(Alice) Bailey made extensive use of the term "New Age" in her books and some writers have described her as the founder of the New Age movement. However The New Age was used as the title of a Journal of Christian liberalism and Socialism, published as early as 1894, predating Bailey's use of the term.

James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, in Perspectives on the New Age wrote:

"The most important—though certainly not the only—source of this transformative metaphor, as well as the term "New Age," was Theosophy, particularly as the Theosophical perspective was mediated to the movement by the works of Alice Bailey."

Sir John Sinclair, in his book The Alice Bailey Inheritance, commented on the seminal influence of Alice Bailey, which, he said, underlies the consciousness growth movement in the 20th century.

Though Bailey's writings differ from the orthodox Theosophy of Madame Blavatsky, they also have much in common with it. She wrote about religious themes, including Christianity, though her writings are fundamentally different from many aspects of Christianity and of other orthodox religions. Her vision of a unified society includes a global "spirit of religion" different from traditional religious forms and including the concept of the Age of Aquarius.

"It should be noted that the 13-Moon/28-Day calendar is a perfect solar-lunar measure; that is, it uses the even, regular lunar cycle of 28 days as the standard of measuring the 365-day solar cycle of the Earth. The balance of solar and lunar may also be taken as symbolic of human psychological characteristics and their balance or imbalance. A solar-lunar calendar will represent and reflect a balance of the solar-lunar, masculine and feminine qualities within the human being. It is important to bear in mind these considerations of calendars and their effect on shaping the human historical consciousness and its psychological makeup. From this perspective, history is, in fact, a process of falling away from the perfection of harmonic standards. "