spirituality – Notes from the Far Beyond

Ancient Festivals

and the Four Seasons

Since it’s solstice, here’s an extract from a book of mine, Power Points in Time, about the cycle of the solar year, for your interest. More about the book below.

We tend to take the cycle of the year for granted, viewing it in a rather reductionist, calendrical and mechanical manner. This is partially because the Western calendar has no natural basis, so we tend to think of a calendar as a matter of dating with no further significance. For a solar-based calendar it would make better sense to anchor it in the solstices and equinoxes, allowing us to move more in harmony with the seasonal undertow of life and nature and with overall energy-conditions.

The seasons are brought about by Earth’s orbital relationship with the Sun, in which she exposes each of her poles to the Sun for half of the year as she orbits around it. Each pole is maximally exposed to the Sun around the time of summer solstice, experiencing the midnight sun, while the other pole is in perpetual darkness during its winter solstice.

Outwardly, the Sun gives Earth light and heat, and inwardly there is a deeper energy-weather cycle activating and modulating life-force on Earth, connected with the solstices. Life-force courses through the subtle meridians of the Earth and the energy-systems and patternings of all living things. In terms of our daily lives, a year takes a while, but for the Earth it is just a short inbreath and outbreath in the long course of geological time.

The ancients took it upon themselves to invoke favourable seasonal change, in the knowledge that change is the essence of earthly life and rhythm is the breathing of life-force. They knew also that subtle energy patternings are the energy-framework upon which physically manifest things are draped.

Psycho-spiritually, the Sun within us resides at the centre of our being, around which all of the constituent parts of our psyche orbit. The Sun represents our fundamental raison d’etre, our will-to-live and our source of aliveness. It gets us up in the morning to meet a new day. You could say it channels the soul through into our personalities and earthly natures. It’s a vibrant, shining place within us which seeks to make something good out of life and to evolve through life’s experiences.

Through the Sun in our birth charts, we seek to become something more than we now are, to evolve and serve our purpose, to be part of the life-process and to contribute to it.

This inner Sun goes through its own cycle of the year. We each relate differently to it, depending on the position of the Sun in our birth charts, but we have a common cycle too – the Earth’s cycle. It’s about the fluxings of energy in life and nature and the thrumming of the resonant sphere of the Earth – we’re bathed in it, even when we live in big cities, even on the 25th floor. The Sun moves around the zodiac in the course of a year, exposing us to different shades and tonalities of life-experience as it moves through the signs. An Aquarian day can feel quite different from a similar Piscean day, and what we make of each is up to us.

There are twelve signs of the zodiac, and the zodiac is anchored in the four quarter-points of the year – the two solstices and two equinoxes. The solstices represent turning points and the equinoxes represent tipping points in the four seasons.

There’s a three-sign sequence in each season. The zodiac has little to do with the stars and everything to do with the solstices, equinoxes and seasonal alternation, outlining the qualitative and archetypal undertow of the four seasons.

An archetype is an image or root-model of fundamental patterning behind and within all happenings and situations. If I say ‘oak tree’ then you will immediately form an image of an idealised oak tree, even though oak trees vary in shape, size and detail. So an archetype represents a basic patterning or template by which living beings and things shape themselves, even though the precise manner of their shaping varies enormously in real life. And yes, trees have thoughts and feelings.

There’s something interesting here. In Britain, NW Europe and other temperate climes (between about 40° and 60° from the Earth’s equator), nature manifests its actual physical changes in an eightfold, not really a twelvefold pattern. This eightfold pattern is marked out by the four quarter points and also by the mid-points (or cross-quarters) between these. These are important in temperate higher latitudes because the alternation of light and dark, day-length and temperature are more emphasised there. This also happens on a subtle-energy level, and it is these changes which pull us around and squeeze us through certain kinds of experiences at certain times of year.

In latitudes closer to the equator, other factors are emphasised by local circumstances or traditions, such as prevailing winds, rainy seasons, river floods, the rising points of stars such as Sirius or the orbital cycles of Venus. Localised cultures saw things in the light of what was visibly important in their own localities. In Europe, the great ocean is westwards, yet in China it is eastwards, and in Brazil the rainy season determined the way indigenous peoples structured their beliefs, while in Europe or Canada spring and autumn do so.

An eightfold calendar is more natural in NW Europe than a twelvefold one, which originated in Mesopotamia – though they interlock. The Sami (Lappish) people of far-northern Europe have an eightfold year, five seasons being different kinds of what most of us would call winter. The ancient megalith builders of Atlantic Europe 4-5,000 years ago, stretched between Portugal and the Baltic, embodied eightfold mathematics into the alignments and placing of the standing stones and stone circles they built. But both eightfold and twelvefold calendars are anchored similarly in the solstices and equinoxes. So they are related.

The energy principles behind each year are represented by the twelve zodiac signs, and manifest seasonal changes are represented by an eightfold subdivision of the year. This interlocking of principles and practicalities has meaning to it. Here we’ll look at the eight annual subdivisions, and in the next chapter we’ll examine the twelve, the zodiac. The eight, the quarters and cross-quarters, were marked in ancient times by festivals when fires, beacons and lights were lit, representing and re-invoking the life-force.

Power Points in Time. This isn’t a normal astrology book – it has little to do with birth charts or specific events. It’s all about cycles of time – cycles big and small, as astrologers see them. But when the original version of this book, Living in Time, came out in 1987, we found that it wasn’t so much astrologers who got excited about it, but it was pagans, druids and lovers of nature, ancient sites and shamanic practices. So, 28 years later, I updated and reworked the book, which came out in 2015.

It’s still available in print, published by Penwith Press and, while it’s a bit late for Christmas, here’s a thought…

If you are a seeker on a quest to understand a bit more about what lies behind and underneath the events of your life, it pays to have a modicum of understanding of astrology as part of your general knowledge – really, the basics should be taught in schools to teenagers.

It takes a while to get your head and heart around the details, but it pays off, since it’s really interesting, and your understanding of it and of life will evolve over time, as the years progress – whether or not you become an actual astrologer. And wintertime is a great time to get focused on it.

If you’re into ancient sites and working with the inner magic of nature and of time, then here’s a secret. The ancients built their sacred sites at power points in the landscape, but they carried out their ceremonies, rites, healings and workings at power points in time. I wrote this book to help my friends identify and understand power points in time.

Time is what stops everything happening all at once.

With love, Palden

This is where to get the book:
https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/

This is about the book:
http://www.palden.co.uk/time/

And this is the original 1987 book, Living in Time:
https://www.palden.co.uk/living/

Sunday Meditation again, and…

It happens again this week, on a cushion just under your bum – and the times in different countries are below. Do it your way: there’s no prescribed method, faith or mantra – just a bunch of good souls scattered around, meditating together. No need to sign up, be online or subscribe – just be there, wherever you are.

Information: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

This meditation was started in 1994 in response to a request from the Council of Nine that we humans do so. It’s at a fixed time so that The Nine can create a field that surrounds us, for that half hour. You’ll feel it, and it begins and shuts off bang on time. To find out more about The Nine: www.palden.co.uk/nine.html

They do not seek followers. Follow your spirit, soul, heart, mind and intuitions and, together, we’ll get there.

I’ve been working through the book I compiled for them thirtyish years ago, ‘The Only Planet of Choice‘, as a kind of revision course. It’s good to re-learn things I learned earlier in life. Or was that another life? They had a big influence on me.

I found some interesting lines from them…

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You must understand that your thoughts are a living reality. If you do not monitor and guard your thoughts, exchange joy for dissension, exchange compassion for disdain, then it is difficult for planet Earth to move forward. We mean planet Earth collectively. If you have gathered but a small understanding of the importance in your moving forward, to benefit the elevation of planet Earth, then you have attained a great step forward for humankind.

It is not necessarily a path of great difficulty, for it is a joyful path, if you understand the truth of who you are. It is a path of happiness, for when you find the essence within yourself, then fear, which creates conflict, cannot completely control you. It is also true that on your path there will seem to be times of trailing backward. What is important is always to understand who you truly are, for you will then move forward. This is your planet, and you have not come here in error.

Every human being who is upon planet Earth has come here by choice. At this time in particular there are many who have come for the purpose of service to planet Earth. Because of the variety and the beauty of planet Earth, and also because of the density that has come into being through unbalanced-negative influences, many souls are now stuck on planet Earth. For these influences try to be in competition with Creation, not understanding that in reality they are of Creation itself – and yet they choose to be in competition, not in obedience, and not in forwardness.

When we talk about obedience, we do not mean that obedience should be blind, not in the way used in your world. We mean that you need to be conscious and aligned to the forward evolution of the universe.

At this time we wish you to appreciate that planet Earth is congested and bottlenecked, since many have chosen to reincarnate here when they could have gone on to other experiences. They became entrapped in what they believed to be reality. It is now time to transcend that.

There are many upon Earth who are trapped in their addictions – if it be addiction to power, addiction to ingestion of substances, addiction to physical sexuality, and to habits, or addiction to attempting to find one’s self in others – and humankind has desecrated planet Earth because of lack of understanding, when in reality it is undoubtedly the most beautiful planet available to experience.

It is important that you not give your free will away: you do it when you permit yourself to lose control of yourself, whether it be with ingestion of addictive substances, or in anger, or other things. You are always responsible: that cannot be removed. This does not mean that you should not have joy in dancing and singing, and all those wonderful attributes that are generated in humankind, for we wish only joy upon planet Earth, and we wish you to enjoy all that has been provided for you. For variety in experience of this kind does not exist in any physical civilisation in the universe.

Always walk in gentleness, in kindness, in joy, and remember this: when you are laughing, the universe is also in laughter and joy. Many of you humans have lived before on planet Earth, as you have all lived in other places of existence. This time you have come here to help planet Earth transform itself. You will continue in future to live also in other planetary civilisation systems, but that does not mean you can escape the responsibility of this existence.

You are a universe within yourself, and your universe affects all universes. As you generate love and kindness, you touch other universes and infuse them. As you generate despair and anger, you also do that to others, for you each are powerful individuals within yourselves.

Some would say that when they die, when they make the transition, they are transformed. But that is not what we mean by transformation. For if in their transition they take with them their problems which they maintained upon planet Earth, then they have created a transformation that is heavier than what transformation truly is on planet Earth.

We wish them to know the importance of transforming who they are during their life on Earth, their direction and their understanding of their responsibility for planet Earth, its inhabitants, its life in all forms, including the seas and the minerals within the Earth – to have respect and to bring about the transformation of planet Earth by elevating it out of darkness. That begins with the individual. Is that explanatory enough?

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With love, Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 7-7.30pm
W Europe 8-8.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 9-9.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
EST, Cuba 2-2.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 1-1.30pm
PST, West Coast North America 11am-11.30am

Sunday Meditation

Those of us who like to do this meditation will be there in inner space at the usual time – times below. You’re welcome to join us – yes, you! Just do your meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, prayer, t’ai ch’i or whatever is your path, in your way, together with us.

As the Christian God once said, somewhere in the Bible, when several are gathered together, tuning into divinity, love and peace, there shall Divinity be. It’s true. The power of it skyrockets.

If needed, full details are here.

Times for the meditation will change with the clocks soon. Why? Because we’re staying with natural time – it’s humans’ clocks that change. We go with the birds, animals and the rising and setting of heavenly bodies. Natural time.

In UK and Europe the clocks change on Sunday 26th October and in North America it’s on Sunday 2nd November. Subtract one hour from the existing time, wherever you are – so, for example, in UK, it goes from 8pm to 7pm (20.00-19.00). Yet it’s the same time!

If thus far you’ve been working with Gazans in your meditations, please stay with them. Things are progressing, but it isn’t getting easier and, in some respects a postwar period can be more difficult than war itself. A few weeks ago I did a podcast with a guided humanitarian meditatation, which can also be applied in other places and contexts, and if that interests you, you can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Dl3rJ46VJ7l2PLHIP5dsW?si=dyC2wwmKSHKPEEGVtGVIUw

Some weeks ago, on an eclipsoid newmoon, I wrote that we had just gone through a turning of the page in the wider world. We see this unfolding now. It simply makes everything look different – it’s a deep and fundamental change of optic.

Ultimately, this is how the world, or humanity at least, changes – and that affects the natural world and the wider universe greatly. Since optic is a psycho-spiritual matter, subtly affecting the perceptions, feelings and behaviour of eight billion souls, this is where meditation has quite a big influence.

Love from me, Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm
These times will change by one hour in a few weeks. I’ll remind you.

Equinoctial Newmoon

You don’t have to be an astrologer to understand this. Just take a close look at the chart here. It’s an example of a planetary configuration with a strong coherence to it. This sets up a thrum in the energy-fields of the Earth, and it has a quantum effect on what is happening and developing worldwide, both above and below the surface. That is, it has an effect that is more and bigger than it looks like at the time.

If I had to sum it up in a few words, it would be… the turning of a page. Not just short-term, but long-term, and changing the nature and rules of the game – to some extent, without many people being fully aware of it, because we tend to walk backwards into the future. But it is indeed a turning of a page. Or many different pages.

