The End Is Near

Well, the end of the year 2025, that is. 😉 In fact, today is one of my last days of “work” before my winter break. Which, in turn, means that today is the perfect day for looking back onto the past year – and forward to the next one…

So how has your year been? I hope it was a good one for you, fruitful, healthy, and enjoyable! 🙂

Here on The Hidden Things, this (still current) year has certainly been a fruitful one, in several ways:

First, the formal Weekly Blessings have continued, well, weekly. While this isn’t earth-shattering news, it’s certainly enjoyable and fruitful – and judging from some comments, not just for me, but also for the people who signed up for blessings.

Then I started a new feature back in January, namely regular essays. I.e. through most of the year, I’ve not just been writing when the muse struck, but have asked my muse for a dance every other week (and so far, she has kindly obliged me).

This year’s essays have mostly been part of a larger series which focuses on changing yourself and your life through some odd and idiosyncratic means, namely by doing Inner Work with the Hermetic Planets.

If this sounds a bit uncommon, then because it is. 😉 But it’s also very helpful and fruitful, and well worth doing, which is why I spent so much time fleshing it out.

The last essay in this series was posted just this past Sunday, i.e. the series is now complete, and you can read it in one go if you’re so inclined (you could also work your way through it more slowly and put it to practical use right while you read your way through it – the choice is yours).

Since the essays are (at least so far) a bi-weekly feature, I’ve had the chance to fill up every other Sunday on the blog with something else which is near and dear to me, namely an online course for the Modern Order of Essenes.

The course sticks very closely to the material originally posted by JMG, but I’ve restructured it very thoroughly, have grouped it into bite-sized units, and have enhanced it with some Commentary, meditation topics and other small goodies.

Each unit contains enough material to last you for two weeks (although you are certainly free to spend longer on them if you feel so inclined). This MOE course started in February, and as of now, it has reached the end of the Healer grade.

I am very pleased by (and grateful for!) the fact that quite a few people have taken up this course, and have been working their way through it successfully and in very good spirits. Some of them take a bit longer due to other life constraints, and this is perfectly fine and intended – the course will stay available, and everybody is very welcome to a. pick it up at any time, and b. spend as long on each unit as they need.

And for those of you who have no idea what the Modern Order of Essenes even is: It’s a system of spiritual healing. It consists of various techniques of spiritual healing, as well as ample material for contemplation, reflection and meditation. You can read more about the specifics of the MOE here – or dive into the first unit of the course here.

Another thing which has happened on The Hidden Things this past year is something seemingly trivial, but with sizeable impact: On reader request, I set up a mailing list system. It allows you to sign up for my emails, sorted by broad topic, and I use it mainly to announce new content (although there is the odd other email, e.g. a heads up about my winter break or other things).

If you’d like to sign up for emails, e.g. to be notified when a new blessing post goes up, or a new essay, or…, you can do so beneath each post, or on this signup page here.

While being a small thing in the overall picture, the mailing lists have proven to be a very helpful and convenient add-on for everybody involved.

(I’m very glad you folks asked, though! I had thought about a mailing list before, but, left to my own devices, would have pushed off setting one up for another good long while, as it’s not exactly a fun job… 😉 )

And finally, I attended the Ecosophian Convention in Glastonbury in June, and published a report about it which contains a lot of details of all the talks and the Q&As with JMG. It’s still available here, in case you’re interested.

On a personal level, during this convention I was also consecrated and ordained by JMG, and am now a bishop of the Universal Gnostic Church.

So this was the year on The Hidden Things in review. Noting earth-shattering, but some good, solid progress, onto which I plan to build further next year!

Before we turn towards the next year and my outlook though… At the beginning, I asked about your year, and this was a serious question:

Everywhere around me, wherever I look, things seem to be in flux. People losing or giving up relationships, for example, or gaining new ones. People changing (or being forced to adapt) their locations, their professions, their ways of life, and sometimes their believes and their worldviews. Everything seems to be just a bit less solid and less sure than before – and sometimes more than a bit so.

