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LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by PRS Librarian dama.This year in Tarot is represented by the Wheel of Fortune: uneven, accelerated...
01/08/2026

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by PRS Librarian dama.

This year in Tarot is represented by the Wheel of Fortune: uneven, accelerated, beyond our control. We are reminded again that history does not move in straight lines, but in spirals, reversals, descents, and returns.

In S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ The Tarot, the Wheel is inevitable. A turning that carries both ascent and fall, crowned by figures who rise and descend bound to the same motion. Fortune is not moral but movement. What matters is how we remain oriented while it turns.

That question echoes through Horace Beck’s Folklore and the Sea, where navigation becomes more than a technique, it’s devotion. Sailors crossed impossible distances not with certainty, but with story, prayer, and inherited knowledge.

Prayer enters here not as dogma, but as practice. In Prayer Explained and Simplified, devotion is framed as something from the body and intentional, as something learned through repetition and attention and as a way of staying present inside difficulty.

Likewise, What Is Buddhism? reminds us that contemplation is not withdrawal from the world but a disciplined way of seeing it clearly. Meditation becomes an act of learning how to sit with impermanence rather than resist it.

And then there is nourishment. Abundancia: My Life in Recipes by Natália Pereira, a recent acquisition of our library from one of the artists in the exhibition Myth of Descent (closing January 10 at PRS). This book offers ritual through the domestic and the ancestral: cooking, remembering, feeding one another. Recipes as spells. The kitchen as altar. Care as inheritance. Abundance not as excess, but as continuity.

By returning to the gestures that have always held people together: reading, praying, cooking, remembering, orienting ourselves to forces larger than us. The wheel turns. We light a candle. We feed each other. We keep going.

🐌 🎋“As I entered the antique shop, I could see no signs of the proprietor. Waiting a few seconds in the complete silence...
01/06/2026

🐌 🎋
“As I entered the antique shop, I could see no signs of the proprietor. Waiting a few seconds in the complete silence of the store, I then called out,
“Are you there, Mr. Nakamura?,
Immediately, the voice of my friend sounded from the depth of his private sanctuary behind the heavily draped door. “Oh, Haru-san, excuse please, you are ever welcome. Come join me in the back room. On this occasion, we shall celebrate a minor success and explore a major mystery.”

🇯🇵 📘

Mr. K. Nakamura is introduced to the reader as a Japanese art dealer doing business in the city of Kyoto, Japan. He is a man of varied and unusual accomplishments, and his establishment is well stocked with valuable oriental antiques. In the course of his long and remarkable life, Mr. Nakamura has accumulated many kinds of knowledge. He is well acquainted with the legendry and lore of his country, and combines the shrewdness of a successful business man with his own natural religious beliefs and a quiet acknowledgment of mystical and magical factors in daily life. Against the background of Mr. Nakamura’s world of art the reader becomes quickly involved in miraculous circumstances.
There is no clear line of demarcation between the commonplace and the supernatural.”

— Manly P. Hall
©️1976

“VERY UNUSUAL: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF
MR. K. NAKAMURA

A series of related short stories by Manly P. Hall

“CONX OM PAX” 🌾 “One of the teachings of the initiate tradition in Greece related to the mystery of time. The temple did...
01/04/2026

“CONX OM PAX”
🌾
“One of the teachings of the initiate tradition in Greece related to the mystery of time. The temple did not divide duration into past, present, and future. Divine and universal laws manifest themselves in an eternal now. Enlightenment belongs to no generation, nor does it increase or diminish. It is always and everywhere. Those who deserve it receive it and, if institutions fade away, the individual remains leader of his own destiny. The illumined ones by walking along the path of merit attain that sublime estate which is without beginning or end. In any land, in any generation, those who ascend to the sovereign truths of existence are the true initiates of the great Mystery System.”

MANLY P. HALL
©️1981
The Adepts in the Esoteric Classical Tradition 🇬🇷 🇮🇹

Bookstore Pick for a full moon!!!There are some stories that refuse to stay buried. They rise again when we need them mo...
01/03/2026

Bookstore Pick for a full moon!!!

There are some stories that refuse to stay buried. They rise again when we need them most.

Martha Ward’s Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau is one of those books. It is not just a biography but a corrective, a reclamation, and a spiritual archive for our time.

Through layered histories, rumor, ritual, and lived reality, Ward traces the many lives of Marie Laveau, a woman who moved between worlds with power and precision. Free Black woman. Healer. Organizer. Spiritual leader. Mother. Myth. Threat to colonial order. Protector of children. Keeper of ancestral knowledge.

