The Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA (2026)

08/27/2026

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

Today’s pull lives between the dervish and the veil under a partial lunar eclipse light. And it helps dissolve the boundary between self and mystery. Eclipses have a reputation for collapsing time where old patterns resurface, and past selves knock.

Front and center is ‘The Rosicrucians” by H. Spencer Lewis, a small print sold to “occult fraternal orders” and “mystics who believe in honor and a square deal.” The Rosicrucians have taught us that not every voice claiming ancient authority has earned it.

“Mysticism and Magic in Turkey” by Lucy M. J. Garnett, with gold crescent-and-star stamped into black cloth spends its chapters moving from “the spiritual hierarchy” down through “monastic rule and discipline,” a structure built on dissolving the self, the spinning Mevlevi dervish as a technology for exactly what tonight’s Moon wants to do to everyone anyway: blur the edge between the personal and the vast.

Then two little Sufi Movement pamphlets: “The Purity of Life” opens by calling “the Perfection of Spirit” the point where “all that a man’s own experience... gives them in the way of knowledge” gets stripped down to something clear and unstained. “The Power of the Word” asks what separates a sacred word from an ordinary one. Both pamphlets are arguments for reduction, for burning off the impurity that “drags down” the spirit.

The Indian art volume, open to sculpture gates carved with ducks and lotus medallions, reaches back past that a soul may have been a bird, a beast, an insect, in some other turn of the wheel.

And then there’s Horizon, March 1943, with MPH’s essay “Strength to Meet Your World” saying that real strength is self-control: being, as he puts it, “not in his own way.” Eclipses are notorious for making people act rashly on feelings that are still raw and half-formed. Hall, writing in the middle of a world war, is telling his 1943 readers the same thing this transit is telling you in 2026: let the feeling surface, but don’t mistake the surge for the signal to act.

Khan tell us: feel everything, but don’t confuse feeling with truth yet.

08/27/2026

Laura Hayes, the writer of the Guidebook to the Transmutation Oracle, strikes open the ceremony with its first card ALL IS MIND.

The principle of Mentalism is one of the Seven Hermetic Laws, which states that the mind affects all real; emotional, physical, energetic, and spiritual.

The full title continues …

“A Metaphysical Guide to Navigating Reality” is an apt summary of this 25-card deck with accompanying illustrated booklet of essays on the cards, created by artist Nikoo Bafti and writer Laura Hayes.

The oracle imagery is both oddly specific and satisfyingly vague - depending on your spiritual perspective.

Bafti, one of PRS’s Contributing Artist in Residence, illustrator. Inspired by the traditional miniature painting of her Persian heritage, Nikoo combines intricate narrative imagery with a deep curiosity for the esoteric and metaphysical phenomena to create ethereal visions of vibrant and mystical otherworlds.

The wisdom of understanding complex esoteric occasions is left to Hayes, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, 13-sign astrologer and editor of PSYCHIC GARDEN Magazine. Born into a family of Scottish scientists, Laura reconciles her background and her interest in magic and the occult with a boundless drive for interdisciplinary research. She loves dance, exploring nature, reading magical realism, and visiting ancient archaeological sites.

The Transmutation Oracle is available both in store and as wholesale. See PRS.org for more info.

08/20/2026

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

These five books span between 1907 to 1950 the cluster around WWI, WWII, and the early atomic age :: moments of collective dread when people reached for a sense of hidden control. Talks of the “unknown Future” and living at the “11th hour” reads almost exactly like the tone of wellness content today.

The Word Went Forth by Laura DeWitt James, published by the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC (San Jose, California). The excerpt is written in a lyrical, devotional register, meditating on the “spiritual glow of an awakening consciousness” and invoking Merlin’s light and the mystical power of the spoken word, viewing sound and speech as sacred, creative forces.

