Alice Bailey - Alice A. Bailey in Popular Culture

Alice A. Bailey in Popular Culture

Music

• In 1975, Todd Rundgren released an album titled Initiation which has a song called "Initiation" on side one. The title of the album is apparently based on the Theosophical concept of Initiation, taught by Alice A. Bailey and C.W. Leadbeater. The entire second side of the album is taken up by a song called "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire"; the three parts of the song are listed as: "I. The Internal Fire, or Fire by Friction; II. The Fire of Spirit, or Electric Fire; The Fire of Mind, or Solar Fire." The second parts of these three phrases are taken directly from Alice A. Bailey's book A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. Also in 1975, Rundgren released an album by his side-project Utopia titled "Another Live." This album contained a song titled "The Seven Rays" (see reference above). Finally, in 1977, Rundgren followed up with another Bailey reference with a song entitled "Love in Action" from the Utopia album Oops! Wrong Planet. Love in Action was the concept promoted by Bailey's and Foster Bailey's "World Goodwill" organization.
• In 1982, Bailey's influence appeared in pop culture, with the release of Van Morrison's album Beautiful Vision, in which he directly referred to the teachings and the Tibetan in the lyrics of the songs "Dweller on the Threshold" and "Aryan Mist". Morrison also used the phrase "world of glamour", reminiscent of Bailey's Glamour: A World Problem, in the songs "Ivory Tower" and "Green Mansions". The song Ancient of Days from the 1984 Sense of Wonder album appears to be a reference to a Bailey concept found in such books as The Externalization of the Hierarchy. Alice A. Bailey and the Tibetan's Glamour: A World Problem is also directly cited in the liner notes to Morrison's album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart.