The Unlikely Occultist E-Book

Isobel Blackthorn

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Discover the fascinating life of Alice Bailey: a long-forgotten occultist widely regarded as the Mother Of The New Age.

Back in 1931, Alice is preparing to give a speech at a Swiss summer school. Soon after, she is put on Hitler's blacklist. What Alice doesn't realize is the enormity of her influence to the world, and the real enemies who are much closer than she thinks.

A dynamic and complex figure, Alice Bailey's reach was huge. She was influential among people and organizations of global power, including the United Nations. Yet today she is maligned by fundamentalist Christians, Theosophists, Jews, academics and above all, by conspiracy theorists.

Are any of these groups justified in rejecting the unlikely occultist?

Leseprobe

The Unlikely Occultist

Isobel Blackthorn

Copyright (C) 2018 Isobel Blackthorn

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Foreword

“Isobel Blackthorn's insightful biographical novel The Unlikely Occultist evokes a rich immediacy to the life of Alice A. Bailey and her contemporaries as they forge 'New Age' thinking, in light of perceiving themselves in a new epoch where humans face unprecedented challenges. The novel offers the reader a glimpse into the little known and secretive world of Alice. A. Bailey and fellow contributors to Western Esotericism as they vie for power and influence. In so doing, it provides an important contribution to re-telling received and accepted accounts of historical figures and events. Isobel Blackthorn deftly raises for consideration an alternate historical interpretation of esoteric lineage.

In writing this biographical novel, it is wonderful to see how Isobel has brought the depth of scholarship applied to her doctoral thesis The Texts of Alice A. Bailey: An Inquiry into the Role of Esotericism in Transforming Consciousness, to the imaginative creation of this novel.”

Lesley Kuhn

Author of Adventures in Complexity for Organisations Near the Edge of Chaos, Adjunct Fellow Western Sydney University.

Author Note

The Unlikely Occultist is a dramatization of Alice Bailey's life and influence, as it was known to the author via the historical record at the time of writing. Some of the minor characters are inventions. All of the major characters are based on real people, but their personalities, attitudes and opinions have been invented for the purposes of the narrative and may or may not resemble the real persons concerned.

This portrait of Alice A. Bailey is based on a deep and prolonged study of her life and teachings. No fictional character can ever convey the fullness of a real historical figure. The Unlikely Occultist is offered to the reader in good faith.

PART ONE

New York

What is it about a death that leaves those remaining at the mercy of time? A single moment, the release of a life, sending ripples through the universe. She hadn't contrived her visit to coincide with the first anniversary of her aunt's passing. Even if she had wanted to, with all of the organising involved—the scheduling of holiday leave, the booking of flights, the itinerary arranged to accommodate the wishes of her companion—such a feat of temporal intersection would have been impossible to pull off. Although another part of her couldn't resist wondering if some entity hadn't orchestrated the entire trip to serve some hidden agenda of its own. It was the part of her that felt connected to her great-grandmother, Katharine, who had died the day she was born.

That it was exactly a year since her aunt Hilary had passed away had only occurred to her as she had entered the building with the others and one of her tour party announced the date to settle some discrepancy of her own. The twenty-fourth, the woman said. And it was June.

They were visiting the United Nations in New York, and she was at last arriving at the key destination of her holiday. She might have come alone. She wished she had. The tour was for Suzanne's benefit.

Heather stood aside a few paces on and let the others file by. Faces rose to the grandeur, the grey concrete of the exterior of the building giving way to sweeping curves and a fluted ceiling high above. Turning, she beheld tall panels of glass evenly spaced between concrete columns newly painted in yellow ochre, dusky pink and black. A colour scheme reminiscent of Art Deco. The windows allowed in an abundance of natural light. To her left, a flight of stairs led to the upper levels. It was all as splendid as she had anticipated, the building exuding an aura of serious, enlightened humanity. At least, that's how it felt to her.

Her awe was shattered by a commotion nearby as one of her tour party raised his fist and yelled, 'Down with the globalist agenda!' over and again. Heads turned. People shuffled off, shaking their heads. Some ran, scared. The man, large, bearded and middle-aged, made full use of the space around him to pace and rant. 'Don't get sucked in by the power elite! It's a cabal!'

'Oh, shut up,' someone said to his back.

The man swung around and yelled in his face, 'Wake up!' He stabbed the air at others. 'You, you and you. Wake up! The United Nations is a conspiracy. Who funded this place? Rockefeller and the Rothschilds! You,' he said, his wild stare landing on Suzanne. 'You need to wake up.'

'I'm fully awake, thank you.'

Heather cringed inwardly, hoping he wouldn't use her reply to home in on her.

Security descended before he could utter another word, knocking him to the floor and pinning him down and shooing away the onlookers. People muttered and rolled their eyes.

'What a nut job.'

'Yeah, but he has a point.'

'What was that about?'

He was whisked away and the atmosphere soon settled. The rest of the tour party gathered around the guide. Heather hovered behind some stragglers. Suzanne, an inch or two taller than the rest, was huddled in with the pack. Heather caught her gaze.

'I'll be over there,' she mouthed, pointing.

Suzanne glanced in that direction then edged through the pack to say in Heather's ear, 'I thought you were joining the tour.'

'It's the meditation room that interests me. That's all.'

'It's part of the tour.'

'I'm well aware of that.'

Suzanne eyed her appraisingly. 'This has something to do with that woman, doesn't it?'

'That woman, as you call her, is Alice Bailey, and yes, yes it does.'

'You've developed an obsession, Heather, if you don't mind me saying.'

Heather did mind. She was not a nut job. She was also well aware that Alice Bailey sat at the helm of the United Nations version of the New World Order conspiracy theory that man had been ranting about. Were they right to put her there? Of course not. But they were not wrong to put her at the helm of the United Nations.

