Beauty expresses itself through many and various forms – a work of art, a beautiful flower. Beauty shines through the form. On the subtle planes the limitations of the material form fall away and beauty shines more radiantly. Beauty in the form is governed by Venus, ruler of Taurus. In our body, Taurus rules the lower part of the head and the neck. There are seven etheric centres above the neck related on the solar level with the seven stars of the Pleiades. They are also called the seven mothers who nourish the disciple after his spiritual birth with glandular secretions in this region in the body.

In the centre of the image, you see Apollo, the solar God, holding his seven-stringed lyre, symbol of the seven planes of creation. He is surrounded by flowers expressing divine beauty. From below, a serpent is lifting up its head. Apollo is raising the currents of the Kundalini energy to flow upwards and reach the Ajna centre. There, you see the shining star of the awakened centre.

Above the neck, there are seven stars linked to the seven stars of Pleiades. On the left side, in the vastness of the night-blue sky, you see a golden globe surrounded by a sphere of light and flowers. I created it with the help of a photo of Venus, from Nasa. For the figure of Apollo and for the flower meadow I worked on photos of friends.

The symbolism of Taurus is visualised in the twelve Taurus paintings done between 2010 and 2021. For detailed detailed descriptions please see the ludgerphilips.org website.

The exchange with the new friend from the Pacific coast of South America which started Mid-January went on for a time in an intense dialogue. This was partly with insertions in previous e-mails, partly with personal aspects that I will omit here. Here are some extracts, my comments partly being from insertions into what she had written before.

And again the first two photos are from South America – the following pictures are from the spring equinox meeting at the Paracelsus Center near Einsiedeln, Switzerland.

She: “I have seen the part you wrote about meditations and morning and evening prayer, but I would like to include all this in my days like something regular and not just a random day like I did before…”

Me: “This is very important and the basis for all progress. Only when you have reached a certain stability, you can slowly grow in becoming useful for the Plan.”

She: “I know what I’m trying to do or what I have read is not even the 1% of what I need to know and practice but like you said, ‘It’s something that grows with the time’…”

Me: “Yes, Master Morya says, ‘Make haste slowly’. The basis of all the activity is the alignment with the energies which we connect with morning and evening prayer / meditation. In case you are interested to know more, let me know.”

She: “I’m interested indeed…. I tried to collaborate with xx and yy last year but they didn’t admit me because ….”

Me: “When some doors do not open, something else is waiting for you. As per orientation and spiritual path, feel free to ask any questions you would like to. I will respond to what you are seeking, and little to what I think.”

She: “These days I’m trying to put order in my life… doing some exercise every day, reading spiritual books every day, going to bed at the same time, trying to respect my time and paying attention to my thoughts… This sounds like a few words but it takes a lot of effort because matter is very dense and has a lot of inertia.”

Me: “You are absolutely right, it is described as ‘hammering the rock’ of our personality – to carve out the beautiful form of the vehicle of the soul. It takes time. And most important is to have an attitude of seeing where one can be of help for the surroundings. This is the basis of any spiritual work, building up a rhythm and following, without ‘feeling’ that ‘I have to follow it’ – just doing it naturally.”

She: “My parents baptized me as catholic but my father always mentioned as a saying ‘The high enlightened beings exist in other planes’ so even if my parents hid their books I always found them so I have read spiritual books since I was 13…”

Me: “You have incarnated at a worthy place! I also was brought up in a very catholic family in Northern Germany, feeling in my youth that I did not find satisfying explanations for life and my spiritual search there.”

She: “Even if I have studied some spiritual fields I just took it as theory but without practice. … Since the last year I have been feeling the sensation of doing the combination of reading and experiencing the spiritual field, otherwise this incarnation might be a waste of time….”