Marie Laveau’s story matters now because she understood something this generation is being forced to relearn:
that freedom is not abstract.
that spirituality is inseparable from justice.
that survival is collective.

“When freedom comes, we shall devour it.” She says

The book is a rigorously researched, and written by Martha Ward, yet accessible biography that blends archival history, oral tradition, and cultural analysis to trace the multiple lives and legacies of Marie Laveau within 19th-century New Orleans.

Published by University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

Library Day Oracles with damaThe New Year arrives under a thinning moon, withdrawing its light and as we receive much ne...
01/01/2026

Library Day Oracles with dama

The New Year arrives under a thinning moon, withdrawing its light and as we receive much needed rain in Los Angeles, even the skies ask of us to quiet down and stop the spectacle.

From the Mayan oracle deck, what emerged is Ahau: the solar center, the crown of creation, the simple and demanding truth of I Am that I Am. Ahau speaks to wholeness after fragmentation, to the light that was never lost but only covered during cycles of descent and return.

Around this teaching, the library opened and a worn book on journeys into the unknown offered a correction: the future is not something to conquer, but something to enter with humility. Pages on karma and rebirth reminded us that time matters less than how we live inside it. A book on the cat appears from the Cabinet of Curiosities (a personal favorite) – a creature of psychic abilities and night vision—that teaches us how to land on one’s feet after a fall.

An old palmistry chart unfolded across the table and we saw hands mapped with life, heart, destiny, imagination, nervous tremor. A reminder from another century that the future was never abstract. It was always read through the body. Each finger is an instrument of will, labor, love, imagination. Not fate, but pattern. Not prediction, but responsibility.

This is not the New Year of fireworks.
This is the New Year of alignment.

I was gifted a stone which rests in the palm weighting, ordinary and ancient. It reminds me that beginnings are not sudden but hey are held and carried forward through care. And as the moon wanes, we release what does not belong to the next cycle. As the sun steadies, we remember that the crown is not above us but it is within. The library listens. The oracle answers. And the future is placed gently back into our hands.

In January, Myth of Descent opens with four gatherings, we invite you to descend with us through myth, material, memory,...
01/01/2026

In January, Myth of Descent opens with four gatherings, we invite you to descend with us through myth, material, memory, and conversation, honoring descent as a feminist, psychic, and transformative act.
⸻

JANUARY 2 · 7–8PM

Curator-Led Walkthrough with dama
Join curator dama for an evening walkthrough of Myth of Descent.
This guided experience will share the conceptual framework of the exhibition, the mythological and esoteric lineages informing the works, and reflections on descent as a necessary process of surrender, unmaking, and re-visioning power through the lens of the Sumerian civilization and mythology.
⸻

JANUARY 4 · 2–4PM

Café das Duas with Artist Natalia Pereira
A Sunday afternoon gathering centered on nourishment, memory, and ritual.
Artist and chef Natalia Pereira hosts an intimate café experience inside the gallery, weaving food, conversation, and art as parallel forms of care, transmission, and ancestral knowledge.
⸻

JANUARY 7 · 7–9PM

Artists in Conversation (Auditorium)
An evening conversation with participating artists reflecting on myth, embodiment, feminism, lineage, and survival.
This public dialogue offers insight into the diverse practices shaping Myth of Descent and the ways descent operates across personal, political, and collective histories.
⸻

JANUARY 10 · 2–6PM

Closing Reception
We gather one final time to mark the closing of Myth of Descent.
Join us for an afternoon reception honoring the artists, collaborators, and community who carried this exhibition through its cycle.
⸻

EXHIBITION FEATURES WORKS BY

Cheri Gaulke
Eva Malhotra
Natalia Pereira
Rachelle Mozman Solano
Sarana Mehra
⸻

LOCATION

Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027

All events are held on site at PRS unless otherwise noted.
Programs are open to the public.

🐐 ♑️“The pagans believed that the zodiac formed the body of the Grand Man of the Universe. This body, which they called ...
12/31/2025

🐐 ♑️
“The pagans believed that the zodiac formed the body of the Grand Man of the Universe. This body, which they called the Macrocosm (the Great World), was divided into twelve major parts, one of which was under the control of the celestial powers reposing in each of the zodiacal constellations.

Believing that the entire universal system was epitomized in man’s body, which they called the Microcosm (the Little World), they evolved the now familiar figure of ‘the cut-up man in the almanac’ by allotting a sign of the zodiac to each of twelve major parts of the human body.”

