Scorpio represents the fall of spirit into matter and the reversal of the process through the ascent of consciousness from out of the bondage of matter. The movement of energy is described as a serpent creeping on the ground or rising as a brilliant light inside the spinal column. Beyond the brow centre the energy bifurcates into two arcs like a winged serpent and further ascends like an eagle. The flying serpents are described as carrying a radiant jewel which is the jewel in the lotus of the head centre, Mani Padme.

In the centre of the image you see the central axis of Sushumna surrounded by the descending and ascending serpentine energies. In the upper part, they form two resplendent wings around the head of the serpent with the jewel of light. An eagle, symbol of an initiate, is soaring up from out of a jewel in the background symbolising the Ajna centre. And above, a group of three eagles is flying in the vastness of space. To the right, you see the constellation of Scorpio.

The wheel of the zodiac in the background, designed with a photo of a friend, indicates the movement of ascent and descent.

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 Scorpio paintings.

Some changes in the team of collaborators during the last weeks made me ponder upon volunteer work in the context of the wisdom teachings.

It looks and feels like a way through a cloudy jungle to discover the path towards the subtle dimensions of life. Running around in various directions does not help. With the years, I found it necessary to focus on one path and to go into the depth instead.

Digging deep needs endurance and commitment. I slowly realised that I have to help build the road to the “goldmines” of wisdom for others as well. And the deeper you go, the more you see the need of cooperation.

As an outcome, I slowly grew into responsibility for various publications and websites related to wisdom, and I met reliable fellow seekers who cooperate in this endeavour.

It takes time to carve out. And many skills need to be developed to fine-tune and to anchor. Newcomers hardly see what lies behind and if they take a glimpse, they sometimes shrink back. Or they pick up some work for a while but find it hard to keep up with rhythm and continuity.

“Likes” and social media entertainment are easier than carrying some stones for a building. Solid steps need to be firm and well done. But who finds time, who takes time for entering a spiritual apprenticeship? Without quick benefits and recognition?

Good will is not enough to become a reliable team member. And often the qualifications required and the equipment in the rucksack of the seeker do not match immediately. But is sh/he willing to enter and learn, to let go of one’s first ideas? And to keep the inner fire burning unsvervingly so that it does not get extinct at a first blast of wind?

New qualifications and skills need to be developed, trust and endurance. Cooperation and at the same time working in a self-reliant way.

It is nice to do something inspiring, but mostly it is seen just as a hobby, when time and other demands allow. The path, however, calls for a commitment like in a challenging work. You have to see where a task needs to be picked up for the greater plan and how to integrate your stone, and at the same time cooperate with the others like a dear friend.

And what if the friends do not give nice feedbacks and cooperate as you expect them to do? Often you have to wait, more often for years, before a door opens. Before you can step in.

Otherwise, life offers many other priorities – job, family, friends; or chilling, sport, travelling… The list is long, and there are many reasons why not to pick up a lasting commitment.

But what about working for an age-old “enterprise”, working out the path to the light? Spiritual Hierarchy has enormous patience in developing the network of collaborators.

Last week a man from France contacted me via e-mail: Sylvain wanted to bring me a gift from friends living on Ko Pha-ngan island of Thailand. (I had written a blog-post about their activity of spreading the knowledge about rudrakshas.)

Last Saturday evening, Sylvain arrived – a tall young man with a special present in his hands, caringly enveloped with a fine string. I opened it and discovered inside two light-brown rudrakasha seeds (called “white rudrakshas”), embedded in a rudraksha shell and embedded in white cotton-like fibres.

It is a very special special gift and the messenger had travelled quite a distance – it was his way of giving thanks to our friends with whom he had lived for some months on the Thai island.

We were not prepared for an overnight stay in our apartment but somehow could arrange. And this was very good. Sylvain and I had an intense exchange. Sylvain told me about adventures on a bicycle tour from France to Kyrgystan, nearly to the Chinese border, about other journey to North and Central America, about his spiritual search and a project related to Ayurveda he is trying to realise in the French Alpes. He carried a fresh energy of bringing inspiration to people and of knowing how to realise his visions.

