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This is the eigth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

Boy, what a morning! Even back when the alarm rang the first time, you knew this day wouldn’t be one of your better ones. Sluggish, tired, and without any drive, you set the alarm forward for a few minutes. Then again. And again, until you finally managed to drag yourself out of bed.

Shuffling listlessly towards the bathroom, the only thing keeping you upright and awake at all was some sense of duty on a workday. Over breakfast, your partner suggested one of your favourites for dinner this evening, but you couldn’t even manage any enthusiasm for that. Still, you did your best to act excited and pleased, even though you’re pretty sure your lack of energy showed. You’ll have to make up for that tonight, although you’d much rather just drop down on the couch and don’t even lift an arm anymore.

Now, at work, things haven’t gotten any better, alas. The deadline looms, but you have no energy at all. Since you can’t get yourself to finish stuff, you instead stare at the outline of the new project you had been looking forward to. Getting going with this would just require you to send some emails… but you don’t feel like starting anything, much less like pulling through. Somehow you must have forgotten your usual initiative and drive in bed.

And to top it all off, in this morning’s meeting about the looming deadline, one of your colleagues offloaded the fault for his own lapses onto you. For a few seconds, you considered starting an argument… but today, even such a small fight seems to be too much effort. Instead, you just shrugged your shoulders, although your boss now believes the delay is your fault and not this colleague’s.

Staring listlessly at your screen, you wonder whether you should just spend lunchbreak slumping here at your desk – and what, for goodness’ sake, is going on with you today… [Read more…] about Wielding a Powerful, Double-Edged Sword

This is the seventh part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

Last time, we left the sphere of Venus behind and approached the Sun – and then enthusiastically went down a rabbit hole of Hermetic proportions. Well, at least I was rather enthusiastic. For all I know, you just might have been clinging on for dear life. 😉

Either way, I hope you’ve spent at least a bit of time pondering the implications of a (positive, life-affirming) monistic and of a (pessimistic, negative) dualistic outlook on your own life, because we will circle back to them later in this essay, where I will also have a confession to make.

For now, though, let’s pick up where we left off last time, and that’s with the question “Why have we been discussing all of this here, in an essay about the Sun?”

[Read more…] about Shining as Bright as the Sun

This is the sixth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

It’s a beautiful Sunday, sunny and pleasantly warm. No cloud disturbs the sky. After the past few days of grey, overcast skies, of wind and rain, today’s weather comes as a relief. Waking up this morning, the sun shining onto your face in bed, all the dreariness of the past few days seemed to be gone in an instant. Full of joy and energy, you jumped out of bed to make the most of this day.

And now, outside, you’re raising your face to the sun and are enjoying its warm rays on your skin. How wonderful! You certainly couldn’t have picked a better day for this hike, could you?

You amble along the path in a comfortable speed, enjoying the sunny day and the warmth, admiring the dance of the golden rays on the ground. Pondering how it takes just a few minutes of sun to raise your mood, you set out to tackle the path before you.

A few hours later, though, your mood has soured considerably. [Read more…] about The One-Barrel-Fits-All Concoction

This is the fifth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

We’ve spent the past two week’s in Mercury’s sphere, and boy, what a dizzying ride it was!

Everything flew by in Mercurial speed, and there was a constant bombardment of words, of new ideas, of new perspectives. And while navigating Mercury’s sphere is an interesting and stimulating experience, it can also be pretty exhausting, can’t it?

To be honest, much as I love Mercury, his quick wit and sharp tongue, his ideas and his flexibility, he can also be a bit intense sometimes.

Of course, this isn’t a big surprise after what we covered last time. Mercury really seems to have made it his goal to teach us about the two sides of each planetary coin, and how they can’t be separated.

(As an aside, I hope you had the time to ponder this concept a bit, and also to apply it to your everyday life as often as possible. If you shouldn’t have done so, it really is worth doing – things can look very different from this outlook!)

Anyway, a break would be welcome right now, wouldn’t it? Just some relaxed time, to take a deep breath or two, and simply enjoy life for a short while.

It turns out we’re in luck, then. ‘Cause now, as we enter the sphere of Venus… now the scenery changes completely. [Read more…] about Queen of Hearts

This is the fourth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

After a bright and shiny day with no clouds anywhere in sight, the Sun set just half an hour ago, and it’s promising to be a quiet and dark night with an equally clear sky.

The Moon is only a thin sliver tonight, and her subdued light gives you a wondeful view of all the less bright stars. In the West, Venus is outdoing herself in her gala performance as evening star, by far the brightest object in the sky.

Much higher up in the South, and a lot further away from the Sun than Venus, Jupiter is doing his level best to outshine her in his slightly different shade of white. These two are so bright, they are easy to spot.

But now it gets a bit trickier. Mars is still fairly easy, with his distinguished red shine.

Saturn is somewhat harder. He’s fairly distant, thus rather small to our eyes, and also by far not as shiny-bright as Venus or Jupiter. But still, you’ve been smart and looked up his current location beforehand, and… ah, there he is! A small, rather dullish brown point in the sky.

But Mercury… Have you ever seen Mercury? For real, I mean, not on some photograph?

Chances are good you haven’t – and the reason why leads us straight into the territory of the Hermetic planet Mercury, its vices and virtues…

[Read more…] about The Chameleon Among the Planets