Meaning
The seventh ray closes Bailey's seven. In her teaching it is the energy of order and of making things real: it works through rhythm, organisation and right procedure, and brings ideas down into forms that last. She calls it Ceremonial Order or Magic, and sometimes Ceremonial Law or Order, and writes that it is the ray coming into power in the new age, as the sixth ray's age passes. It stands at the end of the odd line that begins with the first ray.
Under her rule for the bodies it is one of two rays that normally govern the physical body, with the third. The soul and the personality may be on it; the monad never is.
In our own words, it is the ray of care and practical skill: the person who knows how a thing should be done and does it well, and whose risk is insisting that there is only one proper way.
Her keynote for the ray is Expression, and Organisation is the keynote she gives it for humanity now; the aspect of the will is the will to express. Its word of power is on page 518 of The Rays and the Initiations, cited and not quoted.
Bailey's three lists
In our paraphrase of Esoteric Psychology I (p. 210):
- Special virtues: strength, perseverance, courage, courtesy, extreme care in details and self-reliance.
- Vices: formalism, bigotry, pride, narrowness, superficial judgements and over-indulged self-opinion.
- Virtues to be acquired: the realisation of unity, wide-mindedness, tolerance, humility, and gentleness and love.
Wood, writing in 1925, illustrates the type with the cat, for its grace and its independence. It is his picture, not Bailey's.
In a birth chart
Bailey's table sends the seventh ray through Aries, Cancer and Capricorn, two of which it shares with the first ray. Its one planet is Uranus, sacred in her scheme; there is no non-sacred seventh-ray planet, and the Saturn our old engine gave it belongs to the third ray. Through Uranus the ray reaches Aquarius in her orthodox set, Libra in her esoteric set and Aries in her hierarchical set.
A Sun in Capricorn or a strong Uranus indicates seventh-ray energy acting on a person, by her tables. It does not tell anyone what their rays are.
A note on the source: scholars have criticised racist and antisemitic passages in Bailey's writings; nothing on this page draws on them.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Other names Bailey uses
- Ceremonial Law or Order sourced
- Rulerships in Bailey's three sets
- Uranus rules Aquarius (orthodox), Libra (esoteric) and Aries (hierarchical) sourced
- Bailey's colour
- Violet, an outer name (Letters on Occult Meditation, p. 213); she also writes of the violet of the ceremonial ray (Esoteric Psychology I, p. 121) sourced
- Other colour lists
- Other lists differ, and none is the tradition's disputed
- Colour in our chart
- A violet of our own, shown only beside the numeral our construction
- Wood's type (1925)
- The artist and craftsman sourced
- Leadbeater's table (1925)
- No characteristic given; elemental worship in the magic column; its true development, he says, still to come sourced
- Head of the ray
- Bailey taught (1922) that the Master Rakoczi is on the seventh ray, under the Mahachohan. sourced
How the schools read it
- Bailey (1936 to 1951)
- Order, rhythm and form: the ray coming into power as the sixth passes.
- Wood (1925)
- The artist and craftsman, illustrated by the cat; he also calls it the ray of action.
- Leadbeater (1925)
- Said its characteristics were not given to him, and left its column nearly blank.
- Ascended Master teachings
- A separate later stream that keeps violet for the seventh ray but gives it a different head; not Bailey's, and not what we show.
- EsoTerrier
- Read here as the ray of care and practical skill, whose risk is insisting on the one proper way.
Claims about it
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Saturn is the lower planet of the seventh ray.
falseWhat the record shows: Saturn carries Bailey's third ray. She gives Uranus alone for the seventh.
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A sentence about bringing two things together is the seventh ray's keynote.
falseWhat the record shows: It opens one of her formulas for a seventh-ray personality (Esoteric Psychology II, p. 375), not a keynote. Her keynote for the ray is the single word Expression.
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Bailey lists rigidity among the seventh ray's vices and exactness among its virtues.
falseWhat the record shows: Neither word is in her table (Esoteric Psychology I, p. 210).
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The Moon veils Uranus as a fixed rule.
disputedWhat the record shows: Bailey leaves the veiled planet to the astrologer; our chart adds a note and substitutes nothing.
