The Philosophical Research Society

The Philosophical Research Society This page will no longer be updated. Please follow our new page!

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama On this rainy day at the PRS Library, the shelves feel unusually alive. We begin with Blavat...
11/20/2025

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

On this rainy day at the PRS Library, the shelves feel unusually alive. We begin with Blavatsky’s Collected Writings open beside Sylvan Muldoon’s Sensational Psychic Experiences, diagrams of the subtle body glowing like proto–policy maps, and an 1863 account of Abraham Lincoln holding a séance in the White House.

Speaking of ghosts, a strange alignment. But maybe not accidental.

Blavatsky warns that misusing the “Five Breaths” leads to moral death before physical death—a collapse of discernment, an inner disorientation that makes one susceptible to forces beyond one’s understanding. In her world, the political body and the astral body mirror each other: each has centers of action, triads of power, unseen pressures shaping visible behavior.

Then in Muldoon’s account, we find Lincoln in mid-war, mid-crisis, participating in midnight circles, calling on mediums to navigate the Union’s darkest hours. Not to predict the future, but to re-anchor the moral compass of the nation when all material logic had failed.

Policy in America has never only been lawmaking; it has been ritual, symbol, mythic theatre from the Capitol dome to the Hollywood Bowl: a nation-building through archetype.

Lincoln, in turning to the séance, wasn’t embracing superstition but
he was acknowledging what Blavatsky names outright:
that no nation survives without tending to its invisible architecture.

Today, as policy cycles hinge on spectacle, misinformation, and collective anxiety, Blavatsky’s caution feels eerily contemporary. A democracy loses its soul the same way a person does:
slowly, through disordered breath, through the fractures between its higher and lower selves, through the neglect of inner alignment.

And maybe that’s the quiet lesson the archives give us:

America doesn’t need more power
it needs coherence.
A re-integration of its psychic centers.
A willingness to seek counsel beyond the noise.

Because every nation, like every human, is an esoteric body.
And the fate of both depends on the quality of what they listen to in the dark.

📚✨ Library open 12–6pm

Did you know we have a new used astrology book section now? Well now you do! Come check them out🌠
11/18/2025

Did you know we have a new used astrology book section now? Well now you do! Come check them out🌠

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by damaAs part of Myth of Descent exhibition that opens tonight, the Philosophical Research Society ...
11/14/2025

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

As part of Myth of Descent exhibition that opens tonight, the Philosophical Research Society is unveiling an intimate extension exhibit inside the historic PRS Library. A quiet chamber where the myth of Inanna gathers new forms across time.

At the heart of this extension display is an image of the goddess herself: Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, carved in ancient relief with her unmistakable wings, lions, and cosmic presence. In the main exhibition, her descent frames the collective journey of stripping, transformation, and return. Here in the library, the myth settles into a more contemplative register, a place where books from our collections, artifacts, and symbol converge.

The library becomes her eighth gate, where knowledge gathered across centuries offers its own form of underworld initiation.

On display is a small ceremonial vessel, earth-worn, hand-shaped, carrying the quiet gravity of devotion. Its surface bears a guardian face, recalling offerings left in temples and crossroads, a reminder of the ritual exchanges that sustained ancient cosmologies.

Inanna’s story is not just one of descent, but of the objects, gestures, and devotions that accompanied her.

Together, these elements create a sanctuary within the library: a living dialogue between past and present, artifact and imagination, the written word and the mythic body of the goddess.

We invite visitors to wander these shelves, sit with the images, and experience Inanna not only as a myth but as an enduring presence and guide through the depths of transformation, renewal, and self-knowing.

