Yesterday a small group met in the Paracelsus-Centre of the WTT in Einsiedeln to celebrate the Winter Solstice. This solstice is one of the four cardinal points and very good for meditative alignment. It is the beginning of Capricorn, the moment of the turning of the Sun from his apparent southward journey back to the north and it has a deep spiritual significance. As Sri Kumar says, the rays of the Sun of Capricorn are the blood of the Saviour.

On the way to Einsiedeln, for a few moments there was a gorgeous dawn over the Alps. I stopped on a highway parking to catch the view. A short moment later the sky closed and soon it started raining.

We had a beautiful meeting at the birthplace of the great initiate, with meditation, silence and perceiving the surrounding nature. Please find here some impressions of the meeting.

Ten days ago, I visited friends of a WTT group at the Lake Constance area. We had a few walks together and I joined two group meetings, one of their Herbal Health group and one pre-Christmas meeting of the study group, with a beautiful spiral of light from a candlelight ceremony.

We also had some walks together in the surroundings. We visited an old pilgrimage chapel in the forest, Maria im Stein (Maria in the Stone), with a very vibrant atmosphere, and and the place of a 100 years old limetree with a nearby watchtower. The weather changes between fog and brilliant clear sunshine created a very special ambiance. Here are some impressions of the nuances of light.

Capricorn is called the Mount. The experience of the mountain peak symbolises initiation, the summit of long and intense striving. After having reached the top, you have to return to the valley in order to share the essence of your experience and to guide other seekers.

About eight weeks before creating the painting an image of the Sri Yantra and of beings of light descending onto Earth came to my mind. Later, while in Santa Fe, Argentina, I saw an image of Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak of the Andes and also outside the Himalayas. The Aconcagua is the seat of an etheric ashram of the Master of the Violet Flame and Violet is the colour for entering into the subtle worlds. Only two days before I started working on the painting the details arranged in the inner view. It dawned to me to put the Sri Yantra on the top of the mountain, symbol of the Divine Mother and of pure consciousness.

I fused two photos of the Aconcagua, created a violet vibration penetrating the image, transformed a picture of the Sri Yantra, worked on the light reflections of a photo from the skyline of Santa Fe and of a staircase. I transformed the staircase into the colours of red, blue and yellow, representing the three rays of Will, Love and Intelligent Action. These lights are again surrounding the sphere of blue, pink and white light penetrating the Sri Yantra. I combined the stairway with the light reflections as a symbol of the ascending and descending souls. Then I created a central column of light from the top to the bottom representing the Antahkarana, the bridge of light leading to the highest realms.

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 mist over the country during the last days creates a magical ambiance making the forms appear from out of a light filled field, blurring the contours. Saturday morning I went to Berne city to do some errands. My camera caught some motives of the advent season decoration in the old town. The five-pointed stars around the “Münster” (cathedral) captivated me anew – they are reflecting the yearning of the souls towards the light. And some shop windows were showing traditional handicraft work or were trying to motivate customers with special arrangements. Find here some impressions.

The archer with bow and arrow is the symbol of Sagittarius. Sagittarius is a fiery sign related to long journeys and, on the spiritual path, to the journey towards higher states of consciousness. The key-note is setting a goal and striving with focused attention. The central channel of the spine, the sushumna, is regarded as the seat of self-consciousness; it is the arrow in us. In Eastern symbolism the sacred sound OM stands for the bow with its string. You set yourself as an arrow on the bow and you string it by withdrawing deep within. With a stable mind you then shoot the arrow upwards. This is the upward journey of the soul.

Meditating on the image of the month, I saw the lighted central column with the energy moving upward through the centres. I depicted the archer by the outline of the golden etheric body with the hands not holding the bow but raised to protect the heart. I placed the symbol of the OM at the front. As a point of departure for the bow I transformed the crescent of the earth from a NASA photo symbolising the ascent beyond material consciousness. The rising flames stand for the fiery aspiration, and from above blessings descend from higher spheres via the head centre.

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.

Three years ago, Sri Kumar proposed that I do the first public exposition of the “Images of Synthesis” in Berlin. The WTT group of Berlin did an intensive search for a good location – with success:

From 28 December 2015 to 26 June 2016, you can see a large selection of the “Images of Synthesis” in the Art Café “Café Bilderbuch“, Akazienstrasse 28, D-10823 Berlin, Germany. All the images will be presented together with an explanation of their symbolism, from the wisdom teachings, and the way they were produced. Warm thanks to the Berlin group for their help!

If you cannot come to Berlin, you can do your own exposition by printing some of the images yourself or by getting them printed with an Art Printer. Here you find all the paintings in high resolution for free.

The website ludgerphilips.org is now also available in French and in Spanish. A big thank you for their free help to Murat Cevik (Switzerland/Turkey), who realised this site and prepared the extension; to Helena Cattivelli, Argentina, for the Spanish translation; to Sébastien Peltier, New Caledonia, for the French translation; and to Vijay Ganugula, USA, for publishing the French and Spanish pages.

The turtle is a symbol of the individual who turns inward towards subjective life. He withdraws into the cave of the heart and experiences the inflow of the light of the soul. The Vedic seers visualised the convex shell of the turtle as the upper part of the head and as the micro-version of the upper dome of space with the North Pole above the head. They saw the seven stars of the Great Bear in the region of the head centre. Similarly, the lower pole is understood as an inverted dome or a dish, in which the southern star called Sirius or the Dog Star is visualised in the human body near the tip of the spine.

An image developed over some days in meditation: A turtle with a radiant heart appeared; it was the dome of space inside the head with the luminous central axis of the spine going down. I created the structure of the image by transforming the photo of a turtle and by superimposing layers of an image of the Great Bear and of a polar bear. For the central axis I transformed a photo of the Milky Way. At the bottom I placed a dish-like sphere and in its centre I fused a picture of Sirius and of a dog. Then I worked on the colour shades and the transitions. The way the picture developed was again, for me, a surprise.

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.

13 July 2015, pencils and photo work

Last Sunday my wife and I were invited by Lilli, a Swiss-Japanese friend of my wife, for a lunch with some friends of her’s in her home in Horgen at the Lake of Zurich. Lilli, a lady in her 60s, and my wife are working together in Spirit Release. They cooperate in difficult cases and had also been together at a course on Spirit Release with David Furlong in London. I came to know Lilli during a visit at our home. For many years she had been working with Spirit Release in Japan.

On the highway to Zurich I didn’t feel well. While talking to my wife it came again to my mind that it had started 2-3 days ago, after my visit of the headquarters of anthroposophy in Dornach. There was an inner tension and subtle irritation which didn’t go away in spite of my trying to clear it in meditation. Thoughts returned to my involvement with Anthroposophy in the 80s. I wondered why this visit had released these streams of memories, thoughts and emotions.

Sunday morning during meditation I felt as if I had caught a spirit attachment (of some deceased soul). I tried to release it, without success. I felt a bit better after the fire ritual.

During the trip to Zurich I told Cyrille, my wife, about my feelings as per the visit in Dornach and that I didn’t feel well this morning. She replied that the visit must have triggered some unfinished business of mine in relation to my encounters with anthroposophy in the 80s and started asking questions. I then mentioned to her that I suppose having an attachment and she immediately felt it. She said that these are departed souls of anthroposophs and that she feels strong mental concepts preventing them from ascending from the lower spheres. Images flashed through my mind. She proposed to do a spirit release and so we stopped shortly before arriving at Lilli’s home. She addressed the spirits, explained them their situation and proposed to turn to the light. But they refused, having fear to go away. It was like a fight going on around my head and I felt fatigued. My wife then suggested to ask Lilli for help.

We rang at her apartment and Lilli came to the door; from the background there were party noises – about a dozen persons – Japanese ladies with their Swiss or German husbands and five children. Cyrille said to Lilli: “We have brought you a present – some spirit attachments stuck with Ludger.” Lilli replied, “Oh, what a nice present. Let’s immediately have a look at it.” We laughed.

We went to her office room. Lilli asked Sumi, a young Japanese lady to come with us: “She is also clairvoyant and helps me in my work.”

She took my hands and Sumi touched my left arm. Cyrille assisted energetically. They clearly felt the spirits and Lilli said, “They are quite a lot, and yes, they are intensely stuck in their mental concepts about the subtle world.”

Lilli addressed the earthbounds and explained that she helps them to go to the light. I felt an irritated spider web surrounding me. It was being lifted up from me and flew out through my hands to her’s. The spirits disappeared into the Light. Within 1-2 minutes I felt free and released – and happy.

Lilli and Sumi explained that the spirits had hooked at the back of my spine below the neck, a favourite entrance point. When leaving my aura, many other departed souls with a similar mindset linked to them had taken the chance of joining their friends on their way to the Light.

We then joined the ongoing party. I first had a talk with Sumi who told me how she was in India, finding healing with an Ayurvedic cure, meeting Amma and coming to know there her future husband. Then another Japanese lady addressed me about my paintings. I never was in any Japanese environment before, eating home-made Green tea ice-cream plus sweet Azuki beans and the like… In the apartment there were beautiful Japanese artworks and furniture besides a variety of Buddhas, rock crystals and other stones. I viewed a painting of Mount Fujiyama – in my student time I had various photos and artworks of it in my room.

I especially enjoyed the 5 German/Swiss-Japanese children between maybe 4 and 10. Lilli explained that all of them were in a way clairvoyant and partly their mothers, too. It was very interesting how the children grow up between Japanese and Swiss culture, and all were quite fluent in English as well…

Lilli did some playful trainings with them. She had a deck of cards about precious stones and crystals and their devas. She showed one card to the children, shuffled the cards and put them with the back on the table. Then she asked the children to find the card which she had asked them to connect to. Two of the children were quite good. One boy ended up by always discovering the right card. Afterwards Lilli let the children sense the qualities of different kinds of crystals. We adults also tried to find a card from the set on the table. With no result – it was the second-last card we turned…

After a short walk along the lake we went back home. There were definitely no more earthbounds around.

Laughing Buddha in our bedroom, a present of a friend

Last Wednesday I was in Dornach near Basel at the “Rudolf Steiner Archives“. I was invited by Frank, a friend who works there as an editor of the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner (“Complete Works”, in German, currently 350 volumes, completion targeted by 2025, with approximately 410 volumes total. It is the biggest edition of an author and lecturer globally known so far. Steiner held about 6000 lectures between 1888 and 1924 totally.) The archives are located in the House Duldeck, directly in front of the Goetheanum, the home to the international headquarters of the Anthroposophical movement founded by Rudolf Steiner. The Goetheanum building was named by Steiner in commemoration  to Goethe. Steiner started his career as an editor for Goethe’s works on natural sciences (a brochure in English about the Goetheanum).

I hadn’t been at the anthroposophical headquarters since 27 years. For 8 years in the 80s I had been intensely studying many works of Steiner. I even did the Waldorf Teacher training and worked in a Swiss Steiner school for 4 years. During these years, I had been in Dornach several times. However, I left the school and anthroposophy in 1990. I now was curious to see the headquarters as a visitor.

Frank gave me a warm welcome, and we went into the cafeteria inside the Goetheanum. Renovation work was going on outside – did it touch also the inner attitudes which I had experienced as difficult in the past? The noise of the machines was so loud that we didn’t stay in the “holy halls” but sat outside on a bench with a beautiful view around. I felt like in an open air museum of anthroposophy – it looked all the same as it was in the 80s.

