Talk:Alice Bailey

The Lords of the Seven Rays
I don't have the patience to investigate who did this, but it seemed a shame to just throw it away entirely. The following list has been de-linked (in the article); I leave the links here for any one interested in some Original Research in the form of Wikilinks:


 * 1) The Lord of Power or Will
 * 2) The Lord of Love-Wisdom
 * 3) The Lord of Active Intelligence
 * 4) The Lord of Harmony, Beauty and Art
 * 5) The Lord of Concrete Knowledge and Science
 * 6) The Lord of Devotion and Idealism
 * 7) The Lord of Ceremonial Order or Magic

Some of these may seem inarguable (to some), but there's no equivalent list in Bailey that I'm aware of. (If someone can point to this list, or a secondary source, then it makes a great addition to the article. But until then, it's OR, innit?) Oh and btw, welcome back, Malcolm. :) Eaglizard (talk) 22:09, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The Masters for rays 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7 are as I recall them in the Bailey books. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 22:25, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems there are sources forthese and that there are even whole Wiki articles on some.Renee (talk) 00:50, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * oops, see the links lead to the Wiki articles...if you look at the sources of these articles you'll see there are several. I think it's a good idea to include them in this article.Renee (talk) 00:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * None of the refs in the WP article for Hilarion, as the 5th ray master, relate to Bailey. I have not checked the other articles, but if these correspondences of rays with masters are used there should be AAB refs for them. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 13:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Do you agree with this chart here? (Have to scroll down a bit...) It seems it is from this source: Bailey, Alice A. The Seven Rays of Life New York: 1995--Lucis Publishing Co. Compilation from all the Alice A. Bailey books of material about the Seven Rays. Renee (talk) 20:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I suppose it is correct. I really wish the books could still be searched online. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a reference for the Masters of the Rays in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire - Section Three - Division A - Certain Basic Statements on page 1237. Hilarion looks correct for the Fifth Ray. I can paste in the words from that page here but I don't know how to make the wikitext format the same as in the book. --Linda (talk) 08:11, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * OK I looked through all of these and they all match so I'm putting the wikilinks back in the article with a new footnote. --Linda (talk) 22:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced changes?
There have recently been additions in "On the Jewish Problem", and in "On interracial marriage". Since there has been a lot of disagreement over these sections, it might be a good idea to discuss such changes before making them. In this case the changes seem to be unsourced, and I will soon remove them unless someone gives a really good reason why I should not. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 15:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking Good
Hello, folks. It's me, cat yronwode, a.k.a. the old "64." I decided to revisit this previous battleground, wondering what shards and fragments would remain. I am happy to see Malcolm back, and to see that he and Renee can now discuss this biographical article on civil terms. I like the way the article looks at this point. I have little or no time to add to or subtract from it, so all i want to say is, "Hello." Catherineyronwode (talk) 10:37, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

"The Jewish problem" and NPOV
This section uncritically quotes Bailey several times repeating her anti-Semitic statements. The quotes may be valuable in demonstrating her anti-Semitic views, however as stated they do not appear to follow the guidance of WP:QUOTE: ''the quotation is being used to substitute rhetorical language in place of more neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias. This can be a backdoor method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia's narrative on the subject, and should be avoided''.

At the moment the section lacks balance by effectively repeating her unchallenged viewpoint. Responses from a critical reliable source would address the balance and probably reduce the need to include so many of her anti-Semitic quotes.—Ash (talk) 16:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

There were more references given about two years ago, but they were removed over time by editors who wanted to paint AAB in a bad light.

But therein lies the rub. There is a severe lack of sources available on Ms.Bailey. One can only surmise from her own quotations that she considered both the Jews and the Negroes to be a problem. The problem with this article goes way back to when a group of people looking to exclude all mention of Bailey's antisemitism invaded the article as if Bailey were still alive. Personally I do not see that section as NPOV. Albion moonlight (talk) 01:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

About  "...she considered both the Jews and the Negroes to be a problem." Actually, the only "problem" she address in connection with the Negroes, to used the term current then, was to bemoan their bad treatment by the whites. And the issue of concern was not so much the Jews as Zionism, the parts of Jewish culture that overlap with that. Even with all the safeguards in place a crowd-sourced Wiki like this seems incapable of dealing objectively with things of a religious and political nature, and especially if the subject of race is part of topic. 19:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)Mystic1muse (talk)