— L I V

“The constellation of Capricorn, in which the winter solstice theoretically cakes place, was called The House of Death, for in winter all life in the Northern Hemisphere is at its lowest ebb.”

“Capricorn is a composite creature, with the head and upper body of a goat and the tail of a fish. In this constellacion the sun is least powerful in the Northern Hemisphere, and after passing through this constellation it immediately begins to increase. Hence the Greeks said that Jupiter (a name of the Sun God) was suckled by a goat. A new and different sidelight on zodiacal symbolism is supplied by John Cole, in “A Treatise on the Circular Zodiac of Tentyra”, in Egypt:

‘The symbol therefore of the Goat rising from the body of a fish [Capricorn], represents with the greatest propriety the mountainous buildings of Babylon rising out of its low and marshy situation; the two horns of the Goat being emblematical of the two towns, Nineveh and Babylon, the former buile on the Tigris, the latter on the Euphrates; but both subjected to one sovereignty.’

“From a consideration of this system, it is readily understood why certain religious symbols were adopted during different ages of the earth’s history.”

— L V

“The theory of transmigration was not applicable to the visible material body of man, but rather to the invisible immaterial spirit wandering along the pathway of the stars and sequentially assuming in the course of evolution the forms of the sacred zodiacal animals.”

— L V I

🧠 ❓ Can science be reconciled with religion?Science and religion were identical in origin, are divided in their present ...
12/27/2025

🧠 ❓ Can science be reconciled with religion?

Science and religion were identical in origin, are divided in their present state, and will be united again to become identical in their ultimate. Religion is concerned with the moral values of existence; science with the physical values of existence. Every physical value is the outcome of a moral impulse. The Divine Spirit of religion created the material world of science. In the last analysis, there is no clear line of demarcation where God leaves off and nature begins. Divinity in itself is spirit; Divinity in form is Nature.

It will probably be some time before the church and the laboratory will recognize that they are essentially identical. Therefore the only way that we can reconcile science and religion at the present time is in the nature of an enlightened man.

— p.

🧠❓How can a drone become useful at fifty?

The first thing for you to do is to forget that you are fifty. Remember that you are an eternal self; that before the world existed, you were, and that after the world ends, you will still be. Time is an illusion, and greatness rises above time. Many of the greatest people of the world accomplish little, if anything, before fifty. When you think of accomplishment in philosophical terms, you are thinking of something that transcends time and place and becomes part of a cosmic plan of action, extending through hundreds of lives.

What have you learned in the fifty years of the present life? What do you know that others ought to know? What can you do that needs to be done? Remember that in the great craft of the Temple Builders, we all begin as apprentices. Our first task must always be something small and comparatively insignificant.
example of what you have accomplished, and what philosophy has done for you, may be a great inspiration to those with whom you come in contact. Think noble thoughts, dream beautiful dreams, labor constructively from day to day, and when you are ready for a greater accomplishment, the work that you are to do will come to hand. The universe always has work for those who are qualified to perform it.

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES with damaIn the final week of the year, the library answered in not a single voice, but a chorus fil...
12/27/2025

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES with dama

In the final week of the year, the library answered in not a single voice, but a chorus filled with stories of rebirth, repair, trance, protection, exile, and return.

We pulled texts of protection and charm, reminding us that knowledge has always been a shelter as much as a revelation. Ancient scripts and talismanic marks that marks survival as sacred labor. Alongside them, stories of rebirth and modern myth speak to the necessity of reimagining ourselves when old forms collapse. The gods do not disappear but they change clothes and names.

There were fairy tales and children’s stories, the repairers and the small hands fixing what is cracked. These remind us that wisdom often arrives disguised as care, as craft, and as the humble work of tending to imagination.

This is Sophia’s path. Not purity untouched, but wisdom earned through history, through loss, through listening. Sophia does not always thunder; sometimes she kneels.

As we step into the new year, the library holds this offering:

“We must imagine this ‘holding open’ concretely. It is a kind of inverted volcano, heaven toward Earth.”

The year turns. Sophia walks with us.

“When the Thinker has consumed in the mental body all the fruits belonging to it of his earthly life, he shakes it off and dwells unencumbered in his own place.”
(The Ancient Wisdom, Annie Besant)

Let the year turn not through force or resolution, but through release. What has taught you can now be laid down. What remains is attention, presence, and the capacity to begin again in lighter, clearer, awake conditions.

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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."