This was the chart for the newmoon yesterday, 21st September 2025. Quite a configuration, with Uranus-Saturn/Neptune-Pluto involved and lots of planets cuspal (changing signs).

Amongst other things, a good time for recognising Palestine – turning the page on the past, and a turning of a tide. But this configuration means far more than that. Look also at things that news media and public discourse are not talking about. Or at what lies behind the events of the day and the next few weeks.

Listen more closely to THINGS than to people.

I think it could be a tide-turning in many ways. But actually, when the tide is turning, nothing much actually happens right then. Or the events that do happen can be symbolic of what is to come. It’s what happened before and what happens afterwards that is what matters when a tide is turning.

History changes because of changes of ideas and sentiments. It sometimes takes time for these to surface and emerge as visible, newsworthy events, but they start at times like this.

We will be seeing more configurations like this over the next 2-3 years, because of the Uranus-Neptune-Pluto configuration that’s hovering around at present (I wrote about this a coupla weeks ago).

When faster-moving planets swing into this configuration, big thrums, bongs and rumbles start up, affecting all of us, globally and personally. At present, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is amplifying this – forcing the issue.

We cannot stand still. This period is what I have earlier called an avalanche of events. We’re heading toward a point, or a series of them, where cards are coming down on the table and things just have to move forward. Because, if we don’t move them forward, systems will be overwhelmed, the fuses will get hot and the trip-switches will trip. Then there’s trouble – avoidable trouble.

This configuration is quite balanced. This is a chord with harmony and resonance to it – and a few dischords thrown in to give it a sharper edge.

The big problem today is that things are stuck yet they are also loosening up. It’s like a thaw – and thaws create avalanches.

It’s time to look at our own stucknesses. One big stuckness we all must face is that it is no longer good enough to blame others for our problems. Our problems start with us.

Also, within every problem lies a solution. But, to see it, we must get our stucknesses out of the way and face forward into the future.

One thing that changed around 2012, when there was another significant historic configuration (Uranus square Pluto), was that the future has started exerting a bigger causative influence on the present, overwhelming the stucknesses of the past. That’s why there’s a big conservative backlash happening right now – people are scared. But the past is going and gone. Things will be alright, as long as we respond well to what life is throwing at us – that’s the harmonic chord in operation.

With love, Palden

For more overview stuff (I wrote it in 2020):

The 2020s

and if you want some serious historical astrology, try this:
https://www.palden.co.uk/ephem/6configurations.html

Gaza

A Spiritual Humanitarian Mission

This is a change of course. I’d like to take you on a spiritual humanitarian mission to Gaza, in this weekend’s meditation on a rather strong newmoon. It’s here, as a podcast, and it takes around half an hour:

https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Something prompts me to share this with you. It’s something I’ve been working with for years, and with others (such as https://flyingsquad.org.uk ). It’s spiritual humanitarian aid and inner work to help progress things in our world.

I’ve worked quite a lot in Palestine itself, and that’s why repeatedly I suggest connecting with real people there, whether online, in meditation or by actually visiting. They’re just like you and me. Here’s an audiobook about life in Palestine when I was there twelve and more years ago, in better times than now – it explains a lot: https://www.palden.co.uk/bethlehemblog.html

So many feel deeply frustrated that they can’t do anything much to help people in and around Gaza and the West Bank.

This is one way to work with this feeling, to make something of it. It’s good to make the best out of a bad situation. This is one thing Palestinians teach the world: how to hang in there.

If you haven’t done this kind of thing before, then follow this guided meditation as a starting place. I encourage you to be imaginative, to follow your own way and path, to develop this over time, and to be fully human with the people you meet on journeys such as these. It’s an energy-exchange.

You can do it on your own, or you’re welcome to join the Sunday Meditation each or any Sunday – it’s free, with no complication.

It’s simply a circle of good souls in various countries who meditate together each week. I have a feeling it would be good for the group to work with Gaza for a few weeks. https://palden.co.uk/meditations.html

This is special. With love. Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm

It’s a Mega-Twang

Here’s a little astrology lesson, pertinent to what’s happening at present. Take a look at the chart here, for this morning, Thursday 7th August. Even non-astrologers will notice a pattern, a configuration, that is quite orderly and structured.

When this happens, the energy-fields of the planets of our solar system start syncing with each other and creating a mega-twang, a super-thrum, a chord, and in these energy-circumstances things start happening. They start shaking up and rattling loose.

What’s interesting here is that, astrologically, this is not exactly a crisis situation. This configuration is dominated by sextiles (30 degrees) and trines (120 degs), which are aspects (angles) of flow, movement, progression, slip-sliding, letting go and accelerating evolution. It’s not exactly about crunches, shocks, crises and disasters.

It’s about things simply progressing fast. It’s an avalanche of events that push things forward – with an element of overload that itself forces issues out, up and forward. There’s an element of inevitability to it too – that is, things happening now relate to things that happened or failed to happen before, and also (get this) things that are yet to become visible and come into being. This is a case of the future having a formative influence on the present.

If you look at the green lines in the chart, the core issue here is a triangle that is being formed by the slow-moving outer planets, Uranus (in Gemini), Neptune (in Aries) and Pluto (in Aquarius). This is rare, slow, and happening now and over the next few years. It has been building up since Covid-time and it is historic in effect.

A lot is going to change during the late 2020s, and the key issue here is overload. An overload that makes everyone think differently, choose their priorities, urgently seek fundamental solutions and juggle hard to keep everything going.

There’s a useful analogy in geology. The erosive power of a river increases as the square of its volume. In other words, if the volume of flow increases three times, the erosive power increases nine times. We’ve seen this in recent floods worldwide, though a flood is simply a dramatic increase of flow, a releasing of energy. Yes, it destroys a lot and is difficult or deadly for the poor people at the receiving end of it, but the river is constructing a new path by which things can flow better. It is preparing the future.

These three planets will shimmy in and out of exact aspect over the next few years, and they ard pretty exact right now. Since they move slowly, they influence slow-moving, historic processes and mega-trends. Often we don’t notice these except at critical junctures.

An example is Gaza: this is a longstanding issue spanning many decades, even centuries, but the recent famine and starvation event and the war before it made it into a global issue in the forefront of the world agenda. And it concerns bigger and wider global-scale issues than Gaza itself.

When faster-moving planets move into configuration with these three, we start getting a mega-twang. In this chart, Saturn, Mars and Mercury are involved. A day later (8th Aug), the Moon will swing into it too, just for half a day, cranking it up even more. In other words, events happen that precipitate the bigger issues that lie underneath.

This concerns not just world events, ‘out there’, but individuals too – depending on how your own astrological chart works. If you have planets in the first degrees of certain signs, then you might have quite a few planets aspecting one or more planets in your chart. Stuff happening. Make the best of it – seize the time.

How much this is a crisis depends a lot on you. Yes, it’s difficult when stuff is rattling and banging and it’s all too much, but this is also a mechanism by which things change, and you can make that change easier or more difficult.

And here’s something: the advantage of a crisis is that a lot of issues can get resolved at once, and pragmatically in response to real-life circumstances – instead of dragging out over a long period of time, or being avoided or sidelined. We are being given a future instead of simply trudging along through life living with the effects of the past.

This is a time of accelerating solutions hiding behind apparent problems. It depends how we see things, and how much we are willing to let go of old ways of seeing things. This is about the future, not the past.

There will be more of these configurations in the coming few years and it’s worth keeping an eye out for them. This isn’t the end of the world, or the beginning of the new age, but it is definitely a time of white-water canoeing through a fast and rough stretch on the river of life and of history. By 2030 more will have happened and progressed than we thought possible.

With love, Palden

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And if this kind of thing interests you, then my book Power Points in Time is all about it: https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/
and a free online archive version, the now rather dated 1987 Living in Time. is here: https://www.palden.co.uk/living/

Sunday Meditation

Yes, it’s Sunday, and the meditation continues whether or not I announce it here. You’re welcome to join me and us in this open meditation. There’s no formula, mantra or prescribed method: do it your way, as you always do or have done.

It’s a joining together of souls, to share inner space togther by entering the zone and bathing in a universal energy-stream. No need to be online – switch off your technology to be more, not less, in contact. There’s no sign-up and there are no strings.

Times in different countries are below.

For further details, go here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

Sometimes I can’t or don’t announce the meditation, but I’m there every week anyway.

I’m feeling rather tired of the daily round being alive, mostly alone and untouched, and of an aching body and the rather uphill climb of being lodged inside it – with a blood cancer, radiation-related, that affects my bones and various parts of this creaky body.

