Helena Roerich expressed a particular fascination with a portion of Hall’s book The Occult Anatomy of Man, opining on the composition of blood long before the electron microscope became a standard medical tool: “The blood of every man is individual. When crystallizing, it forms into geometric patterns which differ with every person... The story of one’s soul is written in his blood. The position he occupies in evolution, his hopes and fears, are all imprinted on the etheric forms which flow through his bloodstream. . . so that by means of blood analysis a far surer system could be evolved for crime detection.” [28]
Those kinds of ideas were spreading like wildfire among some of the most acclaimed creative minds of the era. Even such internationally famous artists as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Constantin Brancusi, and inventor Thomas Edison, for example, touted Theosophical notions. Edison would spend his last days trying to build a receiver capable of picking up signals from the dead.
It galled Hall that such notions had no place in American universities, which to him stood as bastions of science and technology. He decided to counter ivory-tower materialism with a spiritual center in Los Angeles of his own design and purpose, one he envisioned as “the center of a new way of life in the midst of the great Pacific theater of the future.” [29] Its mission would be to teach the “practical idealism” preserved in over 100,000 of the wonder-texts of antiquity, develop programs for the good of society, and then excite his students’ desire to put them to work in everyday life. It would be, he believed, a guiding light for a city that was growing out of its skin. Hall would be its occult theologian.
On November 20, 1934, Hall’s nonprofit Philosophical Research Society bought a prime piece of real estate overlooking Los Feliz Boulevard and the hills leading to Griffith Park from Capitol Holding Company for a mere $10, according to county records. The three-quarter-acre lot was originally owned by Anna D. Bockius, who paid $700 for it in 1918. [30]
By the time she died in 1933 it was valued at $6,720, and controlled by her son, Charles R. Bockius, a vicious ex-con with a drinking problem and a formidable criminal record. He was on parole at the time after being released from San Quentin in connection with a drunk-driving incident that left one man dead and another seriously injured. In a separate, earlier case, Bockius beat and then shot a man in the leg after learning the victim had been having an affair with his wife. [31]
At the time of the sale, Bockius, who billed himself as a realtor, was involved in nasty divorce proceedings. It was not clear how Hall managed to get the land for a pittance, although county officials speculated it may have been acquired in a partnership arrangement, or essentially given to him in the depths of the Depression.
On an overcast early morning on October 17, 1935, about one hundred people assembled in a field of wild mustard on the property and broke ground for his Philosophical Research Society. The first cornerstone was laid at a specific moment just after midnight to coordinate with stars aligned for maximum longevity. According to Hall, the crowd looked up to see those stars shining brightly through a brief break in the clouds. [32]
Rendering of Hall’s proposed PRS center
The proposed lecture hall
“This society,” Hall said at the opening ceremony, “is dedicated to the ensoulment of all arts and sciences and crafts. In harmony with the classical point of view we feel that there is a pressing need for a nonaligned institution without creed or dogma, where persons of all beliefs can seek a better understanding of life’s plan. The society requires no membership, and no one is expected to accept any arbitrary dogma. We are all here to grow—to become better and more useful.” [33]
The architect was Robert B. Stacy-Judd, a British architect, amateur archeologist and explorer who instilled a distinctly Mayan and Egyptian flavor into many Southern California buildings over the years. Stacy-Judd even wore feathered Mayan costumes to cocktail parties. [34]
“The architecture of the new building will be Mayan, simplified looking, perhaps, something like one of the buildings on that fabled continent of the Atlantic that sunk into the sea before the beginning of what we call history,” Hall told Los Angeles Times reporter George Addison in 1935.
It began with a single unit of reinforced concrete that included a front office, print shop, bindery, and library. Before long, its dark wood shelves were lined with the donated book collections of scholars of comparative religion and his own rare books and art objects Hall had collected in his travels around the world: a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from 500 B.C., Babylonian and Chaldean writings on clay tablets, Chinese oracles inscribed on human bones, the original works of great philosophers, authors and poets, and sacred writings of almost every religious doctrine, past and present. Hall’s print shop was a hub of activity, a cluttered room with large windows where he spent long workdays directing layouts, linotype operations and binding for his newest books. A few doors down was Hall’s office, a cramped quarters featuring a large brown desk and cabinets containing books and such cherished curiosities as a life-size statue of an Egyptian cat—a symbol of the clairvoyant’s ability to “see in the dark”—which he habitually stroked a few times before leaving to deliver a lecture. [35]
The proposed courtyard
On some days, Hall and his friends would ride horses in the hills of sprawling Griffith Park. Occasionally, they would converge in a circle with horses facing each other while Hall delivered impromptu lectures jokingly referred to as “sermons on the mount.” [36]
Avoiding evil thoughts Rosicrucian-style
They still talk about how Hall and a troop of followers showed up one day in 1935 in Long Beach’s popular Acres of Books store. Hall, draped in a flowing black cape, only needed to glance at a book and one of them would take it off the shelf, and then open it for his perusal. [37]
The Philosophical Research Society was only one of dozens of new mystical retreats established throughout California. One of Hall’s chief rivals, Harvey Spencer Lewis, had established the International Headquarters of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis in colorful replicas of Egyptian temples erected in a park-like setting in downtown San Jose, a few hundred miles to the north. The enclave included research laboratories and a clinic where latter-day alchemists tried to cure people of ailments ranging from depression to cancer with mind-over-matter techniques.
H. Spencer Lewis
The similarities between Hall and Lewis were striking. Both were relentless students who had been born to Welsh fathers and inherited artistic and literary tendencies. They were both plump and favored dark suits with crisp