Me: “Again, a most essential realisation – and when it is a call to practice, it is like an awakening – only things we put into practice become part of us. My spiritual journey started early but it was a ‘long and winding road’. …

As per feeling fulfilled, it will come through the alignment with and dedication to Hierarchy and accepting what life offers as needed commitment. This might be, for you also, a ‘seeming divide’ between spirituality work, a (future?) family, job, friends…. In synthesis, there is no such divide. Master CVV – from where the WTT teachings are inspired – says that “My way is living 200%” – he was a mayor of a South Indian city and a great occultist. For me, reading his biography, by Master KPK, was like a thunderclap. Also the biography of Master EK, the teacher of Master KPK.

If you want to collaborate, please let me know your skills, interests, maybe something about your (spiritual) background. And if it becomes concrete, I would need to know availability, endurance, observing the quality of work.”

She: “Well, to answer I will do a mixture of my professional and spiritual experience. (I know professional experience its not necessary but I will mention it just to explain more about my life)….”

Me: “The professional part is as important as any other part. Spirituality is nothing ‘aside’ of the rest of our life; we need to stand firmly in some activity, which is a means for livelihood and for expressing ourselves into a service to society. This is more a question of attitude than of doing anything big….

Your selection of profession has to do with your energy setup and ‘dharma’ / duty. It is very good to continue in this direction as per main professional orientation. Master Kumar became a chartered accountant, and developed a big enterprise on Indian top level performance and reach – while his main focus remained with meditation and wisdom teaching, without neglecting family and social responsibilities. He is a great role model for me and it helped me while in the past I had to balance with family, job and service activities in the spiritual domain.
So for the spiritual path it is very good and important to have a firm stand with an activity in the physical – and thus being financially independent. All really hierarchical activities / in tune with the Plan, are free volunteer activities.”

Mid-January I came into contact with a lady from the Pacific coast of South America via the Lunar Messenger. An intense dialogue started with the words: “I have been reading several books from Circle of Good Will and I can tell you that I have found several answers for my questions and I’m trying to pull through in this continuous search…”

We looked up on Google maps where we are living and exchanged some photos of how it looks like where we are living – a very interesting trans-oceanic perspective, and quickly we came to deeper exchanges.

The two photos above are from her – the following pictures are from a spring equinox meeting at the Paracelsus Center near Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Though it was the beginning of spring, there was a lot of snow outside. And it was a very small meeting due to pandemic regulations. We were celebrating the equinox meditatively but we also did a small apartment cleaning and a little excursion. So the photos are not related to the content of the ongoing conversation.

I gave some comments into her first e-mails about her activities: “The basis of all this activity is the alignment with the energies which we do with morning and evening prayer / meditation. In case you are interested to know more, let me know. But it is also something growing with the time.” I later asked if I can share it via this blog, and she agreed.

She wrote: “These days I’m trying to put order in my life. I wake up earlier and at the same time even if I don’t have work meetings, doing some exercise every day, reading spiritual books every day, going to bed at the same time, trying to respect my time and paying attention to my thoughts, if they are good it’s ok but if they are bad I reflect about the fact of thinking in that way in order to find a kind of alchemical formula.

This sounds like a few words but it takes a lot of effort because matter is very dense and has a lot of inertia. I’m 36 years old but even if I have studied some spiritual fields I just took it as theory, but without practice. So I have made the same mistakes many times and since the last year I have been feeling the sensation of doing the combination of reading and experience the spiritual field, otherwise this incarnation might be a waste of time.”

She offered to cooperate and I replied: “If you want to collaborate, please let me know your skills, interests, maybe something about your (spiritual) background. And if it becomes concrete, I would need to know availability, endurance, and observe the quality of work.”

She wrote: “Well, to answer I will do a mixture of my professional and spiritual experience (I know professional experience its not necessary but I will mention it just to explain more about my life). My parents baptized me as Catholic but my father always mentioned as a saying, “The high enlightened beings exist in other planes”. So even if my parents hid their books, I always found them. So I have read spiritual books since I was 13. The first book I read was ‘The Kybalion‘ and in that time started all my interest about spiritual laws and all related. Some topics are: Kabbalah & Tarot; Runes; Occidental Astrology (I haven’t had the opportunity to learn Vedic astrology until now); angeology; Mayas; IFA theology & 256 Odduns (more) (from Africa); Gnosis. I studied Engineering and a Master Degree in Engineering.”

