text: Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Mihail Ivanov; January 31, 1900 – December 25, 1986) was a Bulgarian philosopher, pedagogue, mystic, and esotericist. A leading 20th-century teacher of Western Esotericism in Europe, he was a disciple of Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno), the founder of the Universal White Brotherhood.
  Life
  He was born Mikhail Dimitrov Ivanov in Srpci (then in the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire), a village in Bitola Municipality in the present-day North Macedonia, to a Bulgarian family. His father, Ivan Dimitrov established a coal business in Varna, Bulgaria. His mother, Dolya was a religious woman, who dedicated her son to God since his very early childhood. In 1907, she decided that the family should join her husband and they moved to Varna, too. His father died when Aivanhov was seven years old. At the age of 17, after a childhood passed in poverty, he met Master Peter Deunov (1864–1944), the founder of the Universal White Brotherhood in the city of Varna, Bulgaria. A few months later in 1918, he followed Master Deunov to the capital, Sofia.