Myth of Descent features works by five contemporary artists

Now through January 10, 2026
The Philosophical Research Society Library
RECEPTION will be held tonight 6-9pm

Library Oracles ~
11/14/2025

Library Oracles ~

“Every contributor to this issue has passed through fire, spending real time with their demons and being transformed by ...
11/13/2025

“Every contributor to this issue has passed through fire, spending real time with their demons and being transformed by their shadows. These offerings are revealing, intense, risky.”
— Meg Jones Wall / Guest Editor
🟥
“Tarot lives in liminality, not rigidity. Meaning isn’t locked into symbols or the dot-connecting, it’s made in the space betwixt and between, the dreamy Lynchian space. If your system can’t survive a color shift, it’s not divination — it might the chains of The Devil.”
— Laetitia Barbier
🟥
“This possession has given the planet a fever, but the same evils gave her the chills centuries ago. Before factory farms and combustion engines sputtered carbon into the air with unprecedented haste, there was a sudden decrease in CO2. We can see from air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice that the CO, level in 1610 dipped down to the lowest point since, funnily enough, around the birth of Christ.”
— Alm Lindsey

🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥
Saturday — Nov 15 — 16:00 🕓
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥

The PRS Library welcomes Hannah Levy and guest panelists Maria Minnis, Christopher Marmelojo, and Bee Scolnick to discuss THE DEVIL.

“Dealing With the Devil Card: Shadow, Desire, and Liberation in Practice”

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of THE REBIS (valued at $28) ♥️

Join us this weekend for an intimate discussion in the Mayan Revival library. 📚

“Usually the printers included secret marks in their books or engravings to indicate the presence of a cipher or double ...
11/11/2025

“Usually the printers included secret marks in their books or engravings to indicate the presence of a cipher or double meaning. Large and intricate initial letters, including curious designs, sometimes served the same purpose. Most of the enigmas and rebuses have never been solved because of the prevailing indifference to the motives behind the motions of history. Even where it is suspected, as in the case of Gulliver’s Travels, that a satire was intended, it is assumed that the author wrote entirely on his own responsibility according to his own taste. It has not occurred to bibliophiles generally that the writers themselves might be bound into a secret league and be operating according to a formal plan.” __ p. 7

🏆

“Civilization is unfolding according to a predetermined plan, and not by accident and fortuitous circumstance. This plan does not limit the individual to any creed or doctrine, but invites him to recognize those essential disciplines by which he can attain internal security for himself and can contribute to the final emancipation of all men. The adepts are the philosophic-elect-the priest-kings and the shepherds of the herds of human souls. During enlightened ages, they have appeared as venerated teachers, social re-formers, seers, and prophets. In benighted times, their leadership has taken on various appearances, but its substance is unchanging and unchangeable.” __ p.

🌹

The final copies of this edition are available only in the PRS Bookstore. Less than 10 in stock today. 📙
“THE ORDERS OF THE QUEST: THE HOLY GRAIL”
By Manly P. Hall

Bookstore picks by damaRebecca Solnit writes, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling ...
11/08/2025

Bookstore picks by dama

Rebecca Solnit writes, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… it is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.”

Lama Rod Owens offers that “we are all called to be saints for this time,”

Shannon Lee, channeling her father’s teaching,“to be water is to embody the truth of change.”

Elizabeth Lesser writes in Broken Open, “When we lose what we love, we are tested to expand into something larger.”

David Suzuki, in The Sacred Balance, declares that “we are the environment — there is no separation.”

Alan Watts, in The Joyous Cosmology, observes, “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, writes, “All flourishing is mutual.”

Address

3910 Los Feliz Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
90027

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Philosophical Research Society posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Philosophical Research Society:

Share

Category

Dedicated to the Truth-Seekers of All Time

The Philosophical Research Society (PRS) was founded in 1934 by wisdom scholar and prolific author Manly P. Hall as a repository of the world’s wisdom. His international travels culminated in the collection of manuscripts, rare books, artwork, and esoterica that became the foundation for the library, designed by architect Robert Stacy-Judd in 1935. The historic Mayan-inspired campus is home as well to an art gallery, auditorium, bookstore, and lecture room. A nonprofit institution, PRS offers a full calendar of lectures, online courses, workshops, wellness classes, concerts, and special events to the general public. As the 1959 inscription on the cornerstone of Hall's auditorium reads, PRS is "Dedicated to the truth seekers of all time."