I commented: “Excellent training for clarity of mind and practical application.” She gave more details… and wrote: “I like what I do but it doesn’t fulfil my heart because there is always a kind of emptiness that perhaps must be fulfilled by what I am and not by what I do.” The dialogue went on…

I replied about collaboration: “Spiritual Hierarchy is always in search of reliable, devoted, and focused collaborators – and we are always being tested in this regard – like a boss in an enterprise does 😅 at least I sometimes imagine it like this…. If you feel deeper liked to this path ….”.

Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and from the standpoint of light it is celebrated as the true beginning of the year. It is the sign of the birth of a new idea, which starts unfolding its activity. Each time a planet enters into Aries, a cycle is completed and a new one begins.

Aries is the highest point of enlightenment and at spring equinox the sun is also at the highest point at the equator. In our body, Aries is in the upper part of our head, it is the radiant light of the head centre. In the Vedas Aries is also worshipped as the head of the cosmic person called Purusha.

The symbolism of Aries is visualised in the twelve Aries paintings done between 2010 and 2020. For detailed detailed descriptions please see the ludgerphilips.org website.

In Aries the Sun is exalted. Aries represents the midheaven and the midday where the Sun gives the brightest light. Aries is considered the head of the sun signs and also Aries represents the actual head of man. The highest solar centre in man is the Sahasrara, the head centre. When we stand vertically on the Earth, our head aligns with the midheaven. When the Sun is at the midheaven at noon, we can line up with the Sun. In this way we can align with the light in our head and connect with the greater centre of the Sun. This helps us to rise up from personality to soul consciousness and connect with divine consciousness.

The picture shows a group of people gathering at spring equinox and aligning and connecting to the higher energies. The circles around the Sun indicate the three planes of the Sun, the physical plane, the soul plane and the spiritual plane.

The colour of Aries is red. The shades of red along the central axis outline the figure of the solar angel through whom the energy pours down. The arced horizon line was designed with a photo of the Bernese Alps as an expression of the inner striving upward. At the top right you can see the Aries constellation and Mars, the ruler of the sign, and its glyph is at the top left.

The symbolism of Aries is visualised in the twelve Aries paintings done between 2010 and 2020. For detailed detailed descriptions please see the ludgerphilips.org website.

End of January Benjamin, a friend of mine, sent me a scanned version of a booklet of Master EK (Ekkirala Krishnamacharya) which is no more available in print, at least in the West: “Triangles. An Esoteric Approach”. It is a nice booklet; I had read it about 20 years ago.

I told Benjamin that before putting it online on the WTT website, I would like to speak to Kulapathi Editions, the Indian publisher of Master EK’s books. So I had a hearty Zoom talk with Raju, who takes care of the publications. He agreed that we might organise scans of Master EK’s books which are not digitally available and do as-is reproductions of the print version. And we said that M. EK’s “The Yoga of Patanjali” would be a good starting point, since it also contains the yoga sutras in Sanskrit.

I only had my private copy left; so I sent it to Benjamin. It wasn’t in a good condition. I scanned the cover, cleaned the artefacts and shared it with Benjamin.

Last Sunday we met in an online meeting. There was some noise and someone of the group asked, “Hey, Benjamin, what are you doing?” He replied, “Cutting the Yoga of Patanjali book.” Then he switched his camera on and showed the cover and the pages of the book – apart.

Last Monday, he sent the scanned version, writing:

I did a deep digitizing test with the EK book “The Yoga of Patanjali”. The original book came in a bad quality, but it was the last exemplar you could find. So better than none and a perfect test object for getting a good quality also with heavily used material.
The goal was to find an automated process with a minimum of manual (time intensive) operations and most important: a high quality result.
As predicted the scan without OCR produced huge files much bigger than 100 MB. With Ghostscript compressing techniques I got a 14MB PDF with a nice cover.
I wrote down the complete process for imitation by others. Feel free to distribute the attached PDFs.

