12/15/2012

December 15: Sitting Bull and Bailey's Theosophy

The Lakota resistance leader and sideshow performer Chief Sitting Bull was killed today in 1890 by Federal US Indian agents in Standing Rock, South Dakota - a prelude to the Wounded Knee massacre which would occur two weeks later. Sitting Bull's arrest had been ordered because of his support of the messianic Ghost Dance movement, which held that a returned Jesus Christ would drive the white men out of North America, restoring wild game and perished ancestors.

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Alice A. Bailey died on this date in 1949. A theosophist who held that World War II had been a battle of armegeddon between the forces of good and evil, she claimed that with Hitler's defeat an Aquarian new age had begun. For Bailey this meant the imminent appearance of a Maitreya, or world-teacher, who has been vocally anticipated at least since 1982 by Bailey's follower Benjamin Creme (see June 1).