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Manly P. Hall Journals

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“Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making.”

“Let me tell you my dream. I was listening to music. My body became compressed into a column. At the top of the column grew anennae of science fiction design which threw lassos of blue electric lights in circles. In their centrifugal motion they captured other waves. The waves of the brain? Seeking to contact other vibrations? The radiations of my brain not only designed fever charts but they were neon-lighted and threw off sparks like electric short circuits."

"Though we know it not, we do possess the key to paradise. We talk a great deal about understanding and communicating, not only with our fellow men but with the dead, with the unborn, with those who inhabit other realms, other universes. We believe that there are mighty secrets to be unlocked. We hope that science will point the way, or if not, religion. We dream of a life in the distant future which will be utterly different from the one we now know; we invest ourselves with powers unnameable. Yet the writer of books have ever given evidence not only of magical powers but of the existence of universes which infringe and invade our own little universe and which are as familiar to us as though we had visited them in the flesh. These men had no "occult" masters to initiate them. They sprange from parents similar to our own, they were the products of environments similar to our own. What makes them stand apart then? Not the use of imagination, for men in other walks of life have displayed equally great powers of imagination. Not the mastery of a technique, for other artists practice equally difficult techniques.

No, to me the cardinal fact about a writer is his ability to "exploit" the vast silence which enwraps us all. Of all artists he is the one who best knows that "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." He has caught the spirit which informs all creation and he has rendered it in signs and symbols. Pretending to communicate with his fellow creatures, he has unwittingly taught us to commune with the Creator. Using language as an instrument, he demonstrates that it is not language at all but prayer. A very special kind of prayer, too, since nothing is demanded of the Creator. "Blessings on thee, O Lord !" So it runs, no matter what the subject, what the idiom. "Let me exhaust myself, O Lord, in singing thy praises !" Is this not "the heavenly work" of which it has been spoken? Let us cease to wonder what they, the great, the illustrious ones, are doing in the beyond. Know that they are still singing hymns of praise. Here on earth they may have been practicing. There they are perfecting their song."