Since Benjamin always does things very carefully, he wrote a step-by-step guide to scanning the books. He mainly works on Linux systems, he used free software for the entire process – And the book was very well done; he had cleaned all pages automatically.

So I uploaded the PDFs of the two books – here is the one on Triangles – An Esoteric Approach, and here The Yoga of Patanjali. Profound food for thought. Let me know in case you want to scan another book as proposed – I might send you a copy.

Last Tuesday, I received a parcel from São Paulo, Brazil. It contained several books of Master EK, including a paper version of “The Yoga of Patanjali”. Six years ago, I had sent the books to a friend. She told me she no longer needed them and thus returned them, saying “Certainly someone will be interested”. An incredible coincidence.

Pisces speaks of the wheel of creation and of cyclical endings and beginnings. For seers, time is a flowing current or stream in which the past, present and future merge. The symbol of Pisces is a symbol of synthesis. It contains two fishes moving in opposite directions. Although the Pisces fishes appear as two, they are actually one. In truth, there is neither beginning nor ending, but a single continuous movement in which we think we see beginnings and endings, depending on our levels of perception and understanding.

The symbolism of Pisces is visualised in the eleven Pisces paintings done between 2010 and 2020. For detailed detailed descriptions please see the ludgerphilips.org website.

Winter is back with full strength in Europe. Yesterday evening in the online class friends from Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark told me about heavy snow and frost of minus 15° over the country. This morning it was also quite cold here but “only” about minus 10° C.

Since nearly 21 years, I am regularly doing a short fire ritual on Sunday morning, whatever the weather – except with storm/intense rain. So also this morning. It was a beautiful energy – and silence still all around, where normally during the week rush hour traffic pushes its noisy way to the highway. While I was singing mantric chants in a low voice, the rising flames were spreading their magic light.

After the fire ritual I did my “morning walk ritual” through through our neighbourhood and over the nearby field. It was just the time of daybreak.

It was so cold that my camera shut down after this picture – or was the battery simply empty?

For some weeks, I was pondering on the image for Pisces but the direction remained hidden. Going through my photo collections, I was attracted by pictures from an early morning walk along the beach in Visakhapatnam, India. The waves and the wet sand were mirroring golden rays. The meeting of sky, earth and water spoke of the cycles of time and of the endings and beginnings characteristic of Pisces.

While searching I joined a Zoom lecture of Sri Kumar and I was thrilled to hear him explain in detail the meaning of the rod of initiation and how to meditate upon it. The very word initiation means entering into oneself. That rod of initiation is in us; it is normally dormant but it can be awakened. It is a pole of light upon which there is a sphere of light, like a golden club – the rod of power or the weapon Lord Vishnu is holding in his hand. It is a symbolic representation of the inner side of our cerebro-spinal column and our head. I started drawing and contemplating.

I fused the picture of a golden club with a photo of a Bronze sculpture of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion (from the Metropolitan Museum). I arranged them in the centre of the image. Avalokiteshvara holds the rod of initiation. On his eyes and forehead, you see a lighted triangle with a central point, symbol of the basic trinity and the oneness. The meditative calmness of Avalokiteshvara, the eternal observer of everything, is in maximum contrast to the ever-changing movement of the waves of time and life. He remains blessing and protecting the beings through his looks.

The symbolism of Pisces is visualised in the eleven Pisces paintings done between 2010 and 2020. For detailed detailed descriptions please see the ludgerphilips.org website.

This morning, a friend of mine sent me a short video of today’s sunrise at Durga Mountain, also called Master Mountain in the Nilagiris, the Blue Mountains of South India. It reminded me of our visit December 2016.

I had planned for last December to go there again with a group – but the strict regime of “Lady Corona” thwarted our plans. At least this way you can look digitally “through the keyhole” and see the beauty of this place.