The autumn days are growing shorter with a great pace, and some storms have swept the trees and covered the streets with a wet, slippery foliage. Like the vital force of the trees is withdrawing inside, the mood of the time is also turning more inside. A time for more subjective work, to counter-balance the outgoing tide.

There are still a lot of faint green and golden yellow leaves on the branches, but you virtually feel that the pulse of life is receding. At work, it doesn’t seem to be be so, for the waves of activity are running high, though the peak in the project I’m managing seems to be over now.

In the morning when driving to my office the lights of the cars and the street lamps create mosaics of  specks of light, especially when it is raining. At the moment, however, the autumn sun is shedding golden rays through a blue sky. The photos show scenes from my way to the office of last Thursday.

A street light overgrown with ivy – a synthesis of nature and technology…

A play of light and darkness – street light at the entrance of the seat of the South Corean ambassador in Berne.

Tuesday morning started with a fire ritual for Pushyama full moon (Pushyami is the constellation of the moon at that time according to Indian calender).

Sri Kumar explained that this full moon is to be regarded as Capricorn full moon:

“Though the solar god is already in Aquarius, this full moon is regarded still as Capricorn. When the full moon happens when the sun just changes sign, it is the full-moon of the completing month. So it is not the full moon of Aquarius. The impact of the full moon is more with the previous month, therefore the full moon has to be taken as the full moon of Pushyami, the full moon of Capricorn, where the energies of the solar and lunar gods are around the heart centre.”

In the evening the group went to the site with the statue of Master EK at the beach road of Visakhapatnam for evening meditation in the full moon energies.

On the way along the beach road – in midst of all the lower lights it is easy to ignore the greater light.

Later in the evening we assembled at 9 o’clock pm on the roof of the World Teacher Temple, Radhamadhavam  for full moon meditation, guided by the Sri Kumar. It was an enchanted ambiance with the light of the moon and the sound of the mantrams reverberating through the night sky.The atmosphere there is particularly charged with strong spiritual vibrations.

Yesterday brought a number of e-mails from all over the world – new year greetings in several languages, with lots of good wishes – may they come true… For me this turning from December 31st to January 1st is not much more than a step from one day to the other, marking a day fixed by social conventions of some part of the earth, accidentally located 10 days after winter solstice – a much more appropriate day for a start of a new cycle.

Next week we will be in India, and in about two weeks’ time there will be the Pongal celebration – the new year according to the local traditions between January 12 and 15, marking the beginning of Uttarayana, the sun’s movement northward for a six-month period. For years I had been working with refugees, and I have several times celebrated the Tết festival, the Vietnamese new year according to the luni-solar calendar, in February. My Iranian colleague of that time used to celebrate with us the Nowruz festival, the traditional Iranian new year holiday celebrated in Iran and several countries of Central Asia coming for Zoroastrian times. It is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox (start of spring in northern hemisphere), which usually occurs on the March 21st. Though it isn’t an Islamic festival, it has been adopted as such in a number of countries.

For me this is the most appropriate beginning of a new year, marking one prominent starting point of the annual zodiacal cycle, where the sun enters the sign of Aries. Its invigorating energies are most appropriate for launching a new year. Thus the 12 signs of the zodiac are also a more appropriate rhythm than counting the months as normally done. But maybe the double-headed Janus, who gave his name to our January, is quite typical for our times, showing not only two faces and being often irritated by the many perspectives.

Dawn of January 1st, 2008 – what do the augurs say for the coming times?

We are living in speedy times. If you like to speed it even up, here is a tip, from a newsletter which I received today at my office:

If you want to read long texts faster than before, you can try Spreeder, a free onlinie speed reading service. You just have to copy the text into a field, put the setting of the WPM (Words per minute) on a value between 250 and 300 and click “play”: Spreeder now sends the single words of the text one after the other onto you screen and you can read the text without having to move your eyes through the lines. With a little concentration you can thus read the text faster.

Whether you also understand faster, or even deeper, remains a question to be solved. Depth doesn’t come from speed, but from growth of consciousness, inner silence and a good balance in life.

In the cockpit of a glider, April 2007

Yesterday we had staff trainings on IT security. An instructor showed us different ways intruders try to break into a system and how they manage to change or steal information. Some new security measures were presented, and the head of our ITC services encouraged us to keep an eye on our systems at home, too: “Do at least a monthly scan of the hard disk…”

Well, I thought, I have some active measures, firewall, anti-virus, … I’m on the safe side.

Nevertheless I started a hard disc scan in the evening. Two times it got stuck half-way through and the system was blocked. The third time the scan went on, for a long time, through all the programs and folders. And indeed, somewhere in the system trays different malwares had crept in since the last scan. I don’t know what they’d been doing, but now these little cyber-animals had to give up their pernicious activities…

It reminded me of the subtle noxious thoughts creeping in when you aren’t on your guard. Vigilance and discrimination are very much needed to keep these virus-infections away from your inside.