The Mystery of the Human Aura credited to “One of the Brethren,” a limited edition published by the Society of Rosicrucians, Inc. (New York). It opens by framing itself as an attempt to see life from “the invisible side,” with a strong emphasis on spiritual self-cultivation and the idea that growth “must come from within,” and it must be nourished.

Concentration by Annie Rix Militz, a New Thought writer associated with the Homes of Truth movement. This one deals with mental discipline and prayer, discussing texts and mantras as tools for gathering scattered thoughts, with references to the 23rd Psalm, and Hindu practice.

Thinkation: Mind Yer Mind, Notes for Simple Folk “By One of Them,” a more folksy, plainspoken booklet on mental discipline, playing on the same “mind over mind” territory as Concentration but pitched at a casual, everyman audience.

Supersight, or the Third Eye by Ralph M. Lewis, part of AMORC’s “Leisure Hour Series.” It’s a more expository, semi-scientific treatment of the “third eye” concept, breaking the subject into tradition, anatomy, and physiological function, and discussing the primacy of sight among the senses.

“Spiritual growth follows the same law as physical growth — sunshine, nourishment, and fresh air, applied inwardly as much as outwardly.”

08/18/2026

🫆🤙🦵👣
“The oldest, the most profound, the most universal of all symbols is the human body. The Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and Hindus considered a philosophical analysis of man’s triune nature to be an indispensable part of ethical and religious training.”

While all the Mysteries recognized the heart as the center of spiritual consciousness, they often purposely ignored this concept and used the heart in its exoteric sense as the symbol of the emotional nature.

According to another concept of the ancient wisdom, all bodies — whether spiritual or material — have three centers, called by the Greeks the upper center, the middle center, and the lower center. An apparent ambiguity will here be noted.

In this arrangement the generative center represented the physical body, the heart the emotional body, and the brain the mental body.”

“As light bears witness of life—which is its source—so the mind bears witness of the spirit, and activity in a still lower plane bears witness of intelligence. Thus the mind bears witness of the heart, while the generative system, in turn, bears witness of the mind. Accordingly, the spiritual nature is most commonly symbolized by a heart; the intellectual power by an opened eye, symbolizing the pineal gland or Cyclopean eye, which is the two-faced Janus of the pagan Mysteries; and the generative system by a flower, a staff, a cup, or a hand.”

“The four fingers of each hand represent the four elements and the three phalanges of each finger represent the divisions of the element, so that in each hand there are twelve parts to the fingers, which are analogous to the signs of the zodiac, whereas the two phalanges and base of each thumb signify the threefold Deity. The fist phalange corresponds to the creative aspect, the second to the preservative aspect, and the base to the generative and destructive aspect.”

— LXXIII
“The Human Body in Symbolism”

Secret Teachings of All Ages
©️ 1927 Manly P. Hall

08/16/2026

🧐💭🤾🏾‍♂️

“Invisible Records of Thought & Action ~ A Practical Guide to Subtle Vibrations, Their Causes & Effects“ (1990)

“The Theory & Practice of Psychometry” was originally published as Invisible Records of Thought & Action, © 1959 (PRS)

“The Use & Abuse of the Natural Psychic Powers Within & Around Us” was originally © 1964 (PRS)

“The Magnetic Field of the Earth” was originally © 1975 (PRS)

“Positive Uses of Psychic Energy” was originally © 1962, 1983 (PRS)

This book is illustrated with four engravings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the mysticism of Jacob Boehme.

Has anyone seen this book out in the wild? Does anyone know about this collection of essays published in 1990? The minty green cover caught my attention in the cabinet of all Manly Hall publishings. [No. 1] 📚 yet have never seen another existing copy around.

08/14/2026

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

Here’s what today’s stack seems to be telling us: how much can be seen, and by whom, and at what cost of attention.

Justice stands sentinel first at opening hours, sword up, scales balanced, the reminder that clarity has to come before comfort.

