Manly P. Hall'un, Rüya Sembolizmi kitabı Alacakaranlık saatinin dili üzerine kapsamlı bir el kitabı niteliğinde. Rüya, insanoğlunun yeryüzündeki ilerleyişinin şafağından bu yana insanı çevreleyen, canlılar dünyası ve görünmezler evreni ile bağlantılı olagelmiştir. Bu evrensel sembollerin bireyler için önemi uyku fenomeni, mistik ve vizyonsal bir deneyim olarak rüyalar, rüyalar yoluyla öz öğrenim, rüya yorumları için anahtarlar ve rüya süreci ile birlikte açıklanmıştır.
Canadian born, Manly Palmer Hall is the author of over 150 published works, the best known of which are Initiates of the Flame, The Story of Healing, The Divine Art,Aliens Magick and Sorcery The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy. He was also the author of a masonic curiosity, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry in 1923, more than thirty years before he joined a lodge. The preface of later editions states "At the time I wrote this slender volume, I had just passed my twenty-first birthday, and my only contact with Freemasonry was through a few books commonly available to the public." Later, in 1944, he wrote The Secret Destiny of America which popularized the myth of a masonic purpose for the founding of the USA. In 1950 he weighed in again on the meaning of Freemasonry with his booklet: Masonic Orders of Fraternity. *** Initiated: June 28, 1954 Passed: September 20, 1954 Raised November 22, 1954 Jewel Lodge No. 374 Source: Grand Lodge of California records ; William R. Denslow, 10,000 Famous Freemasons, vol. ii. Trenton, MO. : Missouri Lodge of Research / Educational Bureau, Royal Arch Mason Magazine, 1958. p. 165.
Manly P. Hall is very humble and puts forward reasonable examples and comments on dreams and its categories in a descriptive way. He deals with spiritual, mystical as well as scientific and psychological aspects of dreams. In both realms, both physical and metaphysical, his descriptions and examples are not exaggerated, thus quite reasonable. He is very cautious about the dream phenomenon as it is a sensitive field of study.
Came across this book in a used bookstore and picked it up because it looked interesting. After reading a bit of it, I started getting the sense that Hall had no formal training in psychology, much less religious studies. I read up on his background and confirmed this. Hall was born into a Masonic family, so was exposed to and grew interested in mysticism of all sorts. He is a self-proclaimed expert on the topic, his "research" and writings being mostly funded by his family's oil holdings. As luck would have it, he rode a wave of popularity during a burst of interest in mysticism in the early 1900s. But the guy has no formal training and presents his thoughts on occult subjects as facts. I would direct anyone who is interested in such topics away from Hall's works and towards the writings of Carl Jung or Henry James, who both documented and substantiated many of their claims with extensive field studies using scientific methods.