So, if you freely will, keep on with the meditation whether or not I announce it. For there are other people doing it with us, at the same time, in a number of countries – not just us in this group. Hidden away in the world’s quiet corners, we form a network of light, holding the world in place. Holding hands with people of all cultures, backgrounds, faiths and times. Perhaps it’s a secret conspiracy.

We’re sliding into a time of accelerated change, a growing avalanche of events. It’s good to hold the tiller and keep it steady while the world goes into an increasingly swirly, crunchy period of intensity before breakthrough comes. Which it will.

There are, in the end, no winners or losers – we’re all in this together, all humans, sharing a planet that seems big, yet it is so small.

It’s no longer a matter of taking them to our leader – there is none, despite the beliefs of many. It’s a matter of where humanity really is at, as a whole.

One thing that life has taught me is this: those times when everything seems stuck, unlikely to change and seeming to get worse and worse… these are times of prelude to change. So stay with the process.

Such times are part of the cycle of life. They come to oblige humanity to clarify what it truly, ultimately wants and is choosing to create. Then come times when the wave breaks. So getting used to riding our psychospiritual surfboards is a good thing to do. Or perhaps the only thing to do.

It falls on some of us to help bring about that change. Yet it also falls on some of us to look further, to help lay the tracks for what unfolds afterwards and as a consequence. It’s good to look further than the reflective boundaries of our own reality-bubbles.

Bless us all, and here’s a hug to you from me.

With love, Palden.

Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm GMT
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm

Aluna

Aluna, the Void, the Lap of the Mother, out of which everything emerges.

I posted this video a few years ago and it’s worth another spin. Because it speaks of matters I talk about too, though the Kogi Mamas state it far more clearly and unequivocally. It concerns the basis of the way nature works, and it starts in the realm of spirit.

It concerns connecting the power points with each other – the Kogi call them Esuamas – and helping the Earth hum and sing as an energy-being, a conscious being. If she is happy, all will be well, and nature can fix itself when damaged. Ecological reintegration. Rewilding.

This is what we, ‘the younger brother’, are failing to do. Then we wonder why we get flash floods, droughts and storms. We do this by blocking up the energy centres and obstructing their connections.

So, to help the world it is necessary to unblock them.

The Kogi, descendants of the pre-Columban Tairona civilisation, live in the Sierra Nevada of northern Colombia. In a recent article about Caer Brân, a Bronze Age gathering site here in West Penwith, Cornwall, I mentioned the sense of enhanced centrality you can feel at many ancient sites – the feeling of being at the centre of everything – and the Kogi feel that too. It’s a key element in the energy-geography of an area like theirs or like Penwith. They feel that the mountain area where they live lies at the Heart of the World. And it does.

They feel they cannot carry the world any more. In this film, Aluna, they speak of making payments, paying back to the Mother, caring for her and keeping her happy. They practice land management and agriculture that does just this.

In my rants and ramblings about the Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape of Penwith, I suggest that the 600-odd ancient sites in Penwith actually constituted one big ancient site, one big cliff sanctuary. Ancient Penwithians sought to make the land and the wider world hum and glow. Hence the ancient name for Penwith, ‘Belerion’ – the shining or scintillating land. They did it by connecting up the energy-centres to amp them up, to make them operate as one.

The Kogis’ ideas are not unique to them. We in Britain have known them too, a long time ago. We have forgotten. But if, when the time and your mood are right, you watch this film, you too might remember.

https://youtu.be/ftFbCwJfs1I?si=CgtlNYLO-cFopmSH

Meditations

And a meditation on leadership

I’m not sure how many people join the Sunday meditations. In a way it doesn’t matter. I know and feel some people are there and joining in, including people doing it because of their own relationship with the same spiritual source as mine, the Nine.

Eitherwhichway, I’m always there, every single Sunday, whether or not I say so. Those of you who like to join in, whether often or occasionally, are welcome to continue. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s all explained here:

www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

and the meditation times for different countries are below.

As a cancer patient with my ups and downs, there are times when I cannot do my customary pep talk. However, even if I’m really unwell, I’ll still be there at the meditation. Even when I kick off my earthly clogs, you might even sense me there on the other side. It’s an inner commitment I made to the Council of Nine thirty years ago, and I just keep beavering away at it.

Whatever path you follow, it makes a difference if you stick with it for a long time, since nowadays there’s a spiritual commitment problem that itself is rather problematic for world transformation. We all need to step up, each in our own way, to contribute proactively to something much larger than ourselves – personal growth and fulfilment is only the start of the great pathless path through the gateless gate.

