Today starts the month of Pisces. Here you find ten images for the month of Pisces which have manifested in ten years of Spiritual Astrology Paintings, giving various aspects of the symbolism of the sign. They form part of the Images of Synthesis series. You find the detailed descriptions of the Pisces paintings on the ludgerphilips.org website.

This is the 1500th blog-post. I started blogging on 31 March 2006. I called the blog “Flowers on the Wayside”, along the roads of Good Will.

This post is about incense. Recently in an online-meeting with friends someone said, “But please don’t bring these black heavy ones…” They preferred light, Japanese incense. I also like but I silently thought of “these black heavy ones” which had become my trusted companions since many years. And I thought to write some words about them.

Of course, there’s no arguing about taste, and we can also add, no arguing about smell. Smell has a profound influence and you can remember it over many years. I know of a sandalwood fragrance which was used at a meditation seminar in summer 1975. I got one package, and it was so delicious… I never found that species again.

Many others followed. In a way, it became a dear meditation habit to light an incense. And when once one of my sisters told me that it was a dangerous habit, that the smoke is harmful to the lungs, that in India, living with open windows, it might be OK but here it is not – I thought, then may it be my little addiction… I especially like some of the kinds manufactured in the Sri Aurobindo ashram – they are striving for perfection.

I came to know the “black heavy ones” when I first came to the WTT group lives end of the 90s. They were not my favourites in the beginning. But I heard that they are made according to a recipe given by Master EK. I had felt a long, long calling by Master EK, over nearly 2 decades, before I approached and joined the path. And the incense became something linking me to this. And they became dear to me.

I heard from others saying, “I do not like them” – but I started liking. Maybe it was similar like with coffee, tea or smoking; it often does not taste well in the beginning but you can get accustomed. There are different flavours, and each time I am in India I get a good amount of them – for myself and also as a gift to friends. There is also one kind called “Sandal” – it does not smell much like sandal; however, I also like.

Incense supports alignment of the mind in meditation, to get the divine presence. In a group life in Argentina 2015 Sri Kumar said : “As far as incense is used it is to help you to get the presence. Once you are so well established in your prayers that you can relate to the presence even without incense, the incense shall not bother you.” Master CVV recommended incense, saying incense is important because the Master energy works through air, it is the permeating principle of the air. Therefore, having a good odour in the ambience is important.

Among all perfumes, sandalwood is considered to be the most sacred, because it supports the will in an excellent way, and it opens doors into super mundane much more effectively than any other perfume, than any other incense. There should be no artificial perfumes, only natural ones. Also before going to sleep you should light an incense and then go asleep, having conducted a prayer. Lighting a candle and an incense would dispel negative elements from the room. Sandalwood is also helpful for an easy departure and entry into the subtle planes at the moment of death.

Whenever we read a scripture about subtle topics, we should have incense and a candle. It is helpful to pray for the cooperation of the author of the scripture, as his presence is with the scripture. It is like a big light that can show us the intricacies of the text.

Time moves cyclically. Every day is a time cycle, also every week and every year. As long as we remain in our old thought patterns and always do the same thing, we move in circles. As we evolve, we progress from circle to spiral – progressing spirally and ascending the path of evolution. When we learn to be useful to ourselves and to the environment, each turn of the spiral takes us to a higher plane of consciousness, until, freed from the limitations of matter, we finally move into higher circles. In the zodiac, the transition from Pisces to Aries offers the possibility of ascension; symbolically, it is called the resurrection from death.

The lower part of the picture shows the pair of fish swimming in different directions. The background of the painting is formed by the images of a spiral galaxy and a blue spiral, from the centre of which several spirals rise. Above there is the head of Phanes, a god of Greek mythology, whose name means “the appearing, the shining one”. He is regarded as the first-born of creation and as a light bearer. The figures of the zodiac surrounding him are based on a Phanes bas-relief (Wikimedia: Sailko).

Above on the right you can see the glyph of the fishes and above it the constellation of the zodiac sign.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Pisces paintings.