We had an intense talk about his experiences as a project manager with the data management of the archives. I took some shots of the craftsmen working outside the building – very symbolic scenes. Then Frank went with me to the floor of the board of directors. I enjoyed sitting some minutes next to the inner halls. The door-plate of one of the directors showed the name of a man whom I had met 30 years ago in Paris, where I had been a short-time trainee at a Steiner school and he a young teacher.

We then went to the House Duldeck, a fascinating iconic house built with dynamic forms in concrete in the years 1915-20. Frank gave a guided tour – a young couple joined and also one of his colleagues. It was very impressive to have a profound look into the backgrounds of this house and the work of Rudolf Steiner. He had designed and shaped this building for a dentist, Emil Grosheintz, a friend of his who had given him all the area of the Goetheanum – which first was planned to be realised in Munich but met too many obstructions there. When the first Goetheanum was being constructed – a beautiful wood building – various anthroposophs opposed to the creation of a family house directly in front of the “mystery temple”. They feared that the view of diapers on the balconies would disturb the lofty feelings. Steiner, on the contrary, said that spirituality has to be integrated into daily life – and called the house “Duldeck”, meaning “corner of tolerance”. The first Goetheanum was destroyed by arson on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1922 – January 1, 1923. Steiner immediately decided to build a new one, this time in concrete – and much bigger, so that the first Goetheanum would have enough place inside.

In the underground archives (fire-proof!) we got an impression of the gigantic work of Steiner, who had influenced not only the esoteric thought but had given impulses for medicine, farming, architecture, education (world-wide Waldorf Schools), social activity, dance, theatre etc. We saw models of the first and second Goetheanum, of paintings, the hand-writings of rare manuscripts (The Secret Science…) or of Steiner’s many notebooks: He meticulously took note not only of thoughts for talks but also of the money spent- during a bigger part of his life he was quite poor. A huge library of all the versions of his books or the books of his library and of many other materials still unpublished. I felt deeply impressed and humble sensing the incredible impact he had manifested.

At the end we had a look at rooms normally not shown in the upper floors – office and meeting rooms full of nooks and crannies, with beautiful views.

When I left I felt grateful that I had been given the chance of looking a bit behind these curtains. And I felt a bit reconciled with the impulse of anthroposophy. Over years Steiner’s split with theosophy and its consequences, which I very well understand due to the glamour of the successors of H. P. Blavatsky, had nevertheless left a profound irritation. In the past I sensed an attitude of spiritual supremacy combined with trench warfare and a highly sceptical ideology towards the eternal wisdom teachings and their recent developments. When the golden sun-rays shone over the buildings there was a peaceful ambiance around and in me a hope that one day also the strongest thought-forms of anthroposophy will be transformed by the incoming new impulses of life.

View of the Goetheanum from House Duldeck

The spiritual path is from objectivity to subjectivity and via the subtle planes to the reunion with the divine centre. In the movement through the zodiac, Libra stands for the complete unfoldment of objective life, where you can lose yourself in the “scales of the balance” or return to the centre of rotation, which corresponds to the centre of our existence. Objectivity is horizontal life, subjectivity is vertical life, and both need to form a right angle, a balance in the centre.

When I was inwardly searching for the new image, nothing showed up until there was a window of time to start working on the image. I perceived a horizontal and a vertical line formed by galaxies. I started searching the “Google quarry” for elements to approach the inner image and found many a galaxy and other interesting objects but the inner image did not fit with the outer pieces of the puzzle. I felt dissatisfied.

Next morning in meditation I clearly saw the structure and the needed elements. For the vertical line I took a photo of the milky-way and for the horizontal line, the field of light, a photo of the Sombrero galaxy. I super-imposed elements of star-fields and a star and added the eyes as symbols of the Mother of the Universe. Then I worked out colours and details with the pencils and gave the image a final digital finish. And yes, this was the image which wanted to manifest.

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.

13 June 2015, pencils and photo work