Alice Bailey

Alice Ann Bailey
Alice Bailey
Born
Alice La Trobe-Bateman

(1880-06-16)16 June 1880
Manchester, England
Died15 December 1949(1949-12-15) (aged 69)
New York City, United States
NationalityBritish and American
OccupationEsoteric author
Spouses
Walter Evans
(divorced)
Foster Bailey
(m. 1921)
Children3

Alice Ann Bailey (16 June 1880 – 15 December 1949) was a writer of more than twenty-four books on theosophical subjects, and was one of the first writers to use the term New Age. Bailey was born as Alice La Trobe-Bateman, in Manchester, England.[1] She moved to the United States in 1907, where she spent most of her life as a writer and teacher.

Bailey's works, written between 1919 and 1949, describe a wide-ranging neo-theosophical system of esoteric thought covering such topics as how spirituality relates to the Solar System, meditation, healing, spiritual psychology, the destiny of nations, and prescriptions for society in general. She described the majority of her work as having been telepathically dictated to her by a Master of Wisdom, initially referred to only as "the Tibetan" or by the initials "D.K.", later identified as Djwal Khul.[2] Her writings bore some similarity to those of Madame Blavatsky and are among the teachings often referred to as "Ageless Wisdom". Though Bailey's writings differ in some respects from the Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky, they have much in common with it. She wrote on religious themes, including Christianity, though her writings are fundamentally different from many aspects of Christianity or other orthodox religions. Her vision of a unified society included a global "spirit of religion" different from traditional religious forms and including the concept of the Age of Aquarius.[3][4]

  1. ^ American Astrology magazine, September 1937
  2. ^ Bailey 1951 p.1. From the Preface by Foster Bailey.
  3. ^ Bailey 1951. pp.233–234.
  4. ^ Jenkins 2000. p.87. "Writers of the 1920s and 1930s presented themselves as advocates of a New Age of occult enlightenment, and Alice Bailey did much to popularize the dual terms 'New Age' and 'Aquarian'"