Beacon, The.
A Little Periodical Intended for Theosophists / A Periodical Devoted to Occultism / A Magazine of Esoteric Philosophy Presenting the Principles of the Ageless Wisdom as a Contemporary Way of Life.
1922 Monthly and then bimonthly
New York, NY, and London, England.
Publisher: Beacon Committee; Lucifer Publishing Company; Lucis Publishing Company.
Editor: Foster Bailey, managing editor; Anne Pierce, associate editor, Michael J. Eastcott, assistant editor.
1/1, April 1922-current.
50 cents to $3.50 a year, 8-16 pp.

This was the work of Alice A. Bailey (Alice Ann La Trobe-Bateman Bailey, 1880-1949) and her second husband, Foster Bailey. She was an Englishwoman who moved to the United States and became active in the Theosophical Society and Esoteric Section, editing for a time the American Section's journal the Messenger from Krotona, California. In 1919 she met at Krotona Foster Bailey, who was to become the managing editor of and a regular contributor to this journal. The Baileys embraced the "Back-to-Blavatsky" movement of the period and that and Alice's publishing of her revelations from "The Tibetan" brought them into disfavor with the society and they eventually left (or were expelled) from the society and in 1922 they began this journal. Initially it was little more than it claimed, "A Little Periodical Intended for Theosophists," with selections from Blavatsky, H.S. Olcott, Franz Hartmann, J.D. Buck, W.Q. Judge, Alexander Fullerton, H.W. Percival, C.H.A. Bjerregaard, and earlier Theosophical writers. Interspersed with these were reprinted articles from Will Levington Comfort, Inayat Khan, Edward Carpenter, G.R.S. Mead, Robert Assagioli, Kahlil Gibran, Walt Whitman, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Dane Rudyar, Eugene Del Mar, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, et al., and many other occult and New Thought authors. Notable in the first years of the journal are articles by Jacob Bonggren on magic, chromotherapy, etc. He was an editor of the Occult Digest and had been an early member of the Theosophical Society in the days when it had a set of practical rules (fasting, chastity, etc.) for advancement in the society. The journal gradually began including articles by Alice under her own name and as the amanuensis of "The Tibetan Teacher" or "The Tibetan" -- an entity later understood to be Djual (or Djwal) Khul ("D.K."), one of the Masters mentioned by Blavatsky, who first appeared in December 1922 in an article entitled "Occultism, from the Tibetan Teacher." These form the real interest of the journal. Alice had, she said, encountered Koot Humi in 1895, and then in 1919 had while walking in the mountains met D.K. He had asked her to collaborate with him, an offer she turned down, perhaps thinking that some sort of mediumship was intended, replying that she wasn't interested in "anything like that," and then became the scribe for D.K. and for "The Old Professor" or "Professor L.," one of D.K.'s assistants, producing a voluminous series of books of detailed teachings on spiritual, solar and, planetary hierarchies, cycles, rays and their influences, Shamballa, and the Christ, the Master of Masters and reincarnation of Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Mani, et al., whose imminent return was announced. In 1923 the Baileys formed the Arcane School under their Lucis Trust to propagate these revelations. Stanford University, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, Yale University.

Part of a generous and broad-ranging donation of materials from the Portland, Oregon lodge of the Theosophical Society.

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