The meditation room represented to Heather the culmination of a mission, a silent memorial of a spiritual activist, a woman who had dedicated her life to righting the wrongs of power, only to be shafted and duly shunted into the margins of history. If Suzanne wanted to label her appreciation 'obsession' then so be it. She left Suzanne and the tour and headed off, divesting her mind of her chagrin with every footfall.

The meditation room was situated past the security desks on the eastern side of the lobby, discretely positioned to the left of The Peace Window. It was this mural of glass that drew the eye, an impressive artwork Marc Chagall had gifted the UN in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld. Heather didn't need to be told any of this by a tour guide. She knew more than she would ever have imagined possible about the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, given her complete lack of interest prior to last year. In the past few months she had come to admire Dag Hammarskjöld, not for his outward achievements, although they were remarkable by any measure, but for his spirituality, his dedication to the study of medieval mystics Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroeck, and, Heather strongly suspected, his affiliation with, or at least his sympathy for the mysterious occultist, Alice A. Bailey.

It was Donald Keys, a speechwriter for Hammarskjöld's successor U Thant, who had alerted Heather to the Bailey connection. By then she was eight months into dealing with the curious assortment of books, magazines, journals and notes associated with the unpublished manuscript of Professor Samantha Foyle, bequeathed to the State Library of Victoria upon her death. Chair of Religious Studies at a Melbourne university, Professor Foyle specialised in alternative spiritualities and the subject of her latest research was Alice Bailey.

Back at her desk in the manuscript office in the upper reaches of the library, in the thick of unravelling the life of the occult figure, Heather had stumbled on New Age activist Keys' speech – written in the 1970s and later posted online – in which he referred to Bailey's prediction that a leading Swedish disciple would soon be working in the world. Bailey had made her prediction in the 1930s, long before the birth of the UN. In his speech, Keys identified this individual as Dag Hammarskjöld.

Keys was one of the few notable figures who openly admitted to being part of Alice Bailey's coterie. He was almost brazen about it, given the secrecy of most. He even dedicated his book, Earth At Omega: Passage to Planetization, to Alice Bailey. When Heather made the discovery, she had succumbed to a frisson of satisfaction. It wasn't easy uncovering the identities of the occultist's notable followers and sympathizers. Unlike the glamorous mystique the charlatans enjoyed, Alice Bailey was the anathema of flamboyance. In true esoteric spirit, she had preferred obscurity, working behind the scenes to achieve her goals.

Which was more or less how Heather had found herself when working on Professor Foyle's collection, the secretive, almost furtive manner in which she had sifted through the contents of all those boxes cluttering her office, reinforced by her colleague Suzanne's dismissive attitude whenever she poked her head in and scanned about, taking in the chaos that was Heather's desk, and Heather's look of startled surprise as she peered at her colleague through her reading glasses.

The foyer felt like a zoo. She had to ease past a throng of tourists who were exiting the Meditation Room and making their way elsewhere, their voices rising behind her. She still wasn't sure what to make of Keys' claim, although it wouldn't have surprised her were it true, and it had added a measure of conviction to her decision to come and see for herself. What she did know was Dag Hammarskjöld had been single-minded in wanting to see the Meditation Room redesigned. He was adamant that the UN needed a place of stillness and silence that would resonate with the whole of humanity. He managed to gain the cooperation of the Laymen's Movement, who were behind the creation of the original room, and had fought a hard battle for its existence. The Laymen were a Christian organisation and they must have been bemused if not outraged by the new and distinctly non-Christian proposal. Heather had no idea how Hammarskjöld had persuaded them, but by the sound of things he would not be deterred. He set up a sort of petition, garnering the support of numerous Christians, Muslims and Jews, his “Friends of the UN Meditation Room”. Bolstered, he forged ahead, and once the project was approved he oversaw every detail of the renovation, in there with the painters as they coated the walls. Why such zeal, such imperiousness? Was it his own ego spurring him on, or a higher spiritual purpose as he himself would have it?

Finding herself alone, she stood before Chagall's “Peace Window”, taking in the complexity of the artist's vision, his tribute to the United Nations. The work was laden with religious symbolism from the Old and New Testaments, with its tree of knowledge cleaved in two, serpents rising up in the centre, an angel kissing a girl amid a dance of flowers, all rendered in the richest of hues, predominantly blue. The mural was enormous, taking up the height and breadth of an entire wall, there to invite love and harmony and denote the suffering of life without them. She was impressed by the sense of weight of the glass and imagined the effort and care taken during installation. For Heather, the piece was made all the more significant knowing Chagall was a Hassidic Jew.

She took a step back and expanded her vision to encompass the whole, blurring the details, inhaling as though to breathe in the beauty, to embody it, consume it as it consumed her. Then she blinked, the presence of others gathering behind her oppressive. People were murmuring to each other, sharing what they discovered in the mural. Wanting silence, needing stillness, she entered the meditation room.

Semi-darkness greeted her at the door. The room was small and V-shaped, long walls of off-white culminating at the apex where another artwork hung, a fresco backlit by diffused lighting. More lighting had been threaded along the walls in the place of cornice. The fresco drew the eyes. Centred lengthwise on the tiled floor before it, some four feet in height, was a rectangular block of magnetite, the altar. Heather scanned the small benches lined up in rows on a carpet of deep green for the transient congregation. All were empty. She chose one at the front nearest the wall. Despite the lack of a backrest, she found the bench comfortable enough with its rattan seat.

Hammarskjöld had invited his friend, Bo Beskow, to create the fresco. It was an abstract work, interlocking rectangles forming triangles in muted hues of yellow, blue, grey and brown. She noticed other elements, an arc of moon, and a circle, half black, half white. She thought it might be the sun. A blue rectangle, aligned to the horizontal and centred in the work, receded beneath her gaze. Taking up the foreground was a long and twisted thread that stretched down through the middle at a slight angle.

