Picture to the month of Capricorn

In spiritual astrology, Capricorn symbolises the time of dawn on the different scales: the daily sunrise, the dawn of the year, or the birth of the creational intelligences, the awakening of the gods.

To illustrate these different planes, I started with a photo of a sunrise seen from an airplane. The partly visible sun symbolises that our visible sun is an expression of the invisible parts. According to the Scriptures, only one quarter is visible, while three quarters remain hidden. The surrounding petals of three layers of a sunflower and the flames above depict the radiance of the subtle planes. 

In the centre, you see the depiction of the three basic forces of creational activity, pervasion and destruction - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. I created this three-headed unity by transforming a picture of a brownish copper statue into blue with golden ornaments. The statue was done on the basis of the famous Trimurti, a huge sculpture of the three-headed divinity in the caves of Elephanta Island, Mumbai. The serpent is a symbol of the unfoldment of time and the forces of life (Kundalini).

For the background, I chose a photo of the constellation of Capricorn. In many of my paintings you see a dark blue background with stars. It symbolises the background of the unmanifest space, from out of which all manifestations emerge – you cannot illustrate the unmanifest. The blue of the statues of Gods refers to their origin from the unknowable background.

Picture to the month of Sagittarius

Sagittarius is the fiery sign of the archer, symbol of single-minded attention. It teaches us to direct all our forces to one purpose, the goal of our life. On the spiritual path, the bow and arrow stand for the meditative discipline of lifting up the energies to the higher centres and to align one’s own will to the divine Will. 

For the visualisation of the divine Will I chose a representation of the Lord of the Divine Will: I took the face of a statue of Shiva on the banks of the River Ganges in Rishikesh, India. I cleared it from other symbolisms and placed a bow and an arrow over the bust. With the help of photos of the sun and of a lotus I created the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus over the head, the target of the alignment, the connection to the higher worlds. 

For the string and the lower part of the bust I created shapes of bluish flames, expressing the electric tension of the fiery alignment. I emphasized it by intensifying the colours.

Picture to the month of Scorpio

The work of Scorpio is the alchemy of profound transformation through rhythmic inner work. Rhythm, ritual and order are related to the 7th ray of violet vibration. The violet light is the most proximate subtle light; it helps us gain the vision, which reveals the subtle existence. The violet flame causes magical transformations, which slowly reorganize the energies of our life. The Master of the 7th Ray, the Count Saint Germain, is the Master related to Scorpio. He supports us to govern ourselves by following a rhythm and order.

For this painting I took some photos of a candle flame and arranged a picture of Count Saint Germain into several layers of flames transformed into violet light. In the background I merged the pictures of a rose window of a cathedral and a blue diamond. Then I started working with the colours.

After scanning the picture and further working on the colours I saw that the print-outs were quite different from the screen images. The colour tones did not give the right hues, and the violet did not render well. So I slept one night over it and then continued working: I divided the picture into two layers, worked on the layers separately. I then erased parts of the one layer and fused the two layers. After a number of print-outs the right luminosity was adjusted.

Picture to the month of Libra

In one of the Upanishads there is the story of two birds on the tree of life which are eternal inseparable friends. One bird eats the fruit of the tree; the other rejoices the first one eating. The bird below stands for the personality, which is experiencing the world. The bird above is the soul, which is a witness of the actions of the lower self. Both are eternally united. It is a beautiful representation of Libra, which stands for relationship.

Another symbol of relationship is the magnet. Its two poles create a field which attracts and magnetizes the iron filings.

In this picture I joined the two symbols: The upper bird in radiant white is hovering above and observing the lower bird. The latter is sitting on the ground, looking backwards. It is also white but a little tinged.

In the background you see the two poles of the magnet vertically arranged as two suns spreading their fields of force all around illustrating the poles of the soul and personality. They also represent the trunk of the tree of life with the lines of force as branches and roots.

I drew the lines on a photo of iron filings ordered around a magnet. Spiritual Astrology describes the colour of Libra as crimson-red for the average people living in a cloudy admixture of emotions and love. For a disciple who has developed the etheric lotuses the colour is violet; and when he is established in the thousand petalled lotus the colour is a blend between blue and pure white. You see these colour tones vibrating in the picture.

Picture to the month of Virgo

The earthy sign of Virgo symbolizes the slow growth in the “womb of time” through conflicts and crises to reach the light of the soul. When we have gained a pure mind, it can reflect the divine Light. When the Light gets born in the virgin mind, this is called the “birth in Light”. The light of primordial nature is described as the Mother of the World. She penetrates all the seven planes of existence. These planes are said to be the veils of the Mother, and they are also depicted as a rainbow around her head. It says that her eyes transmit the rays of grace uplifting the souls to their pristine nature.

