Alice Ann Bailey
A key figure in the Theosophical Society
Forward
In every movement, there are a few key figures who lay down foundational works on which others build. Alice A. Bailey is one such person. Unknown to most, she, like Aleister Crowley, are foundational to the growth of modern Occultism.
Early Years
Birth
I was born on June 16th, 1880, in the city of Manchester, England, where my father was engaged on an engineering project connected with his father's firm—one of the most important in Great Britain.
In England
Both parents (Frederic Foster La Trobe-Batemen and Alice Hollinshead) died of tuberculosis by the time Alice was eight, so she and her sister lived from then on with their grandparents in Surrey. They were educated by governesses and later attended a finishing school in London.
Until 1908 I wanted for nothing; I never thought about money; I did and went as I chose.
…I was given to good works. I was an ardent Y.W.C.A. worker. I was present (on sufferance on account of my youth) at the meetings of the heads of the organisation, because my aunt was the president. I spent much time visiting at large house parties where I was welcome because I was Alice La Trobe-Bateman and where I wrestled with the souls of my contemporaries in order to get them saved. I was very good at saving souls, but I wonder now—from the angle of more worldly wisdom—if they did not get saved with rapidity in order to get rid of me, so pertinacious and earnest was I. At the same time, the mystical trend of my life was steadily deepening; Christ was an ever- present reality to me. I would go off on to the moors in Scotland or wander away alone in the orange groves of Mentone in the south of France or the hillsides of Montreux on Lake Geneva and try to feel God. I would lie on my back in a field or by a rock and try to listen to the silence all around me and to hear the Voice—after the many voices of nature and within myself were stilled. I knew that behind all that I could see and touch there was a Something that could not be seen but which could be felt and which was more real and more truly essential than the tangible. I had been brought up to believe in a God Transcendent, outside His created world, inscrutable, unpredictable, often cruel (to judge from what The Old Testament reports), loving only those who recognised Him and accepted Him, and slaying His only Son so that people like me could be saved and not perish everlastingly. Innately I criticised this presentation of a loving God, but automatically accepted it. But He was far away, distant and unapproachable.
When Alice was a teenager in England she had been under the supervision of a mysterious man who had visited her in person twice. She described their first encounter in her unfinished autobiography:
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. My future usefulness to Him and to the world was dependent upon how I handled myself and the changes I could manage to make.
Many years later, after she had joined the Theosophical Society and lived in Krotona, the first time she went into the Shrine room of the Theosophical Lodge she saw a portrait of this man on the wall and only then learned that his name was Master Koot Hoomi, and that he was a member of the Spiritual Hierarchy.
In India
After finishing school at the age of eighteen, following a family trend, she did religious work in the Young Women’s’ Christian Association and the Y.W.C.A. sent her to India, where she delivered strongly evangelic sermons to British troops. It was during that time that she gained experience in leadership and management. In India she met Walter Evans, an American studying for the Episcopal priesthood.
Pacific Grove
They were married in 1907, and she returned with him to the U.S. where he was ordained in the Episcopal Church. The couple settled in California and had three daughters. She was a busy minister’s wife, and Bible class teacher but the marriage failed “due to his appalling temper” and the couple separated in 1915 and was divorced in 1919.
…in 1915 when she was 35, that Alice came into contact with Theosophy through two English women who befriended her. She spent the next several years laboring in the cannery while studying the new Theosophical ideas – attending meetings and poring over Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine and attempting to integrate those ideas with the strict Christianity of her upbringing. Before long, Alice began teaching classes in Theosophy at the Lodge in Pacific Grove, California.
In Hollywood
In early 1919, when she was working at Krotona (the American headquarters of the Theosophical Society, then located in Hollywood, and since 1926 in Ojai, California), two significant events occurred. The first was her initial meeting with Master Djwhal Khul, a member of the Spiritual Hierarchy and a personal disciple of Master Koot Humi. That took place one morning when Alice was sitting on a hillside near her house. She heard a clear note of music that seemed to sound in the air, in the hill and in her body. She then heard a voice, which said, "There are some books that it is desired should be written for the public. You can write them. Will you do so?" Without a moment’s thought, she refused. She had no interest in psychic activity and at the time didn’t know the credentials of her mysterious interlocutor. He persisted, however, and she eventually agreed to serve as his amanuensis and secretary. Thus began a telepathic relationship…
The second significant event of 1919 was Alice’s friendship with another Krotona worker, Foster Bailey, an American born in Massachusetts.