She let her gaze wander, enjoying the silence of the room. Behind her, those entering remaining for the briefest time.

Her attention drifted to the altar. She hadn't anticipated the enormity of the stone, its weight. For Hammarskjöld, the altar reflected timelessness and strength. She thought few, if any, would understand its significance beyond the magnetic properties of iron ore. If what Heather saw could be described 'significant', and not just an association made by her receptive mind.

For the altar's placement at the head of the V had jolted Heather's memory and suddenly Beskow's fresco became a depiction of a mountain range, and she was no longer in the meditation room of the United Nations building in New York. Instead, she found herself seated in a valley somewhere high in the Himalayas, reimagining a vision Alice Bailey had on two occasions when she was about fifteen years of age, a vision she described in full in her unfinished autobiography.

She was participating in a ceremony in a large, oval valley. The month was May and the moon full. She formed part of a crowd. She sensed that her position in the crowd indicated her spiritual status. There were high mountains all around and the terrain was rocky. She found she was facing east, where the valley narrowed to a bottleneck. Before the bottleneck stood an immense rock…

The similarities were striking. Heather half expected the Buddha to appear from behind the fresco and greet the Christ standing before the altar, the heads of a spiritual hierarchy of masters central to Alice Bailey's occult scheme.

In her autobiography, Alice Bailey recalled her vision vividly in every detail. For her, the ceremony represented the unity of all things. Although at the time of its occurrence, she hadn't known what to make of it. All she knew at the age of fifteen was she had had a strange vision that only became significant for her when it reoccurred, as it would have any impressionable child. It would be another twenty years before she found a satisfactory explanation of what she had seen, one that would form the essence of her esoteric worldview. She imbued the vision with meaning retrospectively, deciding it represented the inner spiritual realm that had become her life.

Was it possible the stone, the fresco, the entire shape of the meditation room had been designed to echo, not only Hammarskjöld's but Alice Bailey's vision, orchestrated by him as some sort of secret homage? Or were the room and the dream similar because they both pointed at the same higher truth, one shared by numerous others? If Hammarskjöld had contrived the meditation room in accordance with Alice Bailey's vision, what did that say about a woman no one in mainstream contemporary society had heard of?

Or was she reading too much into the similarity, adding twos and arriving at fives? Ever since those boxes of esoteric paraphernalia had landed on her desk, she had found herself open to seeing correspondences between this and that, connections one part of her latched onto, even as her rational self rejected them as contrivances.

Things just happened.

A speck of black fluff on the thigh of her beige capris caught her eye. She pinched the fluff between her fingers, hesitated, then deposited it in her pocket. Then she took a few photos with her phone and jotted down some notes.

She was small-framed and preferred her clothes close-fitting and plain. She thought the style went with her straight brown hair which she always kept short. She had the sort of face that was neither pretty nor plain, with a pert mouth and a chipmunk inquisitiveness about the eyes. Others might have labelled her nondescript, a mouse of a woman devoid of charm, but even a mouse deserves scrutiny and appreciation. An introvert, she had a tendency to draw the world into herself, a quality that befuddled and infuriated Suzanne.

A tour group wandered into the room. Many stood or sat down quietly, save for the two circling the altar stone. Irritation stirred in Heather's belly. Whatever gave that pair the idea that running their hands along its top and remarking to each other that the stone was cold and hard constituted acceptable behaviour? Besides, what did they expect? Fairy floss? The man's heels clomped on the tiled floor. The woman, garbed in a faux leather jacket, squeaked when she walked. There was no one to tell them to move away. She wondered if the room should even have been a tourist site. There were places, like churches or synagogues or mosques, places that ought to be sacrosanct, the sightseeing restricted.

She waited for the others to move on, which they soon did. Alone again she felt like an interloper, an imposter, a spy almost, even as she knew that was ridiculous. She had become something of an expert in a metaphysical milieu, and she was determined to express her discoveries. Publish. She could only hope others would take an interest beyond the genealogical details. Although the audience would not be found among her colleagues. Especially not Suzanne, who had zero tolerance for the non-rational. Nor at home. Throughout the archiving, Heather's father had only feigned polite interest in whatever new titbit was on her mind, responding with soft grunts. She never broached any of the occult with her mother, who would have swept it all aside with derision. She was forced to leave her new knowledge on the doorstep like soiled shoes whenever she arrived home from work.

Heather had little in common with her mother. The one time she had mused that her great-grandmother, Katharine, had died the day she was born, intimating that she felt bonded to her ancestor as a result, almost as though she contained her spirit, Joan had laughed mockingly. She said Heather had entered the world at two in the morning, and Katharine hadn't passed away until ten that night. She said she would never forget her own mother, Heather's grandmother Agnes, waking her in the middle of the night with the news.

Heather had tried to defend her position, citing her mother's choice of “Katharine” for her middle name, but Joan would hear none of it. Heather was fourteen at the time and she had felt stung. The dismissal of her sensibilities formed a wedge between them, a wedge that had held fast ever since, a wedge that had thickened upon the death of her aunt.

There had never been anyone Heather could talk to about deep and meaningful matters other than Hilary, who was no longer there. In the acknowledging, an all too familiar chasm opened in her. She was so thoroughly alone.

Summoning what fortitude she had she pushed the missing away, steering her mind to the revelation that had ushered her into the building, that she had unwittingly managed to arrange the visit to coincide with the first anniversary of Hilary's death. One whole year, a complete cycle of the sun, it seemed to be reflected in that fresco, although she couldn't work out how.

