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LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama “We are being called to face the monsters of our own making—monsters born from denial, disav...
12/04/2025

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

“We are being called to face the monsters of our own making—monsters born from denial, disavowal, and the desire to dominate what we do not understand.”
- Vanessa Andreotti

This Saturday we gather here at PRS to ask a necessary question: What does antifascism mean now, in a world where the past is constantly returning in new disguises?
From Surrealism’s past to present we inherit a tradition that understands imagination not as escape, but as a weapon of clarity and a method for exposing what power tries to keep invisible.

Today, fascism returns not only through militarized states, xenophobic policies, and suppression of dissent, but through cultural erosion: the policing of bodies, the silencing of marginalized voices, the shrinking of public space, and the illusion that progress is inevitable. The symposium will explore how artists and thinkers have historically pushed back, and how we continue that work now.

We honor those who risked everything to oppose fascism from the margins, from those who revealed its shadows long before the world named them, and the new generation forging creative resistance in real time.

By centering the lineages that were always there but rarely acknowledged. By treating surrealism not as museum style but as an unfinished project of feminist, q***r, anti-colonial freedom.

Join us as we reclaim the imaginative tools used to suppress us, and gather in the shared labor of building a world where liberation is not an abstraction but a practice and a call to action.

In collaboration with and support from

2-6pm at PRS auditorium. Inspired by the anthology Surrealism Anti-Fascism pictured here and available for research at our library.

🎆“The sign of Sagittarius consists of what the ancient Greeks called a centaur a centaur — a composite creature, the low...
12/02/2025

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“The sign of Sagittarius consists of what the ancient Greeks called a centaur a centaur — a composite creature, the lower half of whose body was in the form of a horse, while the upper half was human. The centaur is generally shown with a bow and arrow in his hands, aiming a shaft far off into the stars. Hence Sagittarius stands for two distinct principles: first, it represents the spiritual evolution of man, for the human form is rising from the body of the beast; secondly, it is the symbol of aspiration and ambition, for as the centaur aims his arrow at the stars, so every human creature aims at a higher mark than he can reach.“

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“The spiritual nature of man descended into material existence from the Milky Way — the seed ground of souls — through one of the twelve gates of the great zodiacal band. The spiritual nature was therefore said to incarnate in the form of the symbolic creature created by Magian star gazers to represent the various zodiacal constellations. All human beings were thus symbolized by twelve mysterious creatures through the natures of which they were able to incarnate into the material world. The theory of transmigration was not applicable the visible material body of man, but rather to the invisible immaterial spirit wandering along the pathway of the stars and entially assuming in the course of evolution the forms of the sacred zodiacal animals.”
— p. L V I
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'Tis the season for SHOPPING and we're here to remind you that you can shop with us! We've got books, perfumes, tarot ca...
12/02/2025

'Tis the season for SHOPPING and we're here to remind you that you can shop with us! We've got books, perfumes, tarot cards, journals, jewelry, candles, posters, more books, crystals, and more! Stop by our lovely bookstore before and after our events or come by during our regular hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12pm-6pm 🎁

“A careful study of the Kannon image in Japanese art reveals that from the beginning, the figure was androgynous. Even i...
12/01/2025

“A careful study of the Kannon image in Japanese art reveals that from the beginning, the figure was androgynous. Even in the Fujiwara Period, when most of the buddhas and bodhisattvas were pictured with unworldly delicacy of features and grace of form, the masculine and feminine qualities were blended.

It was obviously the intention to suggest by this a superhuman degree of enlightenment, for in the doctrine of Northern Buddhism, those who had attained the bodhisattva state were assumed to have transcended both male and female attributes.
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It seems appropriate to follow prevailing custom and refer to Kannon as feminine, and also as a divinity, although technically, this is inconsistent with the higher aspects of Buddhist thought. Many Japanese scholars simply refer to Kannon as a goddess.“ — p. 177
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“Many of the plots of the Noh Drama deal with types of dementia caused by grief, hate, or emotional repression. Frequently the sufferer dies unregenerated and becomes a wandering and unhappy ghost, more wistful than ma-lignant. Under such conditions, it is usually a Buddhist Priest, happening to pass through the neighborhood, who brings peace and release to the decarnate being by instructing it in the Blessed Doctrine and reciting appropriate prayers. The Noh plays include many unusual psychology.” — p. 55
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“It is now generally admitted that printing was invented by Buddhist monks and scholars seeking better ways to propagate their doctrines. Actually, the oldest woodblock printing so far discovered was done in Japan, but the earliest dated printed book now known to exist is the Diamond Sutra of 848 A.D.” — p. 166

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by damaThanksgiving is usually offered to us as a softened myth: pilgrims, gratitude, a table where ...
11/29/2025

LIBRARY DAY ORACLES by dama

Thanksgiving is usually offered to us as a softened myth: pilgrims, gratitude, a table where difference supposedly dissolved into harmony. But anyone shaped by migration, forced movement, or ancestral dislocation knows that stories rarely arrive so gentle. And the land, as Mary Austin reminds us in The Land of Journeys’ Ending, carries its own version: one made of crossings, ruptures, and watercourses that hold memory longer than any nation-state.

What if Thanksgiving began from that vantage point, not from a colonial table, but from the migrations already in motion long before Europeans arrived? From ancestral routes marked by those who knew how to move with the land rather than against it.
And then there is the chapter, “Cities That Died.”
 Austin describes the acequia madre, the mother-ditch, where water created a shared destiny, forcing people to practice reciprocity or perish. Entire cities lived or died according to whether they honored their relationship to water, community, and stewardship. That, too, is part of the migrant story of this continent.

Not a feast of reconciliation but the violent interruption of existing Indigenous migrations, trade routes, ecological systems, and communal worlds.

So this week, we return to Austin’s deeper truth: to remember the cities that died so we stop building toward collapse.
 To honor Indigenous survival and land stewardship as the foundation and not the footnote of this place.
 To acknowledge how migration, forced or chosen, shapes the stories we inherit and the futures we are responsible for, to listen to the land’s long memory, to the stories beneath the stories, to the people for whom this day is not a celebration but a reminder of all that was taken and all that continues to live.

The Manly Hall Reading Group - Every Tuesday 7:30 p-- currently reading: NORSE MYTHOLOGY 🐺 🐦‍⬛ We are jumping between “S...
11/28/2025

The Manly Hall Reading Group - Every Tuesday 7:30 p-
- currently reading: NORSE MYTHOLOGY 🐺 🐦‍⬛

We are jumping between “Secret Teachings of All Ages” and a rare, incomplete (and presumably UN-distributed) work by Manly Hall from 1993. His final incomplete contribution to The Adepts Series - The Esoteric Classical Tradition.
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Handouts will be distributed for all participants - no purchase necessary. Participation is strictly voluntary and while we “pass the hat” at the end, attendance means more than money in this case.
🌊 🛡️ 🚣‍♂️🌲
Let’s “Finnish” 2025 with Hall’s take on Nordic Cosmogony, Ragnarok, and Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life.

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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."