception within himself have not been developed sufficiently to respond to the subtler rates of vibration of which that universe is composed.”
― Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages — Unabridged 1928 Illustrated Edition

“Philosophy invites man out of the vainness of selfishness; out of the sorrow of ignorance and the despair of worldliness; out of the travesty of ambition and the cruel clutches of greed; out of the red hell of hate and the cold tomb of dead idealism.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“Without the mysterious keys carried by the hierophants of the Egyptian, Brahmin, and Persian cults the gates of Wisdom cannot be opened.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“The true subject of Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the will; the object of his philosophy is the elevation of the mind to the point where it is capable of controlling the will. Schopenhauer likens the will to a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the intellect, which is a weak lame man possessing the power of sight. The will is the tireless cause of manifestation and every part of Nature the product of will. The brain is the product of the will to know; the hand the product of the will to grasp. The entire intellectual and emotional constitutions of man are subservient to the will and are largely concerned with the effort to justify the dictates of the will. Thus the mind creates elaborate systems of thought simply to prove the necessity of the thing willed. Genius, however, represents the state wherein the intellect has gained supremacy over the will and the life is ruled by reason and not by impulse.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“The Stoics were essentially pantheists, since they maintained that as there is nothing better than the world, the world is God.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“From Kircher's Ars Magna Sciendi. In the above diagram Kircher arranges eighteen objects in two vertical columns and then determines the number of arrangements in which they can be combined. By the same method Kircher further estimates that fifty objects may be arranged in 1,273,726,838,815,420,339,851,343,083,767,005,515,293,749,454,795,408,000,000,000,000 combinations. From this it will be evident that infinite diversity is possible, for the countless parts of the universe may be related to each other in an incalculable number of ways; and through the various combinations of these limitless subdivisions of being, infinite individuality and infinite variety must inevitably result. Thus it is further evident that life can never become monotonous or exhaust the possibilities of variety.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“Skepticism as propounded by Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 B.C.) and by Timon, Sextus Empiricus said that those who seek must find or deny they have found or can find, or persevere in the inquiry.”
― Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

“The unfolding of man’s spiritual nature is as much an exact science as astronomy, medicine or jurisprudence.”
― Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages — Unabridged 1928 Illustrated Edition

“By initiation into the Mysteries and a certain process known as operative theology, this law of birth and death is transcended, and during the course of physical existence that part of the spirit which is asleep in form is awakened without the intervention of death.
This is at once the primary purpose and the consummate achievement of the Mysteries: that man shall become aware of and consciously be reunited with the divine source of himself without tasting of physical dissolution.”
― Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages — Unabridged 1928 Illustrated Edition