Alice Bailey's quotes in this section are taken out of context and blown out of proportion. Countless times in countless ways, she indicates that unconditional love for everyone is essential. That is a central theme throughout all of her Work. She wrote that the Masters have perfect loving understanding for every human being, with no exceptions - and that all of us must eventually manifest the same qualities if we are to evolve and at the same time, we must speak out against injustice. 72.177.95.213 (talk)
 * Please check the guidance of WP:SOAP, your statement appears to be promotional rather than specifically suggesting improvements to the article.—Ash (talk) 14:40, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the NPOV suggestion; article itself is not dealing with a controversial subject, it is a biography of a person. The quotes are not used to "Substitute rhetorical languague", but are the subject itself. ie the quotes are note assisting dealing with the issue of antisematism, the quotes themselves are the subject, and so it cannot be considered POV to include them. More of an issue is whether they're cherrypicked as XXX.213 is suggesting. As Antisematism is not the issue, but the views of Ms Bailey are, there is no necessity to counterbalence unless the statements are unrepresentative of her views. I suggest remove POV tag, but have someone check for balance. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 14:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * It may be worth taking a moment to see how the William Shakespeare article handles quotes. He is the most quotable person in history and yet the article keeps the number and length of quotes quite modest and always gives context. In this article the proportion of quote to article text is disproportionate for the controversial sections in question. Most of these sections have no criticism. Repeating a quote with no context or analysis (when plenty of independent reliable sources are available to give context and analysis) makes for a pointless article that reads like a fan site. The NPOV tag appears justified with little improvement made in these areas since the tag was added. Ash (talk) 15:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that there seems to be a disproportionate focus on the quotes, and should be kept in context. It feels as if its written to provoke the reader rather than inform on her opinion.  I agree that it needs to be tidied up.  I don't think its this articles place to challenge / counterbalance her statements (with fact), but her quotes do need to be reprensentative and and in context.  I'm happy not to remove the tag, since the article is loaded with issues so the tag is minor, but I'll move it slightly higher up so it covers all her racial theories, since her 'Negro' views are presented in a similar manner.  Clovis Sangrail (talk) 00:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Consider: http://www.bookreader.org/bailey/Alice_Bailey.htm  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.107.74.253 (talk) 00:49, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

On the controversial aspects, this biography is not so much an accurate reflection of Bailey as it is a reflection of editors outrage over some of her statements on controversial topics. The selections made, and the lack of balancing selections, show the editorial bias. Excellent contributions to the article have been cut away, useful references deleted. The article becomes less about Bailey and more about the battle between editors. The battle has raged for years and will no doubt continue unabated into the future. Such is the nature of human editors and the Wikipedia rules do little to prevent the travesty. Wikipedia is wonderful for noncontroversial subjects, for a topic like Bailey it is, and will remain, a relative failure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.155.9.214 (talk) 23:02, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Exact birth time in first paragraph
It may be important to people who draw up astrological charts on her, but is it important for Wikipedia? -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Given that Bailey's best recognized work is Esoteric Astrology, I would suggest that it's vital information. 71.169.26.105 (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC) Dioxin Freak, not logged in.