Today is Scorpio full moon, and secret activities going on hidden under the surface are qualities of this sign. It rules over venomous creatures that try to hide in holes and do their stinging and attacking from there. The worms and bugs stealthily infiltrating the PC and the ones operating with them, aren’t they real Scorpions? You might like to read about the qualities of Scorpio in the “Letters on Spiritual Astrology” or in the book “Spiritual Astrology” by Dr. E. Krishnamacharya.

Keeping creeping creatures out of the system – spider and ladybug on an artichoke.

Yesterday I received a parcel from Bulgarian friends: They sent me copies of the Bulgarian version of “Spiritual Astrology” by Master EK (Ekkirala Krishnamacharya). They had translated the book and published it by themselves. It is the first Bulgarian edition of the WTT wisdom books, and though I won’t be able to read it in this language, it was a joy to see the book:

My friends had visited us June last year, and I had given them an English copy. They were so fascinated by it that they started translating and publishing – and this without much financial resources. They also had to overcome other difficulties, but the enthusiasm carried them on.

It was for me a good example that when there is a will and the skill to do something, you can get it done.

The book is very profound and has nothing to do with what you normally get to read or hear about astrology. It deals with the spiritual evolution of man and provides some keys for a deeper understanding of the zodiac and the planets from an inner view. You might like to read an extract on the correspondences between micro and macro-cosmos – or read some of our Letters on Spiritual Astrology.

Today is Beltane day, the astronomical midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice.

The astronomical date for this point can vary from year to year. Beltane was celebrated by the Celts around the 1st of May or the nearest full moon. It is the time of fertility, when nature displays its full beauty of spring to bring about new life.

You find more information about the annual rhythms on the website of Archaeoastronomy, where they have a countdown of the annual equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarters.

You might read in the Letters on Spiritual Astrology on Taurus about the Radiance of Beauty: “The beauty of the flower lies in the totality, not in a part of it. Beauty is caught nowhere in the form, but reflects through it.”

Walking through a little nearby forest yesterday I everywhere felt the strong urge of nature to come out with fresh green leaves. The trees were mostly still empty, but in a month’s time everything is supposed to be clad in green. In these latitudes spring is really a time of sprouting and springing up. After this Easter weekend, the eggs and rabbits in the shops, however, will have to make place for new decorations, so here is a souvenir of a colourful shop-window reflection:

The eggs are said to be symbols of new life, of a new creation. Do the unfertilised eggs in the shops symbolise the same vital power, or the infertility of mass reproduction?
The Cosmic Egg of ancient wisdom is described as manifesting out of the darkness of the background, and the vernal equinox as the annual analogy of this creative happening. So the Easter festival, at the first Sunday after spring full moon, is really a symbol for the deep spiritual reality of the cosmic seed principle – besides and beyond its well-known Christian connotation of the resurrection.

Here is an Easter Bunny in its nest, at a farm-house near Berne.

“100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time.” This is the title of the 10×10 (ten by ten) site designed and developed by Jonathan Harris. It gives a snapshop of our world as a picture postcard window. 100 different pictures are taken hourly in connection with the most used words in the top ten news of several international news sources, such as Reuters World News, BBC World Edition, New York Times International News. 10×10 just shows what the system finds, without any politics nor any secret agenda. It runs without human intervention.

10×10 says: “When we see a frequently repeated image, we know it’s important. When we see a picture of a movie star next to a picture of dead bodies, we understand the extremes that exist in our world. Scanning a grid of pictures can be more intuitive than reading headlines, for it lets the news come to life, and everything feels a bit less distant, a bit closer to heart, and maybe, if we’re lucky, gives us pause to think.”

The photos here below show the momentary “snapshop of the world”.

Another “picture that defines the time” you will get when you meditatively work with time cycles, observing the changing pattern of planetary constellations, pondering on the cosmos within. You find more about it in the Lunar Messenger on “Working with the Key of Time“.

NASA has just published pictures from the Cassini spacecraft, which has captured never-before-seen views of Saturn from perspectives high above and below the planet’s rings. Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.: “Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we’ve never seen before. It just doesn’t look like the same place. It’s so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo.” Here are photos and movies from Saturn.

Quite other perspectives from “inner views” you find in spiritual astrology, where Saturn is described as the deepest of the 7 planetary principles. In the Indian Scriptures he is called “the Old Man”. Through him we receive the things that we don’t like, because that which we don’t like is nothing but our limitation. He gives a small dose of dislike and sees how we work with it. The time sense of man is governed by Saturn. So we are made to wait by our own limitations.

Read more about it in the book on “Saturn” by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, it gives deep insights into the way this principle of Saturn is working.