Alexandra David N%C3%A9el
Alexandra DavidNel, born Louise Eugnie Alexandrine Marie David , was a BelgianFrench explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer. She is most known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet when it was forbidden to foreigners. DavidNel wrote overbooks about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet which was published in 1929. Her teachings influenced the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the populariser of Eastern philosophy Alan Watts, and the esotericist Benjamin Creme.
She was born in SaintMand, ValdeMarne, only daughter of her father, Louis David, a Huguenot Freemason, teacher , and she had a Belgian Catholic mother of Scandinavian and Siberian origins, Alexandrine Borghmans. Louis and Alexandrine had met in Belgium, where the school teacher and publisher of a republican journal was exiled when LouisNapoleon Bonaparte became emperor. Between the penniless husband and the wife who would not come into her inheritance until after her father would die, the reasons for disagreements grew with the birth of Alexandra. Although her mother wanted her to receive a Catholic education, her father had her secretly baptized in the Protestant faith.
Source: Wikipedia