Esoteric taxonomy
As a member of the Warburg Institute's Esoteric Studies Group, which is probably the world's leading academic study group in the area, I strongly question the general NPOV balance of the article. For example, it implies that esoteric learning is a subdomain of the meme, whereas if it has any real claim to operational esotericism, it would be the other way around. Such imbalanced claims are hardly to the credit of the subject, and indicate a negative dynamic to Mrs Bailey's fundamental operative practice which is destructive of any original claims in the area, according to the classic texts like the Picatrix. Esotericism is an aspect of the very earliest documented records of human history, far predating the 19th century's fads, which as they don't seem to have had a serious effect on the world may not be worth the memory taken by this meme. That certain black circles seem to have attempted to commandeer the subject for themselves does not make them authorities, for that matter. It would therefore be appreciated if a neutral authority could review the meme and reestablish objectivity, which seems to be seriously lacking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.5.142.222 (talk) 20:56, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Excessive primary sourced material
I removed material which was all primary sourced because the amount of primary sourced opinions on the article, sourced to bailey herself was excessive. It was reverted with no specific objection. Can people outline their specific objections here. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:56, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the amount of sourcing to Bailey was far in excess of the norm on biographical articles. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:37, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm curious as to why this edit was reverted here with an edit summary saying it had to do with primary sources when it clearly does not (at least to me). Was there another reason?&ensp;Debouch (talk) 23:15, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Your reply is unclear. How does it not? Most of the material I have removed is that cited to primary sources, namely Bailey herself, Second Quantization (talk) 00:00, 19 February 2014 (UTC) (Formerly IRWolfie-)
 * You are right, it is unclear. Sorry. I had removed some primary-sourced material and you inadvertently put it back.&ensp;Debouch (talk) 00:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * That specific Diff was due to the revert mechanism failing. (The diff viewer showed my edit, but after the commit a different revert had been made). I had to manually correct it by copying and pasting the earlier version of the article here: . Second Quantization (talk) 00:23, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * My edit was poorly timed. I'll redo it at some point. Thanks.&ensp;Debouch (talk) 00:38, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

The early editions of this article contained additional sources as well as additional information that was in many ways better than subsequent evolutions of it. Many of these were erased by editors who lacked objectivity. There is an older and much modified version that can be found here: http://en.rightpedia.info/wiki/Alice_Bailey#cite_note-39 This version, in this self-proclaimed "God" oriented Wiki, has an agenda and also lacks objectivity and still retains a lot of material that worked at painting Bailey in a bad light and so is really something of an attack piece (as was the article here from time to time) rather than an encyclopedia article. That said, there are many good statements and references in the "rightpedia" version that should be resurrected incorporated in this Wikipedia. Mystic1muse (talk) 19:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Edit War
and - Please stop engaging in your edit war. There is no limit to the amount of text you can remove in a single edit, and if you look above, IRWolfe- has justified the removals, and you have not responded on it. Another editor agreed on the talk page, and still nothing from you. The editor who most recently reverted it asked you to discuss it on the talk page before reverting again, which you ignored. This is very unseemly behavior. It is very clear that IRWolfe-'s removal of the text was done in good faith, so there is no argument to be made that this is vandalism. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 21:52, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * IRWolfie's statement that he removed "all primary sourced" is just untrue. It's clear if you read through his  edit, that he changed and removed much more.  This is not an edit war but standing up for the integrity of the article.  Please see for yourself what under the guise of one edit much more damage was done to the entry.  IRWolfie your arguements don't hold water because they're false.  True there is no limit to how much text can be removed in one edit, but what IRWolfie did to the article is not justified by his edit summary.  I am going to revert.  Please read through his edit. ( Previous unsigned comment by  - 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] )


 * You are speaking of generalities. Highlight something specific and discuss it. To clarify, the specific issue is not the specific book, but that we are quoting her from her own books throughout the article. We should be using secondary sources, Second Quantization (talk) 22:22, 18 February 2014 (UTC) (formerly IRWolfie-)


 * - 1.) Please don't remove my section headers or otherwise edit me on talk pages. 2.) You started by conceding one of my arguments, the other arguments have to do with whether or not IRWolfe- justified their own edits. I was only going by your own edit summaries and addressing the arguments therein. Clearly they did, whether you disagree or not. At this point it's time to build consensus on the talk page because there's a dispute.


 * Do not revert the removal of the material. If you indeed concede that IRWolfe- would be justified in removing the large amount of primary-sourced material, then at the very least you should be adding back in only the reliably-sourced material, not simply reverting his edits. To start, can you please identify any specific material that you think was unjustly removed? 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 22:27, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Itainteasybeingcheesy here. I completely disagree with removing the material from this entry and support putting it back in. Specific objection to removal of Esoteric Astrology and Seven Ray info which is not in the Autobiography as claimed by IRWolfie. Also apperent the wide ranging scope of his edit was malicious. —Preceding undated comment added 22:25, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It is very clear from his above comments that his intention was not malicious. You need to assume good faith on Wikipedia, even if you disagree with the changes that have been made. Vandalism is a very specific kind of destructive editing that is distinct from good faith mistakes. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 22:29, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