Pisces 2020 concludes the 10th annual cycle of the Spiritual Astrology Paintings. There have been 10 times 12 paintings related to the zodiac plus some extra-paintings – a part of the “Images of Synthesis” series.

To celebrate the occasion, I have done a photo book with the pictures of the last three cycles. I cannot make it generally available in print. But you can download the PDF here (text in English only). And the picture series continues.

It’s a complex matter – best told in story-form. It is not so easy to understand, and when you read it on the web, it is very probable that you quickly scan the text but not read, and when you read, you might just take it in with your cognitive brain, maybe quickly putting a “like” on “social” media but not letting it in. No time! the mind runs like crazy…
Recent brain research showed that digital reading is good for cognitive reception but reading on paper is better for transformative knowledge, transforming one’s life. Enough foreword…

The pictures of mobiles in this article are no criticism but done with a smiling eye. I’m also photographing a lot – with a camera. In case of personality complaints, please let me know and I will exchange the photo….

An introduction

This is not a private story about an aspect aof my life, but I use this perspective as an intro for the main story, which comes later:

I stopped seeing TV around 9/11, in 2001, sometimes seeing a movie in a plane, very little YouTube. I prefer reading newspaper articles, going into what I read. I intensely follow what is going on in the world. Already as a child, I had very strong inner images which later led me to painting; when reading a book, I quickly “fell into it”. And when looking a crime story, the suspense frequently made me run out of the room.

In my former profession as head of web office of Swiss Red Cross, I was responsible for all digital communication instruments as per their content side – internet, intranet, central photo archives – until I was “set free” seven years ago, free for my way. There already, people used to run around with mobile. I felt, it would be too overwhelming for my perception, blurring my discrimination. As an excuse, I used to tell that my hearing was not good – it was only half true. I didn’t want to get into “digital morphine”, putting people’s inner side with hyperaction to sleep. Now they talk in the media about the need for digital detox, offering courses for managers about digital fasting.

During the last decade, mobiles made a triumphal march over the globe, entering into remotest corners. I could not escape, didn’t want to be a dinosaur refusing it. I’m extremely active with PC and, when travelling, with laptop. No quick photo publication – selected views, images cut-out and processed. Since some years, we have a family mobile, we just use it “immobile” at home, as a “modem” to enter into WhatsApp. My wife using it as a means for her trance therapy work, working remotely with people who don’t have a computer or don’t physically come. And me for interacting with family members and WTT. Since years, however, I’m studying the digital marketing tricks of big data business and follow the latest developments via a daily newsletter. So I came to see the big players as monsters, some of them massively manipulating, with a mask of innocence, elections and political decision. Making big money with little to no ethics. “Do no harm” of early Google is no longer at use.

No need for fear when reading the following passages, it will come to a good end of the story!

In Europe, governments and data privacy protection offices are trying to fight the supranational Hydras, often without success. The big players are very powerful. Especially the Mark Zuckerberg Empire stands foremost in the manipulation game, from the very beginning, – denying it in public, putting on a smiling face. And everybody uses WhatsApp – in WTT it is used especially in India for bringing plenty of pictures and information “for free” to the members, who need to join to “follow”. You cannot escape when you want to follow.

Nobody thinks of what is being done with the data – things which are directly opposite to the principles the WTT stands for:
Big scale image recognition, profiling people, targeting ads, delivering content individually tailored for the personality profile of the receiver to most effectively manipulate on a mass scale. Yesterday, the media reported: “Facebook policy chief Nick Clegg reaffirms the social network’s decision to continue allowing advertising with political content. Twitter and Google, however, have banned politically motivated ads on their platforms.” Not to speak of what China, the biggest player, does. Incredible “total immersion”, keeping over a billion people under central control – for the “well-being of the state”.

One of the latest developments is voice recognition based marketing, analysing all what is communicated via speech – for better targeting ads etc., combining mobile data with the behaviour portraits of the surfers.

About two years ago, while uploading photos to Google Photo, I saw a function for identifying friends. I wrote the name of a friend – and I got hundreds of photos with her in most intimous situations, at group lives, while travelling – often, I did not recognise her face at first sight, but Google did. And these were not pictures she had uploaded. Data protection, privacy? A joke. Digital profiling in a mass scale. Yesterday, the media reported that 3 billion photos were sucked off the web by a private Silicon Valley company with a big investor. We try to comply on WTT related websites with European data protection standards but these trends go directly against.