Despite her best efforts, a wave of sadness rose up to meet the path of her thoughts. Her aunt Hilary would have adored the space. Although “adored” wasn't the right word. Neither was “space”. Even the phrase 'Meditation Room' spoke nothing of its potency. That phrase conjured images of incense and yoga mats. Hilary would have known how to describe it. She was an adept when it came to the nuances of language. It troubled Heather that at such a critical moment words eluded her. She hadn't come all this way around the world to dwell on Hilary, but the realisation that it was the first anniversary of her death brought her back with force and she missed Hilary's refined, benevolent face, her wispy hair the colour of straw, the way she would turn towards her as she laughed, as if the amusement were theirs alone. Yet, the memory faded without a tear, and Heather realised she was able, just able to recall Hilary without caving in to that downward pull, that lurching into missing. The ache in her heart gave way to an appreciation of the woman, and their special bond. It was as though she was seated right there beside her, enjoying the atmosphere.

Hilary had never been religious. She called herself spiritual. Heather hadn't known what that meant, not deeply, not until she encountered Alice Bailey. What had begun as one of those dubious manuscript collections shunned by her colleagues as altogether lacking interest and therefore dumped in her office on some pretext or other, had unfolded, box by box, into a quest for understanding that led her first here, then there, as the figure that was Alice Bailey blossomed like a deep red rose.

Difficult, intense and isolating as it had been, looking back, Heather wouldn't have traded her immersion in the worlds of Professor Foyle and Alice Bailey, worlds that had brought her to New York to visit the United Nations, to sit in the meditation room and experience this interlude at once ineffable and grounded in art and stone. She was acutely aware that archiving the manuscript had forced her to question the foundations of her beliefs, catapulting her on a journey she wasn't prepared for, leaving her somewhat and significantly different.

It wasn't until she was dealing with the last of the boxes in Professor Foyle's collection that her interest in the United Nations was aroused. As Alice Bailey had neared the end of her life, in those war-ravaged years when the United Nations came into being, she had invested all her hope in the organisation. The United Nations had become something of a fixation for the ailing occultist, almost as though she had created the organisation herself.

For Alice Bailey, the United Nations was a potential vehicle for the expression of all she believed in and wanted to pass on, a unity of all nations coming together in cooperation to solve the world's problems. There could be no higher purpose for humanity. She had thrown her all at persuading her followers to adopt her point of view. Although Heather wondered if the insistent manner in which Bailey had urged her readers to act was the result of her infirmity. She was gravely ill throughout the 1940s, in enormous discomfort and pain, and emotionally worn out by the war. She had suffered as much as anyone in the face of the dark forces that had scourged the planet. More perhaps, she who had fought so desperately through the 1930s to avert a repetition of the previous world war. It was easy to see how the United Nations had given her hope. Like many at the time, she thought it would be humanity's salvation.

Heather knew that for Alice Bailey the United Nations had the potential to be much more. Through its auspices the externalisation of her Spiritual Hierarchy, something she had become so committed to making manifest, had a real chance of happening. Whacky as that seemed, there were plenty who believed it.

Despite her fondness for a figure she had initially found repellent, she wouldn't commit to believing in the existence of a Spiritual Hierarchy, that cohort of wise men—they were all men—overseeing the spiritual evolution of humanity. Privately, Heather thought the very notion ludicrous and an affront to her feminist sensibilities. Yet their existence was the cornerstone of Alice Bailey's thinking and the whole time she had been sifting through the collection, all she could do was suspend disbelief. She didn't want to dismiss the idea altogether, not in case she was wrong, but because that would have made her blinkered and too much like her mother.

Sitting upright in her seat with her knees pressed together and her hands resting open in her lap, Heather took in the altar and the fresco one last time. Had Alice Bailey been alive to see it, she would have been delighted.

She was about to leave when another tour entered the room and Suzanne was soon seated beside her.

'Enjoy the tour?'

'It isn't over yet.'

'I'll meet you in the foyer.'

'Better still, there's a memorial of Eleanor Roosevelt in the gardens. See you there.'

Heather needed no persuading. As she headed back through the foyer, she wondered how well Eleanor Roosevelt had known Alice Bailey. Well enough, she imagined. Well enough.

There could be no doubt Alice Bailey was influential in high circles. Eleanor Roosevelt had read out her special prayer, The Great Invocation, in the United Nations building. She read it on the inaugural World Invocation Day in May 1952, not three years after Bailey's death, a day contrived into being by Bailey's followers to call for spiritual leadership of humanity. In her preamble, Eleanor Roosevelt announced that someone had sent her the prayer. Who was that 'someone'? More, what was it about Alice Bailey that garnered the respect and support of such eminent figures? Heather had poured over Alice Bailey's life and works for an entire year and she felt far from fully understanding the attraction, but she sensed it. She more than sensed it. Alice Bailey had managed to touch a centre of benevolence among the world's most powerful women and men. As far as Heather was concerned that just about made her a saint.

The State Library of Victoria

Heather wouldn't look up from the clutter of manila folders, printed emails, scrap paper and sticky notes on her desk as the man in the shabby work coat wheeled in the last of the boxes.

Her sullen manner made the man awkward. He stacked the boxes on the floor beside the others in forced silence.

'All yours,' he said on his way out.

Only then did she lift her gaze. Sitting tall, craning, stabbing at the air, she counted one hundred boxes. They took up half the floor space in her already crowded office, fanning out in front of her desk, squashed against the wall below the window, and stacked untidily beside the longer wall that supported a low bench along its length.

She wasn't given to rudeness. Her eyes were all puffy and red from last night's tears and they still burned from those she had cried that morning. Her aunt's funeral, a small, family affair held at the Anglican Church in Hawthorn, had been as harrowing as she had anticipated. While her mother had stood at the graveside, her expressionless face matching the grey outfit she wore, Heather was opposite, shuddering with grief, her gaze fixed on that deep chasm of earth between them.