---It's tendentious editing. How can one assume good faith when the references that he removed clearly show that they came from a variety of sources and not just from one primary source? -TOM2087
 * 1.) You should use four tildes (~) to sign your posts.
 * 2.) This is exactly why you need to assume good faith, as the edits were made in good faith. It is clear that you don't understand the meaning of a primary source - it means a source that has not been interpreted, essentially. In this case, the "primary sources" are the works written by the subject of this biography. We should be using secondary sources, i.e. people who have read her works and written about her and her work based on them. It is an important concept to understand, and now that you are on the talk page, assuming good faith, you are learning about it and we are making headway towards consensus. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 22:38, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * ?? The esoteric astrology and Seven Rays of energy sections are both still there. Tom, as I have already clarified the issue is the use of primary sources, especially those written by Bailey herself, rather than secondary sources from an outside perspective looking in. Second Quantization (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2014 (UTC) (Formerly IRWolfie-)

It appears that Tom2087 and Itainteasybeingcheesy were sockpuppets and have been banned, according to their respective user pages. Presumably this will not be a continuing problem. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 22:49, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comments by confirmed sockpuppets have been striked, Second Quantization (talk) 22:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Two missing terms
There are two terms that seem to apply to the writing of Alice Bailey that are apparently missing from the article.
 * 1) Ascended Masters
 * 2) Channeling, noting that the article Mediumship has a section on channeling.

Are there any thoughts on adding some content to the article on these subjects? I know that Bailey objected to being classified as a medium, and that she did not use the term Ascended Master. But her books, as all Ascended Master literature, seems classifiable as channeled literature; and the term Ascended Master Teachings does seem to accurately describe her work.

Kwork2 (talk) 22:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

"Ascended Masters" is present where it should be under "Influence" section on Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Elizabeth Clare Prophet invented the phrase. Bailey did not use the phrase at all, apparently regarding it as redundant since all Masters are by definition "ascendant." Bailey refers to one specific "initiation" as that of "ascension" but it is not used in connection with the term "Master." Curiously, there is a widespread conflation on the net of the Elizabeth Clare Prophet's phrase and teaching with the Bailey writings and even from many supposedly scholarly sources. Also Bailey's "Master" is a different entity than that defined by Elizabeth Clare Prophet. In her writings Bailey refers to the "I Am" of Elizabeth Clare Prophet as a "travesty." The Theosophists are also unhappy with the confusion in the public mind, see: Mahatmas versus Ascended Masters Mystic1muse (talk) 00:29, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

why is that there? sjoo
Hey -- I don't want to get in your way, but while you're working so hard on this article, might you take a look at the section Alice Bailey and figure out where to put the three things near the end (Sjoö and the Blavatsky comparison) where they belong? Originally, they seemed to be in the Bibliography in a section called Criticism, but then people started using that section to discuss the criticism, and now that three-item bibliography kinda floats there. --jpgordon:==( o ) 00:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note. Yes, I was just noticing yesterday and the criticism are sprinkled in multiple places whereas I think, to compare with other articles on Wikipedia I've seen, criticism are usually placed in a discrete "Criticism" section.  I've not looked too much at the overall organization but it probably should be tweaked, inclding putting all the critiques in a single section.  I think it might be good to have all the criticism together and divide that into subsections with the Blavatsky part as 1, and the Sjoo as another, etc. Mystic1muse (talk) 21:29, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It wasn't the arrangment of the criticism section that I noted, just the odd placement of those bibliography items. But yeah, that too. --jpgordon:==( o ) 23:42, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the criticism might stay in multiple places but be given their own heading and started to do that with section 2.9. Does that fix the issue you saw or is there something more? Or is one section better, or? What do you think?

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Original research in the popular culture section
I've done some inline tags for original research in Alice Bailey but I'm also flagging it here as I'm about to tag the article as whole in the hope that someone with more subject knowledge can either source the claims properly or remove them. I noticed this issue as a reader and don't feel able to do more than tag. Thanks. Amedee123 (talk) 11:05, 31 December 2019 (UTC)