An ancient pathway on our farm, here in Cornwall

But that’s not what I wanted to write about. I want to give an astrologer’s insight. It’s all about Neptune in Aries, which started at the beginning of April 2025. It has been in Pisces since 2011 – a time of reality-slippage, geopolitical confusion, underlying transition, flailing beliefs, mental ill-health, tech dreams and military and climatic nightmares.

We have Neptune in Aries for 14-15 years until 2039. So this is a chapter, a phase, in which the world lives out Aries-type experiences, hopefully to progress them forward. On a 165 year cycle, Neptune last did this between 1861 and 1874 – the time of Abraham Lincoln, Gladstone and Disraeli, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, and of roaring, steam-powered industrialisation, warfare, power battles, nationalism, early popular movements and Euro-American colonial expansion.

As Neptune trawls its way round the zodiac, chapter by chapter, it pushes us through periods of preoccupation with certain themes – the rise and fall of beliefs and perspectives which themselves influence the way the world sees things, acting out its anticipations, beliefs, fears and its light and its darkness. There’s a visionary side, a place where dreams and big ideas are born, of revelatory situations and realisations, and there’s an illusory and delusory side, mingled with fantasy, fakeness, projection, hypocrisy, glamour and horror. It’s all dreamstuff, yet it percolates into our reality, both helping and harming us and the wider world.

When Neptune is in Aries restlessness, impatience and frustration come up. Though there’s a lot of noise about freedom and identity, there’s a seeking for social-political-cultural examples to follow, align and identify with – it becomes a parade of leaders, public figures, accidental heroes/heroines (Florence Nightingale was one, last time round), who manifest the best and the worst of human possibility.

Some prominent people represent what is hoped for and dreamt of, or perhaps they represent integrity, genius or a human touch, with their finger on the pulse. Some represent what we most fear and dread, or they capture the hearts and minds of followers to promote or impose their own agenda. Either way, they have a lot of push, even of force – or also they reveal or portray themselves and their flock as victims, as the weak. This often gives rise to strong resistance and counter-measures – last time we had the rise of socialism and workers’ movements. It’s then a matter of how intelligent the wider public is in choosing what ideas and initiatives to subscribe to, and how clear their sight is to exert an influence on the strong.

I think you’ll be gtting the gist of this by now, and seeing how this is playing out round the world today. We’re seeing reformed terrorists gaining power as reformers, Popes calling out the status quo, dictators and billionaires acting out their fantasies, a massive generational change and an ongoing movie in which the best and the worst of human power-plays and moral choices process before us. This action-packed movie demands that we get off the fence to exert a moderating influence on those who lead the public discourse or precipitate evolving facts, whether helpful or harmful.

We’re getting an array of leaders and prominent figures who variously represent different aspects of these issues – and different people will see different facets of them, judging them differently. We’re getting a diversity of realities and viewpoints that partially clarifies things and partially adds confusion. It’s all a matter of perceptions and viewpoints, inspired sometimes with vision and purpose and sometimes with false hope or coloured by predisposition or prejudice. It’s a question of whether big ideas and beliefs attempt to override reality or whether reality clips them back to workable proportions.

There’s a conquering undertone to this – ranging from taking territory or power to overcoming obstacles and pioneering new possibilities. The bottom line is that, in the final analysis, there are no winners, and the idea of winning is inherently flawed. Victory is transitory, and everything turns to its opposite in the fullness of time.

Aries is ruled by Mars which, customarily seen as the God of War, in our time is showing itself also to be a God of Peace – a peace arising from stalemate and from the calculus that further conflict means that even the winner becomes a loser. There are limits to the extent to which the strong can push their agenda.

Each sign unconsciously faces its opposite – in this case, Libra, the sign of agreement-disagreement, values, fair-dinkum and relationship. Neptune was last in Libra in 1942-1956, leading to the formation of the United Nations and the ‘rules based’ order that is now disintegrating as the Global North loses its primacy and the Majority World accrues its true power in world affairs.

This has best been symbolised in Gaza, which in the end is a war between the People and the Megamachine, acting as a tipping point where the power of the Global North betrays itself and the Global South is challenged to find a unified position and agenda of its own, sufficient to replace the old order.

