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| {{Image|Alice medium.gif|right|220px| '''Alice A. Bailey, c. 1920'''}} | | {{:{{FeaturedArticleTitle}}}} |
| '''[[Alice Bailey|Alice Ann Bailey]]''' (June 16, 1880 – December 15, 1949) was a writer on spiritual, occult, esoteric and religious themes who was among the first to popularize the terms ''New Age'' and ''Age of Aquarius''. Her writings expound on subjects such as meditation, healing, spiritual psychology, the destiny of nations, and prescriptions for society. She wrote twenty-five books, most of which she claimed had been telepathically dictated to her by a "Master of the Wisdom" whom she referred to as "The Tibetan". Like many works of an occult or metaphysical nature, her writings are romantic with many obscure or esoteric references including "a bewildering variety of terms".
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| | | ==Footnotes== |
| Bailey's writings have much in common with those of Madame Helena Blavatsky, a Theosophist in that her followers believed her to be a mediator or channel for sages or wise men from the East. Like Blavatsky, Bailey claimed inspiration from Eastern sources and sages, but unlike Blavatsky, Bailey also wrote using Christian terms and symbols.
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| Althought she regarded traditional religious forms as divisive human creations, Bailey nevertheless elaborated a vision of a unified society that includes a global "spirit of religion." She founded ''The Lucis Trust'' to promote "World Goodwill," and "...right human relations through the practical applications of the principle of goodwill." The organization educates through "...correspondence courses on the issues facing humanity, and works with the United Nations as a non-governmental organization."
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| ====Life====
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| Alice Bailey was born as Alice LaTrobe Bateman, in Manchester, UK, to a wealthy British family, and received a Christian education. She describes being uncomfortable in the "well-padded, sleek and comfortable world" of her youth and in a "Victorian" society that she was out of sympathy with and that she came to see as rooted in a false theology. She wrote that, at age 15, she was visited on June 30, 1895, by "...a tall man, dressed in European clothes and wearing a turban." She first supposed this individual was Jesus but later identified him as a theosophical master, Hoot Koomi.
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| <blockquote>
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| "He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail my changing my disposition very considerably; I would have to give up being such an unpleasant little girl and must try and get some measure of self-control."
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| </blockquote> | |
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| At age 22, Bailey did some evangelical work which took her to India where, in 1907, she met her future husband, Walter Evans. Together they moved to the USA, where Evans became an Episcopal priest. However, she stated that her husband mistreated her and she divorced him in 1915, subsequently working for a time as a factory hand to support herself and their three children. Bailey's break was not only with her Christian husband, but with Orthodox Christianity in general; she wrote that “a rabid, orthodox Christian worker [had] become a well-known occult teacher.”
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| .... ''[[Alice Bailey|(read more)]]''
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Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020
The Irvin pin. The eyes have always been red, but there are
urban legends about the meanings of other colors.
A pin from another company, possibly Switlik or Standard Parachute. This style is common in catalogs and auctions of military memorabilia.
The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin.
History
Before April 28, 1919 there was no way for a pilot to jump out of a plane and then to deploy a parachute. Parachutes were stored in a canister attached to the aircraft, and if the plane was spinning, the parachute could not deploy. Film industry stuntman Leslie Irvin developed a parachute that the pilot could deploy at will from a back pack using a ripcord. He joined the Army Air Corps parachute research team, and in April 1919 he successfully tested his design, though he broke his ankle during the test. Irvin was the first person to make a premeditated free fall jump from an airplane. He went on to form the Irving Airchute Company, which became a large supplier of parachutes. (A clerical error resulted in the addition of the "g" to Irvin and this was left in place until 1970, when the company was unified under the title Irvin Industries Incorporated.) The Irvin brand is now a part of Airborne Systems, a company with operations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.[1].
An early brochure [2] of the Irvin Parachute Company credits William O'Connor 24 August 1920 at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio as the first person to be saved by an Irvin parachute, but this feat was unrecognised. On 20 October 1922 Lieutenant Harold R. Harris, chief of the McCook Field Flying Station, jumped from a disabled Loening W-2A monoplane fighter. Shortly after, two reporters from the Dayton Herald, realising that there would be more jumps in future, suggested that a club should be formed. 'Caterpillar Club' was suggested because the parachute canopy was made of silk, and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away. Harris became the first member, and from that time forward any person who jumped from a disabled aircraft with a parachute became a member of the Caterpillar Club. Other famous members include General James Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh and (retired) astronaut John Glenn.
In 1922 Leslie Irvin agreed to give a gold pin to every person whose life was saved by one of his parachutes. By 1945 the number of members with the Irvin pins had grown to over 34,000. In addition to the Irvin Air Chute Company and its successors, other parachute manufacturers have also issued caterpillar pins for successful jumps. Irvin/Irving's successor, Airborne Systems Canada, still provides pins to people who made their jump long ago and are just now applying for membership. Another of these is Switlik Parachute Company, which though it no longer makes parachutes, still issues pins.
