The Occult Anatomy of Man

Manly P. Hall

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789125139
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

First published in 1929, this is a study of the occult aspects of human physiology by Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), a Canadian-born occultist, mystic and author best known for his book, The Secret Teaching of All Ages, published one year earlier.In The Occult Anatomy of Man, Hall has gathered together a world-renowned collection of books and manuscripts on alchemy, mysticism, and the occult, which became part of the library of an organisation the Philosophical Research Society, which he founded in 1934.Manley Palmer Hall was the author of over a hundred books and pamphlets on the esoteric subjects.

PART I—THE HUMAN BODY IN SYMBOLISM

In Scripture we are told that God made man in His own image. It is so stated not only in the Christian Bible but also in the holy writings of nearly all enlightened people. The Jewish patriarchs taught that the human body was the Microcosm, or little Cosmos, made in the image of the Macrocosm, or the great Cosmos. This analogy between the finite and the Infinite is said to be one of the keys by the aid of which the secrets of Holy Writ are unlocked. There is no doubt that the Old Testament is a physiological and anatomical textbook to those capable of reading it from a scientific viewpoint. The functions of the human body, the attributes of the human mind, and the qualities of the human soul have been personified by the wise men of the ancient world, and a great drama has been built around their relationships to themselves and to each other. To the great Egyptian demigod, Hermes, the human race owes its concept of the law of analogy. The great Hermetic axiom was, That which is above is like unto that which is below, and that which is below is like unto that which is above. The religions of the ancient world were all based upon Nature-worship, which in a degenerated form has survived to our own day as phallicism. The worship of the parts and functions of the human body began in the later Lemurian period. During the Atlantean epoch this religion gave place to sun-worship, but the new faith incorporated into its doctrines many of the rituals and symbols of the previous belief. The building of temples in the form of the human body is a custom common to all peoples. The Tabernacle of the Jews, the great Egyptian Temple of Karnak, the religious structures of the Hawaiian priests, and the Christian churches laid out in the form of the Cross, are all examples of this practice. If the human body were laid out with the arms spread in the shape of any of these buildings, it would be found that the high altar would occupy the same relative position in the building that the brain occupies in the human body.

All the priests of the ancient world were anatomists. They recognized that all the functions of Nature were reproduced in miniature in the human body. They therefore used man as the textbook, teaching their disciples that to understand man was to understand the universe. These wise men believed that every star in the heavens, every element in the earth, and every function in Nature was represented by a corresponding center, pole or activity within the human body.

This correlation between Nature without and the nature of man within, which was concealed from the multitudes, formed the secret teachings of the ancient priestcrafts. Religion in Atlantis and Egypt was taken much more seriously than it is today. It was the very life of these peoples. The priests had complete control over the millions of ignorant men and women who had been taught since childhood that these robed and bearded patriarchs were direct messengers from God; and it was believed that any disobedience to the commands of the priests would bring down upon the offender’s head the wrath of the Almighty. The temple depended for its maintenance upon its secret wisdom, which gave its priests control over certain powers of Nature and made them vastly superior in wisdom and understanding to the laity whom they controlled.

These wise ones realized that there was a great deal more involved in religion than the chanting of mantrams and the singing of hymns; they realized that the path of salvation could be walked successfully only by those who had practical, scientific knowledge of the occult function of their own bodies. The anatomical symbolism which they evolved in order to perpetuate this understanding has come down to modern Christianity, but the keys to it have apparently been lost. It is a tragic situation for religionists that they are surrounded by hundreds of symbols which they cannot understand; but it is still sadder that they have even forgotten that these symbols ever had any meaning other than the foolish interpretations which they themselves have concocted.

The idea prevalent in the minds of Christians that their faith is the one and only truly inspired doctrine, and that it came parentless into the world, is unreasonable in the extreme. A study of comparative religions proves beyond doubt that Christianity has begged, borrowed or stolen its philosophies and concepts from the religions and philosophies of the ancient and mediaeval pagan worlds. Among the religious symbols and allegories which belonged to the world long before the coming of Christianity are a few to which we would like to call your attention. The following Christian symbols and concepts are of pagan origin:

The Christian cross comes from Egypt and India; the triple mitre from the faith of the Mithraics; the shepherd’s crook from the Hermetic Mysteries and Greece; the Immaculate Conception from India; the Transfiguration from Persia; and the Trinity from the Brahmins. The Virgin Mary, as the mother of God, is found in a dozen different faiths. There are over twenty crucified world Saviors. The church steeple is an adaptation of Egyptian obelisks and pyramids, while the Christian devil is the Egyptian Typhon with certain modifications. The deeper one goes into the problem, the more he realizes that there is nothing new under the sun. A truly sincere study of the Christian faith proves beyond all doubt that it is the evolutionary outgrowth of primitive doctrines. There is an evolution in religion as well as in physical form. If we accept and incorporate into our doctrines the religious symbolism of nearly forty peoples, it behooves us to understand (at least in part) the meaning of the myths and allegories which we borrow, lest we be more ignorant than those from whom we secured them.

This brochure is devoted to the problem of explaining the relationship existing between the symbolism of the ancient priests and the occult functions of the human body. We must first understand that all sacred writings are supposed to be sealed with seven seals. In other words, it requires seven complete interpretations to understand fully the meaning of these ancient philosophic revelations which we have liked to call Holy Writ. Scripture is not intended to be historical. Those who understand its literal meaning understand the least of its meaning. It is a well-known fact that for dramatic reasons in his plays Shakespeare brought characters together who had actually lived hundreds of years apart; but Shakespeare was not writing history—he was penning drama. The same is true of the Bible. Scripture leaves historians hopelessly involved in self-contradictory chronological tables, where the majority of historians will remain until the judgment day. Scripture furnishes excellent subject matter for debates and also ground for hair splitting over the meaning of terms and probable locations of unknown cities. Most of the Bible towns now pointed out by guides were named hundreds of years after the birth of Christ by pilgrims who suspected them of having occupied sites somewhere near those mentioned in the Bible. All this may prove convincing to some, but to the thinker it is conclusive evidence that history is the least important part of Scripture.

When the Empress Helena visited Jerusalem in 326 A. D., the mother of Constantine the Great discovered that not only all trace of Christianity had already been lost, but that a temple dedicated to the Goddess Venus stood on the hill now accepted as Mount Calvary. Less than four hundred years after the death of Christ there was apparently no one in the Holy Land who had ever heard of Him! This does not necessarily imply that He never lived, but it certainly does indicate that the halo of miracles and supernatural atmosphere with which modern Christianity envelops Him are largely mythological. Like all other religions, the Christian faith accumulated a weird collection of fantastic legends which are its own worst enemies; for they have taken the simple moralist of Nazareth—the man who loved His fellow creatures—and built around Him a superstructure of idolatry which loves no one and serves only itself.

As Buddha in India merely reformed the Brahmin concepts of his day, so Jesus reshaped the faith of Israel and gave to His disciples and the world a doctrine based upon that which had gone before but remodeled to meet the needs of the pe...