Apprentice to Manly P. Hall: Ronnie Pontiac on His Life Inside the Philosophical Research Society
The musician and author on his seven years studying under the sage of Los Angeles — what he learned, and what it cost.
In the 1980s two lost twenty-somethings walked into a mysterious compound at the top of a hill and stayed for seven years.
Ronnie Pontiac and Tamra Lucid spent their formative years under the tutelage of a man many consider one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. It’s a story Tamra would go on to recall in her 2021 book, Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: My Seven Years in Occult Los Angeles with Manly Palmer Hall, a memoir documenting the time she and Ronnie spent at the Philosophical Research Society.
It’s an experience that would mark both of their lives, with Ronnie and Tamra going on to shape the culture in their own ways, as musicians, filmmakers, and scholars.
Who Is Manly P. Hall?
Born in 1901 and standing well over six feet, Hall was a larger-than-life character who believed that philosophy, religion, science, and art weren’t separate things, and that wisdom doesn’t belong to one culture or one tradition. To that end, while still in his twenties, he traveled the world seeking knowledge and collecting books.
In 1928, at the age of 27, he published his findings as The Secret Teachings of All Ages—by far his best-known work, and one you’ll start seeing everywhere once you know to look. Its readers make a strange constellation: novelist Dan Brown cites it as a key source, Elvis Presley was a devoted reader, and Carl Jung drew on Hall’s rare-book collection while writing Psychology and Alchemy.
In 1934 Hall found a home for his collections and teachings when he founded PRS. Its Mayan Revival–style campus went up two years later, at the top of a hill overlooking the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz—this was long before there was much of a surrounding neighborhood to overlook. The neighborhood grew around PRS—just as, we could argue, the culture of Los Angeles grew around Manly P. Hall.
At PRS Hall would grow his library, publish his books and essays, and lecture regularly on a wide array of topics well into his 80s.
My Connection to PRS
I must admit to knowing almost nothing about Hall before moving to Los Angeles, but he has since come to occupy a little piece of my heart. PRS, the campus he built, is home to my in-person monthly event, the Los Angeles Astrology Salon, and in some ways has become the foundation and source of inspiration for my personal astrological practice.
I met Ronnie through a combination of chance, impulsivity, and — I have to assume — forces emanating from beyond the grave of Manly P. Hall.
In May of 2026, decades after stepping away from PRS, Ronnie joined me for a discussion on the Orphic Hymns in the classroom where Manly gave his Sunday lectures — the same classroom where Ronnie would go on to deliver his own Sunday lectures for years.
The interview turned into a solo performance, and while I don’t regret not recording that session — some things are meant to remain private — it was such a moving conversation that I wanted to share the experience with a larger audience.
The following is an excerpt from my podcast with Ronnie. The conversation explores a period when his life overlapped with Hall’s — a window into both their lives.
All quotes below are taken from Ronnie and have been edited and condensed to fit this space.
The Rational Soul of the World
As I opened it up, my mind was blown by reading the dedication to the rational soul of the world. And I just thought, whoa — like the rational soul of the world? Like the world has a soul, and the soul of the world is rational? Like, wow, what an idea.
He Looked Right at Me
During the lecture, he looks right at me and he says, “People who have an irrational fear of natural disasters because of their guilt about how they’ve been living their lives.” And I was just, “What the hell just happened?” And he looks at Tamra a few minutes later and he says people who are born in harsh circumstances, but like a weed that grows through a crack in the concrete, a beautiful flower comes up. I would find out later, when I worked for him, that he couldn’t really see us. His vision was very bad at that time, and we were just basically colorful blurs.
No One Knows
There was much discussion at PRS about what that was. Was he an adept who had secret knowledge of our inner souls? Was he just naturally psychic? Was he really a medium? Was he somebody that was so deeply in the Tao that the synchronicities just gathered around him and spilled from his lips? No one knows, but he definitely did that quite often.
The Last Resort
The people who wanted to meet with him were people who had had experiences that derailed their lives and they did not know what to do. They went to psychologists, they went to priests, they went everywhere they could to try to get help to undo what had been done, and they would always end up at Manly Hall’s office.
Come In and Make Yourself Miserable
He was sitting behind this beautifully carved Chinese desk, and he had these four elderly women who ran the place — the librarian, his secretary, the office manager, and the vice president of the society — all standing there around him looking at me like I was a criminal, and they were right. And he said, in this hilarious kind of W.C. Fields accent, “Come on in and make yourself miserable.”
Let My Enemies Write My Story
He told me not to write a biography of him. He said, “Let my enemies write my story.”
About Ronnie
Ronnie Pontiac was Manly Palmer Hall’s research assistant for seven years. Author of the books American Metaphysical Religion and The Rosicrucian Counterculture, he co-authored The Magic of the Orphic Hymns and The Unobstructed Way. He writes the weekly Star Weather Astrology Forecast on Substack as Spiritual Mysteries. He’s also produced award-winning documentaries and was guitarist for the riot grrrl band Lucid Nation.
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