HALL, Manly Palmer.

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An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy; Theosophical edition, number 179 of 200 copies printed on japon, inscribed by the author on the limitation page, "Very Sincerely, Manly P. Hall", and with a special foreword. This pre-publication issue of Hall's most influential book, better known by its abbreviate title The Secret Teachings of All Ages, was printed as "an expression of appreciation" for the members of the Theosophical Society.The publisher, H. S. Crocker, stipulated that Hall enlist the fine printer John Henry Nash, whom Hall deemed "the foremost designer of printing on the American continent" (foreword, 2003). Hall noted that "the greatest knowledge of all time should be available to the twentieth century not only in the one shilling editions of the Bohn Library in small type and shabby binding, but in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin. John Henry Nash agreed with me" (preface, 2003). Pulitzer Prize winner and Hall's biographer Louis Sahagún, noted that "the result was a gorgeous, dreamlike book of mysterious symbols, concise essays and colorful renderings of mythical beasts rising out of the sea, and angelic beings with lions' heads presiding over somber initiation rites in torch-lit temples of ancestral civilizations that had mastered latent powers beyond the reach of modern man" (Sahagun, p. 50).As well as the Theosophical edition, the book was sold in four other pre-publication groups: the

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