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© Photo: The Lucis Trust
Alice A. Bailey, c. 1920

Alice Ann Bailey (June 16, 1880 – December 15, 1949) was a writer on spiritual, occult, esoteric and religious themes who was among the first to popularize the terms New Age and Age of Aquarius. Her writings expound on subjects such as meditation, healing, spiritual psychology, the destiny of nations, and prescriptions for society. She wrote twenty-five books, most of which she claimed had been telepathically dictated to her by a "Master of the Wisdom" whom she referred to as "The Tibetan". Like many works of an occult or metaphysical nature, her writings are romantic with many obscure or esoteric references including "a bewildering variety of terms".

Bailey's writings have much in common with those of Madame Helena Blavatsky, a Theosophist in that her followers believed her to be a mediator or channel for sages or wise men from the East. Like Blavatsky, Bailey claimed inspiration from Eastern sources and sages, but unlike Blavatsky, Bailey also wrote using Christian terms and symbols.

Althought she regarded traditional religious forms as divisive human creations, Bailey nevertheless elaborated a vision of a unified society that includes a global "spirit of religion." She founded The Lucis Trust to promote "World Goodwill," and "...right human relations through the practical applications of the principle of goodwill." The organization educates through "...correspondence courses on the issues facing humanity, and works with the United Nations as a non-governmental organization."

Life

Alice Bailey was born as Alice LaTrobe Bateman, in Manchester, UK, to a wealthy British family, and received a Christian education. She describes being uncomfortable in the "well-padded, sleek and comfortable world" of her youth and in a "Victorian" society that she was out of sympathy with and that she came to see as rooted in a false theology. She wrote that, at age 15, she was visited on June 30, 1895, by "...a tall man, dressed in European clothes and wearing a turban." She first supposed this individual was Jesus but later identified him as a theosophical master, Hoot Koomi.

"He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail my changing my disposition very considerably; I would have to give up being such an unpleasant little girl and must try and get some measure of self-control."

At age 22, Bailey did some evangelical work which took her to India where, in 1907, she met her future husband, Walter Evans. Together they moved to the USA, where Evans became an Episcopal priest. However, she stated that her husband mistreated her and she divorced him in 1915, subsequently working for a time as a factory hand to support herself and their three children. Bailey's break was not only with her Christian husband, but with Orthodox Christianity in general; she wrote that “a rabid, orthodox Christian worker [had] become a well-known occult teacher.” .... (read more)