At the recent seminars in India – like at the last international group lives – the entire ongoing group communication was done via mobile and WhatsApp – when, where, what is happening – it is so practical, and all have a mobile. Except me, I think. I didn’t want to be washed away by an overkill of information, not only via this channel but by other people trying to contact me this way. They can do it via e-mail. The triage of relevant and irrelevant information needs time and energy and deviates the focus I’m trying to uphold. At the seminar, I told two friends to keep me updated. It worked fine. I even once spoke with my wife via mobile WhatsApp of a friend – my laptop didn’t get connection or only a very low one, for a week. (Later, I got a mobile internet connection from the group of WTT India for the communication activities, a great help.)

Already at December Call celebration in Bangalore, Master Kumar said:

“The teachings of every hierarchy member shall have to be related to. You have no more time for mobile, for silly messages. They are all silly messages from people with experience. There are very silly messages through WhatsApp. You are wasting your time and wasting others time. It is meant to send a simple communication, not to use it because it is free. If they charged 100 rupees for every message, everything would stop. Calls also have become free with WhatsApp. So you call to America and speak for 30-40-50 minutes. Sheer waste of time and energy. Instead why can you not relate to this which is the higher dimension relating to Hierarchy. Hierarchy is the highest dimension relating to humanity and we think we are following some kind of discipleship.”

Recently, a scientist wrote in a Swiss magazine: “When you want to do something effective against global warming, stop taking selfies” – all the infrastructure behind consumes tremendous amounts of energy. Especially the endless Netflix etc. stream entertainment – an easy way to anesthetize your brain.

At the January WTT seminar in Visakhapatnam, things got more intense for me, utmost intensity. Most sublime teachings, multi-directional inputs from people, intense talks with key persons, developing ideas for future developments, for projects. At a question-answer session, I gave a strong word of warning to the group as per the use of WhatsApp etc. There was a good reply by Sri Kumar, here are my notes:

“In humanity there is always an abuse; abuse is common because there is ignorance. Men of knowledge are few, people are stuck by one side or the other. A roller-coaster situation, abuse is about to happen… Humanity is the only species which has discrimination. See what is relevant to us; whatever is relevant to us is not relevant to others. We might be in a huge jungle, we can’t change the whole jungle except by prayer. Immediately it will have an impact on us. It will take time from humanity.

There is some negative coming out of humanity, very few use discrimination. We see what is relevant and what is irrelevant. It is very well possible. That is why we need to grow with discriminative will. We get more guided by conscience, discriminative will.

Whatever Ludger said is in every dimension of humanity, not only in internet – gold invented, misused, slowly balanced. In the 2nd half of last century, the use of fertilizers, they did great harm to the agriculture. Sometimes we learn through ignorance, through foolishness, we make experiments, experiments settle as wisdom. We keep learning by this example, … health is gone from humans and animals, we realise, slowly there is a direction in the production into another direction. Now they have realised that smoking has a very negative impact on health, still some are smoking, smoking; non-smokers were more affected by smoking.
We need to change the planet to an understanding what is a right understanding. “I don’t use it” – not using is not a solution, right use is important.

The world offers many things, be discriminate, develop the conscience, don’t send messages of WhatsApp, when there is no relevance for you, don’t look at it. That is how we use discrimination, use meditation as means to calm down, to develop inner consciousness, the antaratma (inner self), that will help to eliminate certain activities in relation to us and to the group.

We don’t have to criticise, that is Aquarian. We get into the subtler side, it is Aquarian. Make an appropriate use of the right side and don’t get into the (wrong one). The more and more you are negative, judgemental about others – we don’t touch what is black – the more and more we discuss about it, we strengthen it. Don’t get into the path of ignorance, look for light everywhere and don’t get into darkness.

