Alice A. Bailey (June 16, 1880 – December 15, 1949)

Introduction

Alice Bailey’s birth time is uncertain, but has been stated as 7.42 am by Dane Rudhyar, one of the twentieth century’s foremost astrologers. Originally the time was said to have been given to him as 7.32 am – from Alice Bailey herself, a personal friend. Later Rudhyar rectified the time to 7.42 am. The Astrodatabank website quotes the following:

“The time was long quoted as 7:32 GMT, also by Taeger, who quotes Penfield and Rodden … reports by email from the original article by Rudhyar, that Rudhyar’s corrected chart has 11 Leo ascendant and 20 Aries MC … this is consistent with a birth time of 7:42 GMT.”

Doubt about Alice Bailey’s birth time has been generated by Bailey herself, and some astrologers have gone along with this idea, arguing for a Pisces ascendant. This has in turn influenced a recent biography of Alice Bailey, where the author incorrectly continues the Pisces rising assertion.

The Case for Leo Rising

Oh dear! Talk about walking into a minefield. Most astrology sites list the 7:42 am birth time with a C rating, while my Kepler 7.0 program suggests 7:32 am. What to do? What a to-do!

So, I decided to flip the whole chart on its head, by adopting the 7:32 as pm, and then tweaking the time slightly. That’s how I arrived at 7:48 pm. There are good reasons for this: she was visited by a stranger at age 15 (Pluto); and she moved to the United States at age 27 (Sun).

Now her birth chart is more in line with the Sagittarius ethos that I so know and love. (And maybe more in line with the Galactic Centre energy of a true revolutionary.) As it stands now, Alice Bailey has no inconjuncts, but that may be slightly contrived on my part. (BTW: if I’d left the timing at 7:32 pm, there would have been a Yod pointing at the Ascendant, with inconjuncts from Mercury and Neptune. That might have been significant for her writing.)

Twenty-four books! That’s no small achievement, especially as they were the result of channeling Master D.K. (Djwal Khul). Unfortunately, it put AAB, as she was known, on a collision course with the Theosophical Society leaders Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbetter. Such is the nature of esoteric knowledge: everyone wants to be the ‘real’ thing when it comes to ‘revealed’ truths. There are some who dare to suggest that the warnings of a New World Order in her books are being touted as a ‘master’ plan… That’s the scary part: the 10 points seem to have come into our collected morality.

Here is a refutation of the very idea:

“The basic goal is the freedom and the liberation of mankind, but the spiritual workers are handicapped by the fact that men themselves must make free choice and decision in order to be free; they can only be liberated when they – as individuals and later as groups – liberate themselves from the expressed thought-control of the powerful dominating groups and from the fears which these groups intentionally engender.

Freedom can never be conferred through totalitarian methods; liberation cannot come through a dictator or dictating groups…they are fighting – and rightly fighting – the totalitarian methods of cruelty, spying, murder, suppression and the lack of freedom.

What they are doing in truth is fighting the abominable methods of imposing the rule of a few evil and ambitious men upon the masses…They are fighting the technique of exploiting the ignorant through misinformation, organized lying and limited education. They are fighting against the sealing up of nations within the confines of their own territory, against the police state, the lack of free enterprise and the reduction of men and women to automatons. This is the true imprisonment of the human spirit.”

(The Rays and the Initiations, p.745)

You can see how contentious this stuff can be. So, even some spiritual warnings from a ascended master get blown up into a 10-point plan to change the world. 20/20 hindsight.

The Final Word

Amen.