Thus spake Zarathrustra, looking over St Just toward Scilly

Underneath this lies a necessary historic tilting of all and everything, a slow and fundamental shifting from a competitive to a cooperative model in the very nature of society and civilisation. Multiplex issues are bound up with this, and we’re sliding into an avalanche of events that push those issues forward. This multiplicity of issues is pushing us out of our habits, avoidances and complacencies, demanding attention, backed up by the threat of unwanted consequences that will surely arise from inaction.

Historically, we’re surreptitiously entering a new chapter. Last year Pluto shifted into Aquarius and next year Uranus shifts into Gemini. Such shifts or ingresses create a change of themes, realities and atmospheres, which themselves indirectly prompt and colour events and developments. History moves slowly most of the time, though sometimes it moves really fast, and we’re entering such a period.

But it’s all in the way we see things and do things. We can make it easier or more difficult. Our problem is that we have a habit of entering the future facing backwards, of obeying fear, thereby complicating, undermining or blocking the very developments we deeply seek. Our own freedoms, benefits and rights can no longer impose themselves on the freedoms, benefits and rights of others or of nature, reality and the collective good. Change does not have to be as difficult as many people visualise. Its reward is eventual relief from the oppressions we already carry on our shoulders.

With love, Palden

PS. Here’s an example of a new leader who is taking on a big agenda and putting himself on the line. This man, part of the Megamachine and Old Order, is seriously acknowledging the agenda of a younger-generation military dictator who is playing a strong hand of cards. We’ll see more of these agenda-changers in coming years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=navBX2A37ls

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The Plughole

It’s the Sunday meditation again, and I have revived sufficiently from an illness that floored me last week to be able to elbow you about it! That is, you’re welcome to join us in the zone – times for different countries are below. It’s an open meditation space lasting half an hour. To quote Van Morrison: no guru, no teacher, no method – just you and me in the garden… Follow your own path, together with us following ours. We shall be blessed.

If needed, details are here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

The illness was a fluey thing. My energy was low, and I’d been pushing hard and under pressure in my remote humanitarian work. So when I got cold and wet during a trip to Falmouth, my soul pulled the plug and I went down through it. Next day I was semi-conscious, stiff and hurting, with sluggish brains, wobbly balance, burning feet (peripheral neuropathy) and I was right out of it, gone, hardly here.

A pertinent sign at Gurnard’s Head, in West Penwith

My predominant emotion was grief, over things that have happened, and particularly over moral dilemmas and painful moments in my humanitarian work over the years. I’ve seen people face hardship, suffer and die who, in my estimation, should not have died, and at times I’ve been unable to help – often quite simply I did not have the funds needed for medical treatment for an amputation or to save a life.

This is a deep dilemma being faced by many humanitarians now, as governments blithely withdraw funding and the public shrugs its shoulders. For me, in late life, it has left traces of regret, even though I know that the net value of my work was positive overall, and there’s a lot I’m glad about.

But the illness enabled me to go deep, deep down to a place where the hidden roots of life’s experiences and events ferment and bubble. This is one of the big virtues of illness that many people try their best to avoid – the consciousness changes it can bring about. Sometimes our soul needs to cut us down and render us helpless, to help us work through something – burn through something. Whether or not we actually do this is a life-choice and an exercise of profound free will.

It is an act of free will to choose to go through a turning in the deepest seat of consciousness. You have to go over the edge and take the plunge. Getting into the habit of doing this throughout our lives sets us up for one of life’s greatest and most moving of experiences – dying.

As you approach death, life tends to take you down in stages – a series of crunch moments or crises where your worldly powers and agency are reduced, your world shrinks, and you bodily functions deteriorate. This incremental withdrawal yields the possibility of a new seeing, a new understanding, if we so choose it. Though it involves perceiving truths that can at first be uncomfortable. Yet facing and accepting these revealings becomes a relief too, an understanding, a forgiveness. For this life had simply been a short visit on an ongoing pathway. It begins and it ends.

Back in the 1990s I was privileged to help and spend quality time with Sir George Trevelyan, who was in effect the grandfather of the New Age movement in Britain. Very much a man of the Twentieth Century, born in 1906 and dying in 1996, he was an aristocratic philanthropist, thinker and educator, planting the seeds of the new age and the green movement in the 1940s-70s. He was a four-planet Scorpio. At the very end, he died by decision, announcing that he should not be disturbed or given any food or drinks. He was gone in 4-5 days.

Here’s a video of him talking in 1988, in his eighties. Thank you, Sir George, for being you, for what you did with and for so many people, and for pointing the way in my life too.

Meanwhile, if you care to join today’s meditation… see you there!

Love, Palden