This is… challenging, in many ways. Thus my question was all serious: How have you been faring? How are things going for you? Or, for that matter, how are you holding up? 🙂

Because it’s one thing to (intellectually) know that with change comes oppportunity. It’s quite another thing to be confronted with change which one might neither have asked for nor wanted. And it’s the latter which, from what I observe, a lot of people are experiencing right now.

(If you’ll allow me to throw in a blatant plug at this point, both the Modern Order of Essenes and the essay series on Inner Work with the Hermetic Planets can be helpful in dealing with the current craziness and the changes in the world, each in their own way. Thus if you should be looking for something productive to better help you weather whatever winds will be blowing next, you might want to check them out…)

In any case, and no matter which way the wind will be blowing in the future, I very much hope that The Hidden Things and my work will continue to be of help to you!

So what are my plans for the upcoming year?

For starters, things here on the website will pretty much continue as they are now: I will continue to offer (paid) divinations and (free) formal Weekly Blessings.

I will also continue to publish a new unit of the MOE course every other week, too, as we’ve still got all of the Master grade to cover.

There will also be a chance to become Master Teacher, i.e. somebody who is qualified and enabled to teach the MOE and pass its attunements on to others, although this will require considerably more work, and in self study. I’m going to cover all the relevant information in the course, though, so make sure to check it out in January if you’re interested.

On the essay side, now that the series on Inner Work with the Hermetic Planets is finished, I’m going to start a new essay series in January (on Sunday, January 18th, to be precise).

The topic is still top secret, but what I can divulge is that it will, again, focus on some interesting, thought-provoking and somewhat unconventional topic. And it will, again, offer loads of chances for inner work and for change (the kind of change you want to tackle, not the kind which gatecrashes into your life).

There will also be opportunities for hands-on work. And, as usual, we’ll have a lot of fun together – but this time of the sparkling and bubbling, tasty, and potentially explosive kind! 😉

If this sounds interesting, please check back on Sunday January 18th for the first installment of this new series – or sign up for the mailing list in order to be comfortably notified (make sure “Essays and other Stuff” is checked).

Both of these things, the MOE course and the new essay series, will run for quite a few months, and will probably keep me busy enough that I won’t be publishing many other posts here during this time – although, famous last words and all that… 😉

What is also going to keep me busy is some offshoots of the Inner Work with the Hermetic Planets series:

First and foremost, I’m in the process of converting the essay series into a book. But there are also other things related to this topic which I’m working on right now, or plan to work on in the future…

The one most near and dear to my heart is a set of Hermetic planetary rituals which I’ve been developing. The majority of the work on them has been done, just some more testing and refining left (altough “just”, in this case, is a euphemism… 😉 ). They, too, will be published once they are well and ready, and again I will announce it both here on the site and through the mailing list once they are available.

There have also been reader requests for a course and/or a series of meditation topics based on this year’s essay series. Indeed, the content would lend itself very well to this, and I had been toying with related ideas myself.

But while my fingers are itching almost irresistably, urging me to start working on it right away, I’ve decided to be reasonable (just once, mind you! It’s not gonna become a habit!) and put these ideas aside for now until, I’ve finished the work on the book and at least made some serious headway with the accompanying set of rituals. And then? We’ll see…

And of course, neither the MOE course nor the next essay series will run forever. So one of my major tasks for the near future is to figure out what I want to do afterwards: what to write about, which topics to focus on, what else to work on and to offer.

Thus my plan is, basically, to continue with things here as they are (apart from the new essay topic, that is), and to ramp up some of my work in the background. Or rather, that’s the current plan – given the amount of change which is in the air, it’s probably not wise to become too set on any one path on any specific roadmap… 🙂

And what are your plans for the next year?

Will you continue as before? Muddle through as best as you can? Or do you have any specific changes, goals or plans in mind?

I’m looking forward to your replies, if there is anything you’d care to share. 🙂

For now, though, I’m almost off to my winter break. I wish you wonderful and awesome holidays – Holy Days full of wonder and awe! May your next year be healthy, fruitful and enjoyable, and may its winds carry good things to you.

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Image: Martin Blonk on Unsplash