In 1988 White House spokesperson Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged that Ronald and Nancy were devoted to astrology. Rumors had circulated about this since Reagan had insisted on being inaugurated as Governor of California at 12:10 a.m. in order to have a more auspicious alignment of the heavenly bodies.
Lucky Numbers and Secret Knowledge
Reagan also paid close attention to lucky numbers, a practice called numerology. Even deeper esotericism is revealed by the fact that Reagan was apparently a fan of Manley P. Hall, a 33 degree Mason and lecturer who drew on ancient occult ideas to promote an ordained destiny for America. Hall’s The Secret Teaching of the Ages, was a massive codex of Egyptian, indigenous and kabbalistic teachings. Hall started a mystery school in Los Angeles and taught thousands. In 1944 he wrote a smaller book called The Secret Destiny of America, drawing on the hidden “knowledge” he had gleaned.
The Great Plan for America
According to the Washington Post, Hall said America was part of a Great Plan for “religious liberty and self-governance.” This plan had been launched thousands of years earlier by a hidden order of philosophers and secret societies. According to Hall, a strange man had materialized at the Philadelphia statehouse to bolster the founders as they debated independence and gave them a rousing speech. “God has given America to be free!” the man stated. After the founders signed the document, they found the man had disappeared, apparently walking through the walls. Was this “one of the agents of the secret Order, guarding and directing the destiny of America?” Hall wondered.
The Disappearing Man
At a 1957 commencement address, when Reagan was a spokesman for General Electric, Reagan told the students that America was a land of destiny and repeated the Hall story. “When they turned to thank the speaker for his timely words,” Reagan concluded, “he couldn’t be found and to this day no one knows who he was or how he entered or left the guarded room.” Reagan repeated the story in a Parade magazine interview in 1981.
American Folklore
Where did Hall get the story in the first place? The episode originated in a collection of folkloric stories about America’s founding by George Lippard, a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, who in his original tale depicted the mysterious man in a dark cloak. After awhile, the story became part of folklore, like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. For his part Hall was handed a copy of the story by a member of the Theosophical Society as a “rare volume of early American speeches.”
Reagan used lucky numbers, astrology and occult sources to help guide his own life and life of the nation. Whether this worked well in still debatable.