Sunday morning, he joined the meditation and fire ritual; afterwards we did a walk over a nearby field and enjoyed the magic of the sunrise. Before he left again back to France, we did a selfie with my wife on the balcony. A hearty encounter.

“May the times of the autumn and spring equinoxes not be neglected. They are of immeasurable importance to the disciple of yoga/discipleship.”

Following this hint of Sri Kumar, we met again at autumn equinox in the WTT Paracelsus Centre to celebrate this cardinal point of the year in meditative orientation.

We wanted to meet at the mountain ridge near the Etzel pass but it was not so easy to get there for many roads in the area were blocked because of an “Iron Bike” festival around Einsiedeln.

Also the road at the top of the pass was blocked but somehow we managed to get to the fire place where we had already met the years before. The clouds looked grey but there was a majestic ambiance and a grand panorama view.

While we were singing the mantrams of the fire ritual, the flames rose and spread their magnetic radiation.

Afterwards we met at the Paracelsus-Center. As usual, we started with a little ritual and a short meditation. Afterwards, I spoke a bit about the importance of the eqinox celebration and the energies of Libra.

In the afternoon we made a walk along the Sihl River to Egg and returned via the other side of the river.

We greeted a group of cows on a meadow – it was cute to see a cow couple in exchange of affections.

Later in the afternoon, we read a little text about the spiritual importance of Libra and closed the meeting with the evening meditation. It was again a profound experience to meet and meditate at such a beautiful place.

In Spiritual Astrology, the solar year is called the Day of the Gods. In Aries, we have noon and in Libra midnight; in Capricorn there is dawn and in Cancer dusk. When the spiritualist has completed his journey of tracing the path from Libra to Aries, the lower pole is absorbed into the higher pole. Man is reunited with his higher pole, the God centre. He later enters into the soul of the Sun and finally attains the centre of the spiritual Sun. He then sits in the lotus above the head centre, the jewel of the seventh lotus.

In the upper part of the picture you see the cross of the year with the vertical line of Aries and Libra and the horizontal line of Capricorn and Cancer, designed with the help of an old astronomical illustration of the movement of the Sun around the Earth. It is dovetailed into the arch of a colonnade symbolizing the stages of unfolding consciousness.

The figure of the meditator was formed by the fusion of two Buddha statues. Above his head is depicted the jewel in the lotus which creates the pathway to the zodiacal wheel and to the Sun. In the upper right corner, you can see the constellation Libra.

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 Libra paintings.

A friend sent me the link to a new video of Cristóbal Vila: Infinite Patterns (here on YouTube). Cristobal is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director in Zaragoza, Spain. His website Etereaestudios consists mainly of a gallery showing the outstanding work done by Cristóbal Vila within the field of 3D and digital imaging. I already had done a blogpost about some of his video works in February 2011. See here links to his work.

On his website, he writes about Infinite Patterns – Connecting geometry, nature and architecture:

“This is a new personal project that seeks to establish connections between various fields that interest me deeply: geometry, and how it appears linked to nature, on the one hand, and to art and architecture, on the other; raising relations between all of them. Somehow it would mean the fusion of the interests of two of my previous works: Nature by Numbers and Ars Qubica.”

Have also a look at another of his works, “Lux Aeterna” (Eternal Light) – a journey of light, from distant galaxies to small drops of water. Fascinating!

The video Infinite Patterns cannot be seen on other websites, please click on this link to see it on YouTube.

The divine essence is described as being veiled by many envelopes. So it is not so easy for us to perceive it or even realize it. Furthermore, our personal / social / cultural conveniences influence and colour our attitudes, likings and dislikings. And the way how people express their relation to the divine is most varied.

I had to think about my own “coloured glasses” when a few days ago I saw pictures and a video from a ceremony in Pithapuram, India, probably of the celebration for the 700th anniversary of Sripada Srivallabha (see the text at the end of this blogpost, from my communication of the event). I noticed that I have to be careful to see the essence behind the outer pomp.