The wake back at her parents' house was equally gruelling. Various cousins huddled round the small buffet, sipping sherry. Heather had chosen to stand by a window overlooking the garden, avoiding contact with the others, riding out the ordeal with the large glass of whisky she had snaffled from the drinks cabinet in the other room.

With all the ceremony behind her, ahead lay only the missing.

She knew her grief would destabilise her but she couldn't have anticipated how all-consuming her feelings would be, how they seemed to change her entire point of view. Staring at those boxes she felt instantly irrational. When Ms Emily Prime, who had taken on the appraisal and acquisition, had asked around to see if anyone was into religious beliefs, she expressed a vague interest in Buddhism. That interest was thanks to her aunt, and she hadn't been religious either. Hilary had taken a lay interest in faiths of all kinds, in much the same way a spectator follows chess, all analysis and no participation.

She wished she had kept her mouth shut, not that it would have made a jot of difference. Resentment snaked around her abdomen as she realised the collection would have fallen to her regardless. She felt put upon, discriminated against in a department filled with assertive extroverts. At least, that was how her colleagues all came across. The dull projects, those doomed to be relegated to the backwaters of the library, always fell to her, the departmental doormat.

Eyeing the collection, she suspected Suzanne had been meddling behind the scenes as well. All week she had been going on about the grieving needing distractions, and there could be no better distraction than work.

Adding to her discontent, when Heather went over and pulled off the lid of the nearest box she was hit with that musty smell of paper left in damp conditions. She all but gasped. Inside, a pile of letters and papers was crammed to the top. It looked as though they had been tipped out of a drawer, shuffled about on some fetid floor and then scooped up in indifferent handfuls and tossed in. So much for the original order. She put back the lid and rummaged through her bag for her inhaler.

She might have opened the window but it was June and a winter wind was blowing off Port Phillip Bay. Facing south, her office received little direct sunshine and tended to be cool yet stuffy. The room was situated in the upper reaches of the State Library of Victoria, in an area not open to the public and lacking the grandiosity of the main reading rooms below, rooms accessed via marble staircases. Still, her office was pleasing enough, with its high ceiling and thick walls. Although once the door closed, the room seemed to seal in its occupant, for better or worse.

Expecting another rush of allergen-laden air, she held her breath as she lifted the lid off the next box. This time, the interior was filled with nothing but books with deep-blue covers. It seemed as good a place as any to make a start. She would easily be done with assessing the entire contents of that particular box by the end of the day. She cleared a cursory space on her desk thinking with luck, she would whip through the other boxes containing nothing but books and be done with the collection altogether by Christmas.

Before she set to work, she lined up the other boxes in neat rows on the bench and under it, and two-deep on the floor under the window, shoving the remainder in rows three-deep in front of her desk. There was little space left to stand but at least she had a direct path from her chair to the door. Surveying the scene, Professor Foyle's collection had the feel of a house removal put in storage.

She inspected the boxes one by one, holding her head away as she opened the lids and noting the contents at a glance. She counted seventy boxes that contained nothing but books, leaving thirty filled with bundles of newsletters and pamphlets, magazines, journals, notebooks and correspondence. Fortunately, none smelled as bad as the first.

She held fast to her initial decision, rounded her desk and delved into the second box she had opened, withdrawing the blue books and piling them on her desk. Then she read the provenance, outlined in a media release Emily had composed, clipped to the front of a buff file that contained nothing but the picking sheet.

The State Library of Victoria has just taken delivery of a sizeable collection of books, serials and archival material relating to the unpublished manuscript of the late Professor Samantha Foyle, a notable Australian historian of religious studies with a special interest in alternative spiritualities. More commonly termed the 'New Age', alternative spirituality encompasses a wide range of belief systems, often with an esoteric religious element. The New Age is informed by Eastern religion and philosophy, and Humanistic and Transpersonal psychology.

Samantha Foyle received her Doctorate in Religious Studies from Deakin University in 1996 for a thesis titled A Crisis of Belief: New Age Seekers in Australia. The work encompasses an in-depth study of intentional communities, with special emphasis on the cult surrounding Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, or Osho as he is known by devotees. Before a series of scandals broke open the cult, 'sex guru' Osho had a sizeable following in Australia, particularly in Byron Bay and Perth, along with smaller communes dotted around the country.

A small quantity of books in this collection relates to the practice of magic and Wicca. Professor Foyle's investigations resulting in her internationally bestselling work Witches in the Suburbs, built up an extensive collection of literature in this regard.

At the time of her death in 2013, Professor Foyle was working on a scholarly volume in which she revisited the genesis of the New Age movement, tracing its origins back to breakaway Theosophist Alice A. Bailey. A complete set of books, along with partial sets of newsletters and magazines pertaining to the era of the occult figure form a substantial part of the collection.

In June 2017, library staff visited the Foyle property near Healesville to pack the collection. A total of one hundred boxes were packed and dispatched. By coincidence, the two days spent at the residence fell on the full moon of May, known as Wesak in the Buddhist calendar and acknowledged as a significant date by Alice Bailey's followers.

Heather's heart squeezed in her chest. Professor Foyle's collection was less a chore or a distraction and more a hand clenching the back of her neck, pushing her head forward into her pain. For Hilary would have loved this collection. With her fascination for new religious movements, an interest she enjoyed and shared with her friends but not her family—not even Heather—Hilary would have relished every moment, participating vicariously as Heather gave her little updates at the end of her day.

Heather fought back the tears, removing her glasses and wiping beneath her eyes. She had to summon her will to continue, to not bolt from her room, seek out her line manager, Shona, and beg that the collection be given to someone else. Her reaction soon gave way to resignation, almost defeat.