The black ones try to use the others to propagate them. The negativity in us is a deception. … We as students of goodwill see the light side of it, don’t criticise the dark side of it. … You slowly disassociate from people but do not entertain the negative side, if you entertain it it is in you. Be neutral to the negative and be attractive to the positive side. That is how we need to take to the positive side. Make a good use of the good side of the developments coming to us, it is contributing to human progress. In science there is open thinking, but the sciences are under the thumb of the barbarians on the planet who control the whole of humanity. We don’t have to deny the sciences; take the positive side of all the science. Let it be so with all of us.”

A member from Spain introduced me to Microsoft Teams, explaining to me how he uses it for his course organisation and interaction, the structure set up by a friend. Chat and collaboration instruments, file sharing, and video calling. And it runs on PC/laptop/mobile without being bound to mobile. I found it thrilling, thought, “what’s the catch for Microsoft to give the basic version for free?” I know that Microsoft is a much more integer player when it comes to dealing with data. I had several discussions with IT specialists of WTT. It seems to be a way out of the challenge of using digital instruments for group work, interchange and collaboration. Of course, there are also other tools. Plenty of ideas rushed in. It will take time to evaluate and test. I started testing the app but: “Take to turtle speed, not the speed of a rabbit.”

Last year, I had a strong warning as per my health with a brain bleeding. I realised, I have to slow down, take away pressure. This is most needed, especially in the present time and with the present challenges. I’m daily walking for a while in nature, ponder and observe. Keeping longer times of silence to centre inside. The inner guidance will lead through the times of rough weather.

In all of this, I had to think of the story from Puranas of Aghasura, the enormous serpent-demon which wanted to devour Krishna and his friends. The cowherd boys innocently entered its mouth, mistaking it for a mountain cavern. After seeing this, Krishna then came to their rescue, killing Aghasura. In a way, the mobiles look like the many heads of a serpent devouring the attention. But help comes, when you turn inward and stay strongly aligned to the soul.

Here you find ten images for the month of Aquarius which have manifested in ten years of Spiritual Astrology Paintings, giving various aspects of the symbolism of the sign. They form part of the Images of Synthesis series. You find the detailed descriptions of the Aquarius paintings on the ludgerphilips.org website.

Before something appears, it is potentially present. Aquarius stands for the manifestation out of a potential state. Aquarius is the point of transformation where the invisible becomes the visible and the visible becomes the invisible. The symbol of Aquarius shows waves in space; the vibrations pour forth from the pot of Aquarius as the waters of life. The constellation Aquarius is called the Heavenly Man. During the month Aquarius he showers down a stream of spiritual light from his water jar. The Masters of Wisdom called this cosmic man the Manu, the prototype of man. He guides mankind through the cycles of time. In the present Age of Aquarius, spiritual evolution is accelerated to an unimaginable degree. Rishi Agastya, called Master Jupiter in the Theosophical circles, is the ruler of Aquarius.

For the figure of the celestial man I reworked a statue of Agastya from Java (Wikimedia: Photo Dharma) and merged the face with a picture of Master Morya. In his hands he holds the glyph of Aquarius with waves swinging like lightning. The zodiacal arch with the figure of Aquarius was created from a photo of the astrological clock of the ‘Zytglogge Tower’ in Bern. In the upper left corner, you can see the contours of the Aquarius constellation. The star in the hub of the wheel indicates the point of origin of the creational cycle; the play of colours of two Gothic window rosettes with twelve spokes stands for the variety and rhythm of cosmic unfoldment.

When I looked at the picture for several days, I realized that the figure with the Aquarius glyph looks like a magician. Aquarius is also the month of magic – to manifest something out of the apparent nothing. In Sanskrit, the month of Aquarius is called Magha, which means magic. The wheel of creation with its many colours is Maya in essence, an illusion that hides the truth of existence.

See more pictures on the site with my paintings. If you want to print the image, you can download the file in medium and high resolution format.
The different zodiacal signs are clustered in groups – you can see here all my Aquarius paintings.

During the 2019 May Call celebration at Mount Shasta, California, Master Kumar launched a revised English version of the thrilling biography of Sripada Srivallabha. Sripada is an avatar of Lord Dattatreya who was born in Pithapuram, India, in 1320 AD. The book has been published by Kulapati Editions of WTT Germany. They had already published the German version end of 2016 which I had the grace of Sripada to translate and also published a website on Lord Dattatreya and Sripada. At that time, I had brought it to the temple at Sripada’s birthplace. Now, I wanted to hand over to them the new English version, together with the friends who had done the publishing work.
I first intended to go just with a small group, but finally 26 group members were sitting in the bus which started 31 December early morning from Visakhapatnam.

At Pithapuram, the bus had to stop at a distance of some hundred metres from the temple, for it is located in a quarter with only very small streets. Read more about it here.

The hall of the temple was filled with people sitting in rows before the inner shrine, where some priests were conducting a ritualistic worship of the “Padukas”, the symbolic sandals of the feet of Sripada. The ceremony was projected on TV-screens placed at the roof besides the shrine, while the rhythmic vibrations of the Vedic chanting resounded through the air. I had announced our coming via e-mail, and though I had got multi-language publishing rights for the West some years ago, I wondered how they would receive the new book, since it was a version done by fusing and editing three existing English versions. I thought, let’s wait and see things develop.

After a while, the ritual came to a close, coconut water was sprinkled over the group as a blessing and some sweet curd from the ritual was distributed with a spoon. Our group remained seated while the big group slowly dispersed.

Some priests came to us, asked questions, and we started singing some mantrams – which caused a smiling interest. I told to some people that I would like to hand over the new English edition, and this caused a stir. The head of the temple approached and full of joy and gratitude hold the book. I explained what we had done – the photos, the footnote explanations, the register of persons, the introduction etc. – and he immediately asked if they could publish the book by themselves and if they could get the PDFs. Yes – everything is for free download on the web, with multi-lingual explanations… It was a very solemn moment, standing there in front of the shrine in the energy around statues of Lord Dattatreya, Sripada and his following incarnation as Narasimha Saraswathi. Photos were taken, thanks exchanged and then the entire group of Westerners sat on the steps in front of the temple for some group pictures.

Later, we visited the place of Go Seva – cow worship – which is part of the temple compound. It was very nice to stand there with the cows looking at us with their deep eyes…

Afterwards, the bus brought us to the Kukkuteswara temple where there is an old lingam worshipped as a self-manifested form of Dattatreya and some other deities around – a temple dedicated to Shiva and Parvathi, a temple of different forms of the Divine Mother. In one shrine room, there were statues of several incarnations of Dattatreya.
Later, we started on our journey back to Visakhapatnam, with a short lunch stop at a restaurant. We all very joyful and felt much blessed of having been at this very sacred and magnetic places.

The group lives are always a very intense time, offering many opportunities for growth of awareness and collaboration. I noticed that I have to be very attentive to perceive and pick up the blessing of a situation where a time window opens, sometimes just for a very short moment. I learnt to pay attention to this during the “morning walk meditations” over a field I have been doing the last year. Every day, every moment offers gifts which you can pick up or let them pass by unnoticed.

“December Call” means, the call of the Master consciousness. Master CVV has started these annual times of group initiation in 1910 with May Call and December Call, where you can receive, as a group, in group consciousness, an increased expansion of awareness. To apply it depends on your, on my inner wakefulness.

The Master yesterday mentioned to me in a talk that you can only can only receive and use them when you are living in a very rhythmic, ritualistic way (7th ray).

In Bengaluru I was accommodated on the fourth floor together with 9 other members in two rooms – it worked out to be very smooth. To keep up my early morning ritual of doing some yoga asanas and visualisation exercises, there was the chance of doing it outside, under the vast vault of heaven illumined by the morning lights of the surrounding streets. On the top of the house there were two satellite dishes turned towards the sky – they were for me like symbols of the inner focused listening to the call of the Master.

When one afternoon I was coming out of the house, there was a cow standing in the wild bushes next to the house with a bird on its back – a scene of unexpected beauty. I stopped to take out my camera and noticed the cow coming to me. For a moment I thought – any danger? She came directly to me, caressed me with her nose and looked at me with her deep eyes – a moment full of magic. We stood like this for a short while, then I said good-bye and proceeded.

