Occult Meditation & the Great Invocation

Bailey teaches the practice in two layers — the personal discipline of alignment, then the invocation/distribution that uses it. A. The graded meditation (alignment). From Letters on Occult Meditation:

1. Wise control and discipline first. Bailey insists the work rests on “wise control of the personality, and discrimination in work and time” — a regular hour, a settled posture, freedom from emotional turbulence. The mind, not the emotions, is the instrument.
2. Alignment. Sit and deliberately bring the threefold personality (physical, emotional, mental) into quiet line, then lift the attention toward the soul. The goal is “alignment, union and identification with the soul.”
3. Concentration → Meditation → Contemplation. Fix the mind one-pointedly on a chosen seed-thought or theme (concentration); hold and reflect on it with sustained mental activity (meditation); then let the activity fall into “an absolute stillness,” a poised reflective receptivity (contemplation). Bailey describes the skill as the ability “to control and order the mind that it engages in action or becomes stilled to ‘reflection’ at will.”
4. Illumination → Inspiration. From the stilled, aligned state, insight (“illumination”) and the impulse to right action (“inspiration”) are received and then carried back into daily life. B. The invocation and distribution. Having aligned, the meditator does not keep the energy but sends it out. This is the point of the Great Invocation — recited slowly and with mental intent, ideally at a fixed time so that many recite it together. Its structure is itself the method: it calls Light “from the point of Light within the Mind of God,” Love “from the point of Love within the Heart of God,” and the Plan/Purpose “from the centre where the Will of God is known,” asking that these “stream forth” and that “Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.” After reciting it, the meditator visualises that light/love flowing through them and radiating outward to humanity — the “distribution of light.” (Sourcing note: the five stages and the “soul/personality” and “wise control” phrasing are from Letters on Occult Meditation; the Great Invocation is the 1945 Lucis Trust text. Short key phrases are quoted for fidelity; the prayer is summarised, not reproduced in full.)

Alice Bailey (1880-1949) inherited the Theosophical Society’s Spiritual-Hierarchy framework from Blavatsky and, from 1919, claimed telepathic dictation from a Tibetan master, “Djwhal Khul.” Letters on Occult Meditation (1922) was among the earliest of the resulting volumes and laid out meditation as a trainable discipline of soul-alignment and service.

With her husband Foster Bailey she founded the Lucis Trust and the Arcane School, which taught this meditation worldwide. The Great Invocation was released in 1945 as a tool for group “distribution of light.” Bailey is the principal bridge from classical Theosophy to the modern New Age; her invocation/alignment model feeds directly into Benjamin Creme’s Transmission Meditation and the broader ascension current.

Making it emotional or imaginative. Bailey is emphatic that this is mental work; drifting into feeling-states or freeform visualisation misses the discipline.

• Skipping alignment and rushing to invoke. The distribution step is meant to flow from a genuinely aligned, stilled state — not be recited mechanically.
• Forcing it. Bailey warns against over-strenuous concentration; the stilling is a release into poised receptivity, not a clench.
• Treating the Invocation as a magic spell for personal gain. As taught it is an act of service — distributing light outward, not pulling outcomes toward the self.