In Krotona she met Foster Bailey, national secretary of the Theosophical Society, whom she subsequently married. Foster Bailey and Alice Anne Evans reached high positions within the Society - she became editor of the Society's periodical, The Messenger, and member of the committee administering Krotona. They were both dismissed in 1920, when L. W. Rogers was elected President of the Society, which was disappointing to both of them: “Thus, ended our time at Krotona and our very real effort to be of service to the Theosophical Society.”
I became next an occult student, a writer of books which have had a wide and constant circulation and which have been translated into many languages. I found myself the head of an esoteric school—all unwittingly and without any planned intention—and the organiser, with Foster Bailey, of an International Goodwill Movement (not a peace movement) which proved so successful that we had centres in nineteen countries when the war broke out in 1939.
I have not, therefore, been useless where world service is concerned but I do not, and cannot, claim that my success has been due to my personal efforts alone.
In New York City
in 1921 they were married, after relocating to New York City to found the Arcane School and its umbrella organization, Lucis Trust.
By 1923 the Arcane School was in operation, the Lucis Publishing Company had been founded (also under the aegis of Lucis Trust), the two books mentioned above had been published, and a modest esoteric journal, The Beacon, was being issued monthly. The journal’s subtitle on its first few issues was "A Little Periodical Intended for Theosophists," and it accordingly contained mostly articles from Theosophical sources, some many decades old. But the August 1922 issue contains an extract from "Mrs. Alice A. Bailey's latest book, Initiation, Human and Solar." That was actually the first published book written by the Tibetan, but of course there is no mention of him. Their arrangement was that all his books would be published under her name and that his identity would remain a secret in order to guard against the damaging onslaught of mass glamor.
…Alice Bailey finally passed on in December 1949…
Even though they had established their own branch of the Theosophical Movement in the Arcane School, the Baileys kept up relationships with the other organizations, and appreciated the work of others. They advertised their books in The American Theosophist. Albert E. S. Smythe reported in 1935:
Mrs. Alice A. Bailey of New York and Mr. Foster Bailey paid a visit to Toronto on April 5, 6 and 7. Mrs. Bailey spoke in The Theosophical Hall to large audiences, that on Sunday evening taxing the capacity of the Hall, which seats 500. Airs, Bailey spoke of the surprising number of men at the meetings, as she thought. She had just returned from a long visit to England and the European Continent. It was only in Holland, she said, that she found any parallel to the work being done in Toronto.
In Alice Bailey's view,
the movement initiated by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was an integral part of a Hierarchical plan. There have always been theosophical societies down the ages. The name of the movement is not new but H. P. B. gave it a light and a publicity that set a new note and that brought a neglected and hitherto somewhat secret group out into the open and made it possible for the public everywhere to respond to this very ancient teaching. The indebtedness of the world to Mrs. Besant for the work that she did in making the basic tenets of the T.S. teaching available to the masses of men in every country, is something that can never be repaid. There is absolutely no reason why we should overlook the stupendous, magnificent work she did for the Masters and for humanity.
Eleanor Roosevelt read Alice Bailey’s prayer
In 1952, Eleanor Roosevelt read Alice Bailey’s prayer, The Great Invocation, on a radio broadcast from the UN building in New York.
Closing
So here we had a child born of the Silver Spoon who then had her future ripped away from her. She had no personal knowledge of Jesus, only religious teachings of her Episcopalian upbringing.
Along the way, thoughts foreign to her entered her mind. Much like Eve, instead of vetting those thoughts, she welcomed them. And for the rest of her live, her conduct was ordered by them. Is one to believe she accomplished the entire undertaking of the Lucis Trust on her own with only the help of her husband? Or was the Theosophical Society behind it all?
Www.lucistrust.org/world_goodwill/key_concepts/the_new_group_world_servers3