For this picture I used the image of a little statue of the Virgin with a star-filled veil. Around her head you see the colours of a huge rainbow, the planes of creation. In the background I placed two galaxies from the constellation of Virgo, depicting the cosmic eyes of the Virgin.

In the lower sphere I arranged an extract of a group photo and on each person’s face I placed a layer of a sunrise, illustrating the reflection of the divine Light in the human minds. They are the souls maturing in the matter to experience the birth in the Light.

Picture to the month of Leo

According to spiritual astrology, the heart centre is the seat of the soul and is ruled by Leo. Leo is the expression of the I AM, the sun of our being. The lion is the symbol of the personality which is to be transformed by the soul. The highest point of illumination in us is the head centre, and via this centre a yogi establishes contact with the sun centre of our planet, Shamballa. On a still higher plane there is a relation to the polar star.

The painting took some inner preparation before I began the outer work. To start with, I did a print-out of a colour spectrum wheel with 7 layers per colour shade. I photographed an icosahedron cut in a rock crystal and used the form of this Platonic solid of 20 triangles as an expression of rounded-up matter, or the “diamond body” of the spiritual matter which an initiate carries. For the meditator inside the crystal, I chose a picture of a statue of an Eastern goddess in a blessing posture which I took some years ago in the home of friends. I placed her face into the centre of the triangle pointing upwards and placed the picture of a lion with its head in the middle of the downward triangle. I put the colour wheel into the background with its centre at the heart centre of the meditator, symbolising the spectrum of the one light manifesting in 7 layers of creation. The colour of Leo is gold, and so the lion radiates a hue of golden light.

Behind the colour wheel I included a photo of the Dhaulagiri (meaning “White Mountain”) of the Himalayas as a symbol of intense aspiration towards greatest heights. On the front of the meditator, I placed the symbol of the sun. I shaped the headpiece exceeding the pyramid as an etheric representation of Shamballa which the meditator contacts via the head centre. Atop of it you see a star symbolising the polar star forming a triangle with two other stars.

Picture to the month of Cancer

Pure, sublime music is associated with the Divine. The soul naturally responds to high quality music, and we get absorbed into its enchanting vibrations. At the beginning of creation, when space begins to awaken, there is a first group of cosmic devas. The scriptures call them the Gandharvas, the musicians, because they are the intelligences who produce periodicities and durations. They are the blissful devas, the musical waves beyond creation. The musical hierarchy is presided over by Soma, the cosmic lunar principle, which exists on all planes. In astrology, his energy is presented through Neptune; on the planetary plane it is Venus; on the plane of our earth it is the satellite Moon.

In the centre of the picture you see three spheres representing the moon principle, composed from photos of the moon and a Chinese ivory carving. I placed a picture of the constellation of Cancer in the background. The outer, bluish sphere is touching a lower sphere representing the reflective principle or the transmission of the lunar energies to the Earth.

In the upper part of the picture you see three angels with flageolets, taken from the works of the English Pre-Raffaelite painter Edward Burne Jones (1833-1899). I worked them over to represent the Devas of the musical hierarchy. The musical vibrations penetrating the cosmos are visualised by the rays descending from the cosmos.

Picture to the month of Gemini

The Eastern wisdom describes the unfoldment of the creational activity in tremendous time cycles called Manvantaras. They cover periods far before the creation of our present earth and go into cycles of far distant future times. A Manvantara is ruled by a solar intelligence called Manu and the Manu presiding over the present cycle is called Vaivasvata. Vaivasvata is the son of the Sun; he is the mind of the Sun and is also called the light of the soul. The Sun is called the weaver, Vivasvata; he weaves the globe of light around itself. The very meaning of Vaivasvata Manu is “the weaver of the light of the soul”, of the divine plan on earth.

This painting visualizes Vaivasvata Manu as emerging from the Sun in the background. Behind his head you see the radiance of the solar light and his headpiece has the form of the solar material shown in images of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT). His youthful face reminds of him being the son of the Sun.

The sages describe the creation as emerging from out of a golden egg. You see a golden egg-shape in the background and the Manu surrounded by a wheel of 14 egg-shaped figures each containing the colours of the rainbow, representing the 14 Manvantaras and the 7 planes of each creation. The whole is contained in a huge lotus, the symbol of unfoldment. Vaivasvata is in the midst of the lotus, and inside the Sun you see a higher octave of the lotus out of which the Manvantaras emerge.

Creating this picture was a strange experience. It seemed that it didn't want to come out. And while working on it, I wasn't satisfied with the way it developed and on several occasions wanted to destroy it. In the end, I realised that my concepts of how the picture should look like were blocking its emergence.

The 90 + 2 poems “Shades of Yous" (German: Schattierungen von Dus) were written between June-October 2009 and were distributed in 4 sections.