One evening – it was already late because of some talks with members and the other had already returned – I set out for quickly walking back from the seminar site to the place of our stay when suddenly a motorbike stopped besides me and the driver asked, Shall I bring you home? A second I hesitated, for I did not recognise the person but then said yes and mounted on the back seat. He drove slalom around the holes in the road and in a short moment he dropped me at the house, me gratefully saying thank you. A number of similar situations have been popping up during the whole time of my stay – short, intensive encounters, ideas dropping manifesting into initiatives for future collaboration, Aquarian intensity like swimming in a rapid river stream.

The May Call seminar was full of hints and inspiration. In his second talk, the Master started:
“I know how difficult it is for the brothers and sisters who come from the West to wake up at 4 o’clock, and be here for the morning prayer. It is not easy. The body is put to much training through these morning exercises which is meant for utilising the body to the wish of the personality and to mobilise the body in according to the wish to the soul and align to the super soul. There would be complains of the body and of the personality. Change is for the good that you align your personality to the soul and the soul intents to bring in the divine to the body and the super-soul who is the Master. The Master gives the impulse otherwise we could not do this. It is decided by the Master in you that you are here and you come here again and again.”

The time ran by extremely fast, filled with powerful energies – a water ritual and a fire ritual, talks of members which the Master invited to share some thoughts – they partly were not from “our” group but they were from “the group”. On May Call, there were releases of new books, one on Hanuman, another on the Wisdom of Nakshatras, the 27 constellations of the zodiac much used in the East. Presentations by children and youngsters of dance and singing, introduction of children into first writing, distribution of gifts…

I had given the Master 5 photo-books with spiritual astrology paintings I had done over the last three years (there was just the completion of the 10th annual cycle of paintings related to the wisdom of the zodiac with 120 paintings). He wanted to present the book to the group and did so before the last meeting of a question and answer session, handing over one book for the library of the Bangalore group and one to a member who very creatively had started a number of WTT groups in different cities where he had been placed for a while on professional duty. It deeply touched me.
Then the last moment of the stay, the busses to the airport ready for departure, driving through the heavy city traffic, arrival at the airport, entering the plane and off we went. The landing in Vizag was also a magic moment – we were flying over the WTT retreat centre – a view down to the next group life. Inside the airport there were now beautiful works of art along the corridors and a “hanging garden” behind a golden Buddha statue greeting the visitors, a painting showing a meditator with the chakras – beautiful! The next phase of the journey started.

26 December. Leaving home early morning before the time of winter dawn, having freed the car windowns from ice first. The railway to Zurich, then entering the plane – a space and time capsule to project me through abstract space to India for – my 20th journey to the WTT group living in the month of Capricorn – an auspicious moment.

Sitting in the plane, close to the dark blue expanse of sky, is the only time in the year where I watch some movies. An excellent new one caught my attention – “Tolkien”, about the early formative years of this great genius of fantasy novels. During my student times in the early 70s, his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy made me dive intot he books for three days and nights.

A short stop in Delhi – immigration, floods of travellers, colourful attires, pulsating crossroads of many parts of the world. At 6 am, again in early morning darkness, the plane took off, flying into the majestic colour symphony of sunrise. I was astonished – the flight captain of the flight from Switzerland and now to Bangalore was a lady pilot – for the first time in all the years of travelling.

A taxi driver picked me up at the airport and brought me safely through the heavy traffic to Sadguru Tapovana, the centre of WTT Bangalore where the celebration of the 110th December Call takes place. Friends greeted joyfully giving a warm welcome.

The preparations in the hall were still going on. In front of the stage, some ladies created beautiful decorations with colourful sands. The altar was framed by two dark blue ribbons with shining yellow Sanskrit letters, on one side: “Soham Asmi (That I am) and on the other “Parabrahman Asmi” (The highest existence, Parabrahman, I am).

The group life was opened by chanting the Purusha Sutkam, the hymn to the Cosmic Person. Master Kumar conducted a short ceremony to Lord Ganesha and then opened the December Call celebration. (to be followed)