Manly P. Hall’s Shadow Forms takes us east, up golden stairs toward a mountain temple and occult stories as pilgrimage and devotion. This came before his best-known 1928 work, The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

Gina Cerminara’s Insights for the Age of Aquarius falls open on goldfish arguing theology in a bowl “if there is no God, who changes the water?” A parable about the limits of what we can see from inside our own tank, and a nudge to imagine hierarchy stretching beyond us, not stopping at humans.

Vera Stanley Alder’s The Finding of the Third Eye opens to Chapter 1 “Things As They Are” acknowledging that truth when it meets the eye, it often hides at the bottom of a well and has to be earned. Translating the “I” in the “eye” of consciousness.

Dion Fortune’s Through the Gates of Death (1930) the orange wrought-iron doors, say the rest before you even open it, is a short esoteric work exploring what the soul might experience after physical death.

And closing the row, Frances Chamberlain’s Guided by Visions (1949). an autobiographical account of the messages she received, often through dreams, and the effect they had on her life and the people around her. It treats dreaming itself as a kind of mediumship.

“why assume that ladder stops at human?”

08/13/2026

Come get your dreams read by Megan this afternoon and before our events tonight! Can't make it today? Megan will be back offering dream readings at the Surrealist Ball on the 22nd 👁

Tomorrow, visit our historic library and get your birth chart read by astrologer Camirin Farmer ✨️

And Saturday, stop by for a tarot reading by Tanya E. Orellana 🔮

08/12/2026

📚✨ MORE Staff Picks from employees of PRS ‼️

Cameron, Rubin, Wall Kimmerer, Hall, Frankl, and even the Bookstore ghost gets some love from the spirituality shelves.

All Used Books = 25% Off 📙📖📓

08/11/2026

🛌 😴 💭
“Among the most remarkable dreams are those which involve COMPOSITA; that is, creatures which have no existence in the material world.”
— p. 23

“Occasionally in life we have what are called archetypal dreams. These can usually be identified by their clarity and intensity and the high quality of their import. The same dream may be repeated on rare occasions over a long period of years, and it is always accompanied by a powerful impression of significance.

These dreams represent a motion of the psychic archetype or total psychic being, impressing itself upon the objective facul-ties. They are directive, and usually indicate a course of action or an unfoldment of character required or demanded by the internal nature.”
— p. 28

“Prophetic dreams are essentially different from those which originate within the personality itself. In some cases, they seem to indicate a dimension of consciousness as yet comparatively unexplored. This is true of events about which the dreamer himself can have no preconception or which cannot arise from his own experience - either subjective or objective. These include foreknowledge of disaster, earthquakes, wars, and accidents— especially those affecting other persons or remote places.

There is another type of prophetic dream, however, such as that mentioned in the Bible as having occurred to Nebuchad-nezzar, King of Babylon. The dream was highly symbolical, and could well have originated in the King’s conscience, for he was quite aware of the corruptions which prevailed, and even in his waking state might have pondered the probability of divine retribution. We are constantly envisioning the future as the fulfillment of present actions, and are instinctively fearful that our individual and collective delinquencies open us to various punishments.

Dreams laden with prophetic import, or of unusual intensity, may often lead to historical consequences.”
— p. 25

08/08/2026

📚 BOOKSTORE Picks for Little Readers 📚

🖼️ Can You Imagine? The Art and Life of Yoko Ono — Lisa Tolin, illustrated by Yas Imamura
A vibrant picture-book biography celebrating Yoko Ono’s art, imagination, and activism for inspiring young creatives to dream big.

🔮 The Children’s Illustrated Book of Tarot — Kristen Witte, illustrated by Margarita Kukhtina
An adventure through the Major Arcana, told through a band of young travelers (and one very good lion). A gentle, whimsical way to introduce kids to tarot symbolism and storytelling.

🌊 Tales of the Sea — illustrated by Maggie Chiang
Traditional stories of magic and adventure from around the world, wrapped in the most stunning storm-and-mermaid cover we’ve seen in a while. Perfect for young readers who love folklore and the ocean.

Come flip through these beauties in store! 💛

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