The German volume was published at spring equinox 2013. Easter 2014, they were published in English as well. The translation was done by the author and proof-read by Vijay Ganugula, New Jersey, USA.

The poems speak of the reverberation of encounters, of wounds and their healing, of dangers of the way and surprises of everyday life.

The volume of poems is now online in the Gallery.

It is also available for download in two versions:
• as Powerpoint 
• as PDF

On request, the volume can be ordered as an individual print photo book at cost price (108 p., hardcover, A 4 landscape, high quality paper; CHF 118.- + dispatch).

Picture to the month of Taurus

In the symbolism of Puranic scriptures the flow of life is described as the cosmic waters of space that had to be brought down to earth from the plane of the creator, Brahma. There was no one on earth who could receive the intensity of the fiery flux called Ganga (Ganges) but Shiva, the Lord of Divine Will. So a solar king ardently prayed for a long time until Shiva agreed to receive Ganga. 

Shiva, who carries the crescent moon on his head, opened his hair, and when Ganga came down, she was caught in the hair and her impact was reduced before she was allowed to descend from his head to the heart and then to the planes.

The head of Shiva represents Shamballa and the heart of the planet is Spiritual Hierarchy. The human beings live in the planes. Each year in Aries, a new annual impulse is received in Shamballa and in Taurus it is passed on to Hierarchy and in Gemini to humanity.

For this painting I chose a picture of Shiva with a beautiful smile. I transformed it a bit, added the crescent moon onto Shiva’s head and placed a picture of Mount Kailash into the background. Then I created the sphere with the downpour of the energies onto Shiva’s head and from there, changing colours to golden yellow, down to earth. The air is filled with the flow of etheric energies.

It must be like this to stand in the full flow of life.

Picture to the month of Aries

Aries opens the astrological year and stands for the birth of spiritual man. It also symbolises the birth-place of an idea, of a spiritual impulse taking to a form.

The butterfly is a symbol of the soul. Just like the caterpillar is totally different from the chrysalis, the butterfly emerging out of it is again a totally different state: its light movements make it difficult to believe that such a being comes forth from the previous states.

In this painting I tried to illustrate the state of transformation we go through on our way to spiritual birth: you see a human head like a cocoon from out of which emerges a being of light with wings like a butterfly. I constructed the head using different layers of a picture of myself fused with a picture of Master CVV. In front of the head you see the merged pictures of an enlarged empty cocoon, a chrysalis with the butterfly still inside, and a butterfly just emerging – pictures of a Plain Tiger from an Indian friend. There is another butterfly in front of the head, like emerging out of it, and other ones are seen flying into the vastness of space.

Picture to the month of Pisces

The signs of the zodiac have their correspondences in the body. Pisces is not only associated with the feet but also with the area above the head, with the pineal gland and the pituitary body. When the higher consciousness awakens, a light starts to manifest between these two glands and gives rise to an ascension via this higher bridge of light beyond the limitations of the body. Pisces represents the ascent of man into God; it is therefore also called the sign of completion, of the meeting of the “alpha and omega” of creation.

For this picture I used a picture of Jesus and of the transfiguration of the Christ, from a painting of Fra Angelico (1442). I transformed this painting and fused the face of the Christ with a picture of Maitreya. I arranged two photos of sunrises on the front of the image of Jesus, thus generating the view of the radiant etheric centres. I increased the intensity of the eyes which are observing the observer and created a fusion of the subjective and the objective spheres.

For the upper background, I warped a photo of waves rolling onto a beach, producing the impression of the vastness of the etheric ocean of space associated with Neptune, the ruler of Pisces. And the colour of the sign is that of the pure sky in bright daylight. I further worked on the head centre in the middle of which you see the blessing figure of Christ.

Picture to the month of Aquarius

The Wisdom Teachings speak of Agastya or Master Jupiter as the oldest member of the Spiritual Hierarchy. Since time immemorial, he has been a great sage on the earth and his deeds have been described in the Puranas. In South India, he is also called Agathiyar and worshipped as a Siddha having his abode in the Nilagiris or Blue Mountains. He is closely linked to the energies of Sirius and on the zodiacal level he presides over the sign Aquarius.

The creation of this picture was a paradox for me: I pondered upon it for few weeks. There was the initial impulse for the image of Agastya but I thought it must be something else – and no thoughts came. I felt frustrated but finally followed the original impulse to do the picture with a photo of a statue of Agastya. For the background, I took a photo of the mountain in the Nilagiris which is said to be the location of the ashram of Agastya. Then I integrated a photo of Sirius. Using the computer and pencils, I worked on the colours and details of the expression. When the picture was ready I was thrilled about its radiance.