• Details how the author and her boyfriend developed a close friendship with Manly Hall and how Hall at first mistook her boyfriend as his heir apparent
• Explains how Hall adopted the author as his "girl Friday" and personal weirdo screener, giving her access to the inner circles of occult Los Angeles
• Richly depicts the characters who worked and gathered at Hall's Philosophical Research Society, including Hall's wife, the famed "Mad Marie"
In the early 1980s, underground musicians Tamra Lucid and her boyfriend Ronnie Pontiac discovered the book The Secret Teachings of All Ages at the Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. Poring over the tome, they were awakened to the esoteric and occult teachings of the world. Tamra and Ronnie were delighted to discover that the book's author, Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), master teacher of Hermetic mysteries and collector of all things mystical, lived in LA and gave lectures every Sunday at his mystery school, the Philosophical Research Society (PRS). After their first tantalizing Sunday lecture, Tamra and Ronnie soon started volunteering at the PRS, beginning a seven-year friendship with Manly P. Hall, who eventually officiated their wedding in his backyard.
In this touching, hilarious, and ultimately tragic autobiographical account, Tamra shares an intimate portrait of Hall and the occult world of New Age Los Angeles, including encounters with astrologers, scholars, artists, spiritual seekers, and celebrities such as Jean Houston and Marianne Williamson. Tamra vividly describes how she used her time at the PRS to learn everything she could not only about metaphysics but also about the people who practice it. But when Tamra begs Hall to banish a certain man from the PRS--the same man who inherited Hall's estate and whom his wife Marie later alleged was Hall's murderer--Tamra and Ronnie are the ones banished.
Tamra's noir chronicle of an improbable friendship between a twenty-something punk and an eighty-year-old metaphysical scholar reveals Hall not only as an inspiring esoteric thinker but also as a genuinely kind human being who simply wanted to share his quest for inner meaning and rare wisdom with the world. Tamra Lucid is a founding member of the experimental rock band Lucid Nation. She was a writer and editor for Newtopia Magazine and the principal interviewer for the original Reality Sandwich. She has produced documentary films, including Exile Nation: The Plastic People, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock, and the award-winning Viva Cuba Libre: Rap Is War. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Ronnie Pontiac. The Big Book
Ronnie and I joining our fates, as you can imagine, could have led to all kinds of mayhem. Ronnie was troubled, more troubled than me. We discovered we had the same feeling of having to get somewhere, without knowing where or why. Ronnie was already searching for something better. But his definition needed a little elevation. Maybe the destiny he was feeling might be as something other than a musician who dies young to his everlasting fame, especially since he had never done anything to make himself famous.
Ronnie's parents showed a rare optimism when they gave him money for a haircut on his birthday. Maybe they knew he would spend it on something he wanted but they didn't wish to appear nice or approving. We promptly went to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore instead, to find something special in the used branch. We were looking for a copy of Atlantis, Mother of Empires. No such luck, so we searched for a worthwhile substitute.
Ronnie had taken me to the Bodhi Tree on our second date. I met their mascot, a big ol' ginger cat named Bear. We became friends, a tradition I kept with every Bodhi Tree cat, including Lucia, whose reign ended when the store closed and she was taken home by an employee.
In that converted West Hollywood cottage of a used bookstore, Ronnie found a 1936 edition of a tome with an e
