A closer look
Secret Teachings of All Ages is considered the absolute encyclopedia of mystical philosophy, but it was published by Manly P. Hall when he was only twenty-seven and hadn't actually experienced any of it. He somehow managed to compile an overwhelmingly massive tome on everything from Rosicrucianism to Kabbalah simply by reading a ton of books and being incredibly confident in his own summarizing abilities. The fact that generations of hardcore occultists treat this book as an infallible sacred text is deeply amusing when you realize it was basically the ultimate esoteric college term paper written by a guy who was just very good at aggressive library research