The words Sri Kumar had spoken after our first visit to Pithapuram in Jaunary 2015 came to my mind: “I hope you have enjoyed the visit to Peetha Puram called Pithapuram. It is a typical center where the light is hidden. As we say, the key note of India is ‘I hide the light’. Pithapuram is one of the most important spiritual centers that we have in India, but it continues to hide the light. It is so humble that unless you get insight, you don’t get the profundity of light. But in due course it unfolds from within. “

My contact with Sripada was in October 2014, through his biography. It was an intense inner experience followed by a long and profound work with the book in silence – translation and editing. It had a deep transforming impact and it is an ongoing experience. I found a similar impact of highest light at certain places where the veil seems to be thinner than elsewhere. You might call it spiritually vibrant places. It is very similar with certain books that also have a strong unveiling impact.

The communication: 2 September 2019: Ganesh Chaturdhi, 700th anniversary of Sripada Srivallabha

From time to time, Lord Dattatreya, the Cosmic Principle of the Teacher, incarnates in a human body to enable the humans to relate to him and get uplifted.

700 years ago, Lord Dattatreya took birth as Sripada Srivallabha. Sripada was born at sunrise on a day of Ganesh Chaturdhi in the year 1320 AD. Ganesh Chaturdhi is a festival in honour of Lord Ganesha celebrated on fourth ascending moon phase in Virgo.
Next Monday, 2 September, is Ganesh Chaturdhi, and thus, according to Indian counting, it is the 700th anniversary of this first incarnation of Dattatreya in the present dark age.

You find here a brief outline of the birth of Sripada (PDF). The text is taken from the WTT website about Lord Dattatreya and his incarnations:
based on the the biography “Sripada Srivallabha Charitamrutam” and on a transcription of the 2016 seminar of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar on Lord Dattatreya / Sripada. The biography was recently published in English by Kulapati.de, see here how to order / download the book.

In the Eastern tradition, Krishna’s birthday is celebrated during the 8th descending moon phase of Leo, this being today.

I have written a number of blogposts and done various paintings about Krishna. Here is the story of a picture called “The Magic Flute of Krishna” realised seven years ago.

I used a picture of a Krishna statue in my room and did some transformations.

For the background I used a painting of Karl Friedrich Schinkel done for a stage design for Mozart’s opera Magic Flute (1815).

I fused it with a picture I had taken from a magazine 45 years ago – an extract of the Isenheim Altarpiece (1515), Colmar, by the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald showing the emanation of angels from God.

Then I integrated the image of a peacock (bottom left), Krishna’s bird. I put the statue to dark blue; so the image emerged in violet – the right magical colour for Krishna with a “magic flute”.

In “Music of the Soul” and “Man Sacrifice“, Master EK gives the following birth dates according to Eastern Scriptures:
1. Lord Krishna was born in the month of July, 3228 B. C. midnight at Zero hours between the nineteenth and the twentieth.
2. He dropped His physical body on the eighteenth of February, 3102 B.C.
Thus, his birth chart looks like this:

Happy Krishna’s Birthday!

From the background of space, there are periodic emanations of creation. They are seen as the radiations of the World Mother coming down through seven planes and in seven colours. Therefore, the Mother is symbolically depicted with a rainbow around her head. The Secret Doctrine speaks of sequences of time periods with a periodicity of seven like the biblical seven days of creation. There are units of seven planetary incarnations called a planetary chain and seven great cycles of humanity called the root races.

To illustrate the World Mother, I transformed a picture of Mary into the blue colour of the background. She is surrounded by a rainbow and seven globes of the planetary chain of our Earth. The globe at the bottom symbolises the physical manifestation of the fourth globe.

Radiant orbs around the Earth indicate the different stages of matter. The chain of seven smaller orbs above the Earth stands for the descent and ascent through the seven root races; the chain carries the glyph of Virgo. At the upper right corner, you can see the outline of the constellation.

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 Virgo paintings.

About hornets, spammers and subtle attacks…

When the summer was rising I noticed an increased activity of “flight operations” in front of my balcony windows: Big insects arrived with some speed, landed on the roller shutter and seemed to do an inspection there.

