The Occult Art of John Augustus Knapp
By Michael Pearce
A generous series of mysterious and colorful lithographs enrich the pages of a very big book resting on a lectern within the paneled walls and book-lined shelves of the library of the Philosophical Research Society. It is The Secret Teachings of All Ages. It is a beautiful tome, now nearly a century old, written by the prolific and charismatic Manly P. Hall, who created it to give the writers of the wisdom of the world the book he believed they deserved. To lend it the gravity and weight he appreciated in the alchemical texts he collected, he employed artist John Augustus Knapp to paint dozens of bright gouache illustrations, capturing the complex ideas of esoteric philosophical concepts in pictorial form, expressing them as allegorical symbols and portraits of the subjects of each chapter.
Subscribe to the New PRS Journal to read on...
Subscribe to the New PRS Journal to read on...
Nothing comes from nothing. Manly Hall’s vision for the All-Seeing Eye was entirely supported by contributions from its readers who paid for their subscription with gifts made according to their means. Manly Hall wrote,
“This magazine is published and distributed privately to those who make possible with their financial support its publication. The magazine cannot be bought and has no fixed value. Like all of the ancient teachings which it seeks to promulgate, it has no comparative value, but the students must support it for its own intrinsic merit.”