She scanned through the media release twice more, absorbing the information, gaining a sense of the late Professor Foyle. The mention of Osho repelled her. Hilary had talked about him from time to time. She had had a friend called Aashti who had spent time at his ashram in Pune. A single mother who had complained of the prurient goings on.

Wicca wasn't something Heather took to either. Paganism in all its forms seemed to attract a peculiar type of devotee, one fond of dressing up and enacting weird rituals.

She had never heard of Alice Bailey. With sudden conviction, she decided she would archive the collection for Hilary, for it occurred to her with force that this was the perfect way to understand a part of her aunt she had overlooked when she was alive. She felt guilty in the remembering, the way she would steer the conversation elsewhere, onto topics that ignited her instead. 'I'm sorry,' she said aloud, chastened.

She set the file to one side and drew the piles of blue books closer. They were leather-bound, with titles including, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, Initiation, Human and Solar and The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. Strange titles and she felt strange even holding them. She leafed through the first, skimming over the language, comprehending nothing. She examined the cover, her eyes drawn to the bottom right corner where a white equilateral triangle was positioned with its base running to the horizontal. Inside the triangle, three straight lines, the tallest reaching the triangle's apex, descended to meet a horizontal line above the triangle's base. That line continued on a little before switching direction and rising to form an X with another diagonal line. It was all most uniform and perfect and she hadn't a clue what it signified. She noted that the author's name only appeared on the spine.

She scanned the front-end pages of the book in her hand. The volumes were published by the Lucis Publishing Company, owned by the Lucis Trust, a tax-exempt, religious and educational organisation based in New York. She set down the book thinking she would arrange the series in publication date order. A simple yet absorbing task and she lost herself to the process.

The first was released in 1922, the last in 1960. The texts appeared to all have been written by Alice Bailey, but when Heather scrutinised further, she noticed many were written by someone else. He called himself The Tibetan. So that was the Buddhist connection, right there. In a statement written in August 1934, and included before the tables of contents of many volumes, the Tibetan referred to Alice Bailey as A.A.B. It was all most peculiar.

Flashing into Heather's mind was an image of a candlelit room, a round table covered in black baize, a crystal ball in the centre, a gathering joining hands. A séance, the stuff of Spiritualism. Hilary had told her once that her great-grandmother, Katharine, had been a Spiritualist. Heather hadn't bothered to ask Hilary what that meant. She knew Spiritualism involved mediums contacting the dearly departed. Hilary said Katharine had been one of those mediums. That was all Heather knew about her great-grandmother, other than that when her husband died she brought up her two daughters and never remarried.

Heather wondered if Spiritualism had anything to do with this Alice Bailey.

Among the volumes was one she knew she could read. It was titled Unfinished Autobiography. Contained in the front pages was an image of the woman herself.

Heather was immediately struck by the benign-looking visage. Alice Bailey was seated sideways at the head of a small wooden table. She sat with a slight forward lean as though poised to stand. Soft light shone in through a window behind her. She must have been in her sixties when the photograph was taken. She was garbed in a light coloured, loose-fitting top over a simple dress that had a large rosette of flowers attached to its breast. Her hair, dark and voluminous, was swept back from her face. A face that wore a warm, closed-mouth smile, with eyes the kindest Heather had ever seen. Alice Bailey exuded benevolence and humility. Staring into that face for the first time, Heather trusted her instantly.

She turned the pages and arrived at a moving foreword by a Foster Bailey. A son? A husband? It was composed in the form of a letter dated December 16, 1949, a day after Alice Bailey's death. The man talked of her steadfast dedication, her resolve to press on despite the poor condition of her heart and her blood, and of her utter exhaustion. Right to the last she worked, receiving visitors, writing letters, meeting with executives. The letter seemed addressed to her followers. He spoke of aspirants and disciples and of her esoteric school, the Arcane School. He described the work she did, her chosen path, as that of world salvation. His words were infused with love and yet also with detachment. It was, after all, an official letter. There was a subtle sense of sadness but also of relief.

Heather was struck by the detachment she felt as she read of the woman's passing. Then again, this particular death had occurred decades before and was far removed from her. It wasn't sudden or tragic. It was a release. Heather read on.

In the introduction, Alice Bailey described herself as a rabid orthodox Christian turned occult teacher. Not the most endearing of characters, Heather thought with bitter irony. Likely as not she would repel just about every modern reader who came across her. She could imagine the ladies of Hilary's book club issuing disdainful remarks amongst themselves, aspersing or commenting that the topic wasn't exactly their thing.

Alice Bailey wrote briefly of her unhappy childhood, her life as an evangelist and a social worker, and her role as the wife of a rector. When she mentioned her second husband, the Foster who had written the foreword, it was with much fondness and appreciation. They had been married for over twenty-five years. She went on to state outright that she would not write about their relationship. That to do so would most likely do damage to what they had and sound hollow and pointless.

Heather paused, her curiosity aroused. She had read enough biographies to know when to look between the lines. She pondered over the passage. The author had to be responding to the opinions of others. Unfavourable judgements and criticisms? On the surface, as far as Alice Bailey was concerned, they were not worth contesting. Yet they must have been and she was clearly hurt. Otherwise, why mention it at all? The veiled defence was an approach Hilary would use, indirect and pointed all at once, when she was offended by some remark or action of her sister, Heather's mother Joan. What sort of marriage had Alice and Foster to warrant such a defence?

From the writing style, and the words she chose, Heather decided Alice Bailey was a bright and determined woman, witty at times, with a soft, nurturing centre. She sounded down to earth, sensible and pragmatic and not at all the wafty air-head Heather had anticipated. Curious to discover her background, she permitted herself time to read on, dipping into the early pages.

