The Seven Rays are the foundational framework of the Alice Bailey / Djwhal Khul teaching — a system that describes seven distinct qualities or streams of divine energy through which all manifestation occurs. Everything that exists — every soul, every nation, every planet, every cosmic being — is qualified by one or more of the Seven Rays, which determine character, method, purpose, and the particular quality of divine energy being expressed. The system draws on Theosophical sources (particularly Blavatsky's Stanzas of Dzyan) and is most fully elaborated in Bailey's five-volume Treatise on the Seven Rays, dictated by the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul between 1936 and 1949.
The Rays are numbered and named, each with a colour association, a governing planet, and specific psychological qualities in their higher and lower expressions. They govern everything from individual personality to national character to astrological influence to the quality of specific historical periods.
Every individual soul, in the Bailey teaching, has both a soul ray (which remains constant across many incarnations and represents the soul's deepest quality and purpose) and a personality ray (which changes from life to life and represents the current incarnation's dominant quality). Additionally, each of the three aspects of the personality — mental body, emotional body, and physical body — has its own ray. This produces a complex of five rays that Bailey presents as the key to self-understanding: knowing one's rays enables one to understand one's strengths, challenges, the nature of one's spiritual path, and the quality of contribution one is here to make.
The difficulty is that ray identification is not simple — there is no test for rays in the way that there are personality type tests. Bailey explicitly discourages attempts at self-identification until a degree of impersonality has been achieved, because the desire to see oneself as expressing a particular ray quality distorts the observation. Qualified teachers in the Bailey tradition assist students with ray identification as part of an ongoing relationship of spiritual guidance.
The seven rays are seven streams of energy, seven qualities of divine consciousness, seven ways in which the One Life can express itself through the manifold forms of creation. To know your ray is to know your purpose; to work with your ray is to fulfil it. — Alice Bailey, Esoteric Psychology Vol. I
Bailey's teaching extends the Ray system beyond individuals to nations, historical periods, and even planets. The United States, for example, she identifies as having a soul ray of Second Ray (Love-Wisdom) and a personality ray of Sixth Ray (Idealism/Devotion) — which would account for both the idealistic quality of American founding documents and the evangelical fanaticism with which American ideals are sometimes pursued. Great Britain has a soul ray of Second Ray and a personality ray of First Ray (Will/Power) — the imperial will serving, at best, a genuine commitment to world service. Russia she identifies with a soul ray of Seventh Ray (coming into expression in the Aquarian Age) and a personality ray of Sixth Ray.
Whether these attributions are historically accurate, symbolically useful, or entirely speculative depends considerably on one's prior assessment of Bailey's overall credibility. But the exercise of asking "what is the deepest quality this nation is here to express?" and "what is the distorted personality expression that obscures that quality?" is independently useful as a tool for national self-reflection, regardless of the metaphysical framework.