They were too big for wasps – hornets! They had invaded the roller shutter box and disappeared through some holes. I googled, found out that they were less aggressive than wasps – which had visited us on the other balcony in the past years – and that they were protected animals.

Fine, I thought – but each time I tried to air the room they managed to come inside and were vagabonding around. In the morning and evening I could easily guide them to the toilet by switching on the lamps there, opening the window and closing the door – gone. During the day it took more time to get them out again.

It was getting hot – something had to be done. One by one I stuffed the chinks along the roller shutter with plastic bags – they could get in through tiny holes. When they noticed my activities, they increased their efforts. They could not really remove the plastic though they tried to gnaw it away. However, they managed to dig a little hole into the wall.

A group of hornets stayed together in one corner while the others brought food – a bigger hornet – the queen was sitting in the centre. I didn’t dare to go too close with my camera.

I observed it for about two weeks and tried to deter them with clove oil – no effect. When some days it was raining, there seemed to be less hornets – and I found dead ones on the balcony. Then – three hornets, two, sometimes just one, the lonely queen. Sometimes I thought they were gone again but then several hornets flew an attack against the window, clashing against the glass. But window and door were closed.

Then about a week ago finally they had disappeared – though not totally. I sometimes still see them flying around but they must have found another save haven. I pondered on the meaning of this experience… They reminded me of my vagabonding thoughts in a turbulent meditation – how to keep the windows closed? Wakefulness, discrimination, “non-refoulement”…

Two weeks ago, there was another kind of attack:

My provider informed me that my “spam@” e-mail had been hacked; lots of e-mails had been sent from the account so that the provider had to shut it. At the same time I was flooded by return e-mails blocked by other providers. I quickly changed the password – my provider told me that after a few days the flood might go down again.

It did not but increased: The “spammer friends” used my e-mail address without sending from my account to distribute their e-mails where lonely ladies were longing for lusty lovers… Each day 1-2 thousand return mails from other providers – from east, west, north, south, in varous languages ….

My provider installed some filters on my server but it only had a small effect for two-three days, then again over thousand return mails popped in. My provider told me that the only thing I could do is to put filters in my webmail. And so I defined a number of filters deleting the return mails. I suppose that the mail flood abusing my e-mail address is still going high but there is again silence in the spam inbox.
And again, I pondered on the meaning of the experience – shut out any unwanted “over-activity” of outer impulses trying to drag us away from ourselves.

A third kind of experience:

A few days ago, the daughter of a friend skyped me and explained about some strange experiences in her neighbourhood – I don’t go into details but she described how she received subtle attacks draining her energy. I rate her as an alert and quite down-to-earth person not prone to fantasies. She knew already a number of things of how to protect herself from attacks but wanted to know more about it. (I had blogged already about protection from energy vampirism before, see also here.) We spoke about mantrams and exercises like the double pyramid to insulate oneself of destructive intrusions.

Like with the other attacks, of hornets or spam mails, you need to keep your protective shields strong and your thoughts pure. You find interesting hints in the books of Agni Yoga, esp. “Supermundane“:

“People protect themselves from poisonous gases by wearing gas masks. But they should provide themselves with one more mask — the protective mask of pure thought — for only thought can shield one from the poisonous breath. People should admit that there is such poison, and remember that thought has the power to resist the most harmful vibrations. ” (Supermundane 291)

“You may also ask how to counter unwelcome visitors — only through the valor of the spirit, not permitting them to contact your essence. Urusvati knows how these unwelcome guests have recoiled; it was not even necessary to drive them away, for they could not penetrate the protective net. Such natural protection is always the best, but for this, training of the spirit is required. Depression is the most gloomy magnet, and irritation also entices these ugly guests.” (Supermundane 430)

P.S.: A friend from Miami wrote me as a feedback about “Attack and Defence”:
“I also have been reflecting, sadly, because the opening of schools in Miami Dade has had the emphasis in surviving attacks. I understand that preparedness is important, but it is sad anyways.”
Indeed, a sad thing – training children in schools to survive shooting violence a horrible consequence of the craze for weapons…