At first, the author rambled, taking tangents into astrology and esotericism. She seemed too fond of her own opinions and speculations. After seven more pages, Heather felt ready to put the book down, and was about to do just that when she came across a name that caused her to do the opposite.

Alice A. Bailey, born in Manchester, England, on the 16th June 1880, began her life as Alice Ann La Trobe-Bateman.

Heather knew that surname, or at least half of it. How could she not? The very building she worked in had been instigated by Charles La Trobe, the first governor of Victoria. There was a statue of him outside the library building. She skirted by it every day. A statue of a slim, noble-looking man garbed in ceremonial dress, his long, double-breasted jacket buttoned to the neck and held at the waist by a cummerbund replete with tassels. He wore a cocked hat decorated with long gum leaves high on its crown. The sculptor had gone to town, the collar and cuffs of red and gold brocade catching the eye.

It had been Charles La Trobe's idea to build the public library. Designed by Joseph Reed in Roman Revival style and opened in 1856, the library was an impressive stone building, distinctly symmetrical with rounded arched windows. Heather never failed to enjoy the feeling of entering into history when she crossed the grounds and climbed the stone steps, soon to be embraced by the fluted columns of the portico.

Melbourne was proud of this heritage; the La Trobe society had been founded to honour the first governor's memory. They had a website. She had attended some of their events.

Heather placed a bookmark in the autobiography and moved her keyboard to the edge of her desk. In moments, she was staring at the La Trobe family tree. She had come across it before, when Suzanne had linked her to the site to encourage her to attend an exhibition of early Melbourne paintings. Back then, she hadn't given the genealogy a second glance. This time she pored over the names, arriving at Alice Ann La Trobe-Bateman, married first to a Walter Henry Evans, and second to a man called Bailey. It was her. She had one sister, Lydia, married to a Parsons.

Heather confirmed what she saw as she traced the family back through the generations, arriving first at her father, Frederic Foster La Trobe-Bateman, one of seven, and then her grandfather, John Frederic La Trobe-Bateman, Charles La Trobe's cousin. She searched the grandfather and discovered he was an eminent water engineer and consultant to the British government, best known for his development of municipal water-supply systems in cities such as Manchester and Glasgow. John Frederic had married Anne Fairbairn, Alice's grandmother. Anne was the daughter of the eminent Scottish engineer Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet of Ardwick, who was renowned for his pioneering work in bridge building, ship building and railway locomotives. The family luminaries went on and on. Another great-uncle was acclaimed book illuminator and Pre-Raphaelite watercolourist Edward La Trobe-Bateman, who, like Charles La Trobe, had chosen to live in Australia.

Her office felt suddenly claustrophobic, too small to contain the revelations. Succumbing to a need for air, she left the jumble on her desk and went and stood in the corridor. Thinking a glass of water was in order she headed in the direction of the staff kitchen. Then, recalling the excitement expressed by staff at the release of a new biography of Charles La Trobe, she changed direction.

Her line manager Shona's office was down a wide carpeted hall. The door was open but she knocked anyway. Her office was the immaculate, orderly contrast to Heather's. Shona looked up from her computer screen all calm assurance and took in Heather's visage with a single sweep of her eye.

'How are you holding up?' she said. Her face exuded professional warmth.

Heather gave her a thin smile in return. It was all she could manage.

'That book on La Trobe, the one just published, do you still have it?'

'By Professor John Barnes? I do, but you haven't answered my question.'

Heather avoided her gaze. 'The Foyle collection,' she said inanely.

'What about it?'

'It's…' Her lip quivered. Embarrassed, she flushed, cursing the dam of tears, forever fit to burst.

'I'll fetch the book,' Shona said quickly, sweeping past Heather as she left the office, returning moments later.

Heather took the book and mumbled her thanks, hurrying back to the sanctuary of her own office, resisting the urge to lock herself in.

The edition was a hardcover carrying a less than flattering image of La Trobe on the cover. Publishers.

She had no idea what she was looking for, but she found it in the first chapter. Alice Bailey had described herself a rabid Christian. That mindset had its roots in a Christian sect. Whilst the aristocracy of Victorian Britain observed the High Church of England, the La Trobe-Batemans were Moravian. Bailey's grandfather John Frederic La Trobe-Bateman, was the eldest son of John Frederic Bateman and Mary Agnes La Trobe, whose father and Alice Bailey's great, great-grandfather was Reverend Benjamin Boneval La Trobe, a well-known Moravian minister.

Barnes provided a detailed description of the sect. Founded in Moravia, Central Europe, the denomination was thought to be the oldest of all Protestant faiths. Moravians held a deep belief in Jesus Christ, and upheld values of love and respect for others over adherence to doctrine. The faith carried a strong emphasis on leading the life of a missionary, simple, spiritual and pure.

Reverend La Trobe passed on his faith to his children, and them to theirs. Alice Bailey's grandfather was born into a Moravian settlement and attended Moravian schools. Barnes was at pains to show the extent to which the Moravian faith had influenced his cousin Charles La Trobe. Had the faith coloured Alice Bailey's life too, with a religiosity she was later to make manifest in her own peculiar fashion?

Charles La Trobe could not have known of his third cousin. He had died five years before she was born. Yet they were related, and sitting in the library with his statue right outside, Heather felt peculiarly connected to Alice Bailey. It was as though the very walls were taking an interest.

Heather returned to Alice's own account. There was aristocratic pedigree on the mother's side as well. A quick cross reference on genealogy sites and she discovered that Alice's mother was Alice Harriet Holinshed, eldest daughter of a William Holinshed. The socially prominent family were descended from Raphael Holinshed, the English chronicler who inspired Shakespeare.

