The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Definition

The Secret Teachings of All Ages is a folio by Manly P. Hall, published in San Francisco in 1928, that surveys the symbolism of the ancient mysteries, Hermetism, the Qabbalah, alchemy, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Hall wrote it in his mid-twenties from older books and printed it without footnotes, so it is a guide to sources rather than a source.

Primary source

I make no claim for either the infallibility or the originality of any statement herein contained. I have studied the fragmentary writings of the ancients sufficiently to realize that dogmatic utterances concerning their tenets are worse than foolhardy.

— Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Preface (signed Los Angeles, May 28, 1928), H. S. Crocker Company, San Francisco, 1928. Wikisource transcription, public domain in the United States. Open-access copy

Deep Understanding

The book runs to more than forty chapters. It opens with the mysteries of the Druids, Mithras, the Gnostics and Eleusis, turns to Hermes Trismegistus, the Great Pyramid and Isis, and then works through Pythagoras and number, the Qabbalah and the Tree of the Sephiroth, the tarot, the Rosicrucians, alchemy and the chemical marriage, Freemasonry, mystic Christianity and Islam. Its colour plates are by the illustrator J. Augustus Knapp.

Hall's preface disclaims both infallibility and originality. It also explains a choice that matters to anyone checking a claim: all footnotes were removed, and the quotations and references to other authors were worked into the running text, with a bibliography at the end. The book therefore tells you what Hall read, and to find where a statement comes from you have to trace it back through that bibliography to the older author. The earliest documented source is always one step behind the page.

According to the preface, work on the text began on January 1, 1926 and ran for more than two years, after collecting reference material that started in 1921. The first edition of 550 copies was sold by subscription and closed a year before the manuscript went to the printer; a King Solomon edition of 550 and a Theosophical edition of 200 followed. Hall, born in Canada in 1901, founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles in 1934 and died in 1990, and the book has stayed in print in many later editions.

Alongside The Kybalion, it is often the first door a modern reader finds into Hermetic and occult symbolism. That makes it worth reading for its map of the field and worth checking, claim by claim, against the texts it summarises.

Often confused with

The Kybalion: a short 1908 book by the anonymous "Three Initiates" that reduces Hermetism to seven principles, where Hall's folio is a broad survey under its author's own name. Mystery Schools: the ancient institutions of initiation that Hall's opening chapters describe, not the book that describes them.

Stefan's Alkimia. (2026, October 1). The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Pleroma Guide. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/secret-teachings-of-all-ages

Stefan's Alkimia. “The Secret Teachings of All Ages.” Pleroma Guide, 1 Oct. 2026, pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/secret-teachings-of-all-ages.

Stefan's Alkimia. “The Secret Teachings of All Ages.” Pleroma Guide. October 1, 2026. https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/secret-teachings-of-all-ages.

@online{alkimia2026secretteachingsofallages,
  author = {{Stefan's Alkimia}},
  title = {{The Secret Teachings of All Ages}},
  organization = {{Pleroma Guide}},
  date = {2026-10-01},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://pleroma.guide/en/lexicon/secret-teachings-of-all-ages},
  langid = {english}
}