Letters on Occult Meditation Bailey, Alice A. Occult,Women Writers

Fourth edition. Signed by Alice A. Bailey on the title page. [xvi], 372 pp. Bound in publisher's dark teal cloth lettered in gilt; lacking the dust jacket. Very Good with light wear, offsetting to endpapers. Previous owner signature and bookplate to front free endpaper, penciled marginalia throughout, some colored underlining. Rare signed. Alice Bailey, born in Manchester in 1880, was raised as a Church of England evangelical. She married a former soldier and moved with her husband to the United States, where he was ordained as an Episcopal priest. After their 1915 separation, Bailey began studying Theosophy while raising three children by herself. When she remarried in 1921, it was to the national secretary of the Theosophical Society, Foster Bailey. The turning point in Alice Bailey's life was not her second marriage but her visitation from Master Djwhal Khul, an ancient Tibetan whose name first appeared in a work by Madame Blavatsky. The Tibetan appeared to Bailey while she walking in the Hollywood Hills in 1919 and began telepathically dictating the teachings that filled twenty books over thirty years. Bailey was one of the earliest writers to use the term New Age, and her writing profoundly influenced the development of twentieth century esoteric thought. Lou Reed was a fan -- the Velvet Underground song "White Light/White Heat" was inspired by Bailey s A Treatise on White Magic -- and Reed credited Jonathan Richman's song "Hey There Little Insect" to his own evangelizing influence. The musicians Van Morrison and Todd Rundgren based several songs on her works. The Nadine Bullard whose bookplate adorns this copy of Letters on Occult Meditation appears to have been just as passionate about Bailey's work. Her ownership signature is dated 1942, and judging by the dates near several passages, she was still reading it in 1977. In 1950 Bullard wrote two articles for the Theosophical magazine The Beacon, which was founded by Alice and Foster Bailey. It was likely she who obtained Alice's signature on this book.