Alice Bailey had quite a pedigree but she put little store in the achievements of her ancestors and she had little to say that was positive about her childhood. Although as she read on, Heather found that unsurprising. Alice Bailey lost both parents to tuberculosis before she was eight. Her grandfather, John Frederic, passed away a few months later.

She spent much of her formative years at Moor Park, a fine old house in Surrey, once known as Compton Hall, remodelled and renamed in the 1680s by diplomat and essayist Sir William Temple. The property enjoyed five acres of magnificent formal gardens. Alice Bailey's grandfather purchased Moor Park in 1859 and, long before the girls came to stay, he established a highly popular hydrotherapy spa at the residence. Among the regular attendees was Charles Darwin, who had worked on his The Origin of the Species there. The hydrotherapy spa was the culmination of a life's work given over to the salvation of humanity through water engineering. Heather could only imagine how Britain's cities would have smelled before sewers, and how tedious things would have been for all concerned without running water.

Unable to restrain her habit of jotting down points of interest, Heather opened a drawer in her desk and extracted the clothbound notebook Hilary had gifted her one Christmas and until then, she had found no suitable use for. Observing the elephant on the cover her heart squeezed, her grief poised on the upsurge. She inhaled, waited, and let the feelings subside before opening to the first page and making some brief notes on her discoveries.

Alice had lived at Moor Park in the 1880s. For a moment, Heather pictured her and Lydia in their pony carriage, travelling down the pretty country lanes, but that image faded as fast as it came. Despite the obvious luxury, life at Moor Park for the little La Trobe-Bateman girls sounded severe. They had been under the strict supervision of a governess, nurse and maid, and had to adhere to a daily routine segmented by the half hour. It was all lessons and more lessons, walks and formal dining. There was certainly no opportunity to be idle. The regimen was echoed in the La Trobe-Bateman's religious observances. Daily prayers involved the entire household from the grandfather, who would sit at the head of the dining room table to lead the prayers, through to the scullery maid.

Alice sounded like an impressionable child. Had all that religion she was exposed to crusted over the hole left by her parents? What other comfort had she?

With the passing of her grandfather, she subsequently endured a lonely and disrupted childhood as she and her younger sister Lydia were shunted between their grandmother's residence in London and various aunts scattered across Scotland and England, with a healthy portion of the winter spent on the French Riviera.

It couldn't have been easy. The poor girl's grief must have been immeasurable. There Heather sat in her mid-forties having just lost an aunt and she was barely coping. She could feel the hurt, the anguish in what Alice Bailey said and what she left out. The only mention of her mother was her golden hair. Alice Bailey unwittingly juxtaposed that poignant image with a portrait of an irascible sounding father who, for the few years remaining of his life, chose to blame his eldest daughter for the loss of his wife. He passed away on a ship off the coast of Tasmania, leaving Alice, a withdrawn child, maudlin, living in the shadows. Her wretched state of mind was exacerbated by her remarkably charismatic and talented younger sister who cast a dazzling light wherever she went.

Odd that through all her summing up of her childhood, she didn't mention her sister by name. Had Lydia forbade it? Surely not. Was it that she couldn't bring herself to name the sibling who had caused her so much unhappiness simply by being who she was? Or was it another hurt? A deep hurt perhaps, one she carried with her into her sixties, the decade she composed her autobiography.

Castramont

'I told you to leave me alone!'

Aunt Margaret rushed into the drawing room, coming to an abrupt halt on the hearth rug. She surveyed the girls, gave Alice a disapproving look and said, 'There really is no need to shriek.'

'She is taking my light.'

Alice was seated on the settee. Behind her, Lydia lounged on the window seat, warming her back.

'Alice, all you need to do is move aside.'

'Why should I move? What about her? No one ever tells her to do a thing; she who can do no wrong.'

'That's enough insolence from you, little madam.'

'But Aunt, you don't know her as well as I do,' Alice whined. 'Wherever we go, she makes herself the centre of everything.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Ask Miss Godby if you don't believe me. She'll tell you.'

Although the moment the words exited her mouth, Alice doubted their veracity. Only last week she had flushed all of Miss Godby's jewellery down the lavatory. She was furious with her governess for refusing to let her leave the schoolroom until she'd finished her maths. She hated maths and was no good at it and she was rapidly developing a headache. Lydia had finished her exercises and was permitted to go down to the kitchen where Cook was baking girdle cakes. Alice could smell the spices wafting upstairs. Hot girdle cakes straight out of the oven were her favourite. By the time she got to eat one, they would be cold. Seeing the others downstairs, she took her chance. Miss Godby's jewellery was no more. Nothing was said and nothing was done about it. Three days later, upon reading Miss Godby's diary, something she had taken to doing with fascination after discovering it in her room, she realised she had been found out. Riven with guilt and not knowing how she would ever repay the loss, Alice confessed, only to be surprised by Miss Godby's consternation, not over the loss of her jewellery, but of the intrusion upon her privacy. Now she doubted Miss Godby would ever take her side in sibling disputes.

'It's all right, Aunt,' Lydia said obligingly as she crossed the room. 'I shall retire to the library.'

Her remark, her manner altogether, incensed Alice even more. Did she have to sound so proper and mature and in command of her feelings? She was only thirteen. Alice was fifteen and she was rarely in command of hers.

Aunt Margaret waited until Lydia had left the room before sitting beside Alice on the settee and remaining silent for a long time. It was her aunt's way of deflecting her wrath. She sat with perfect deportment, radiating from deep inside a serene beauty and Alice was instantly chastened and soothed. She really oughtn't lose her temper so often, not in front of her favourite aunt, but she couldn't seem to help it. Looking out of her own emulous eyes, Lydia had inherited all the intelligence and all the charm there was to be had, winning everyone's affection without effort, leaving her, the elder sister, to languish in her shadow.