Issue #48 February, 2026
“It is better to be temporarily an egoist than never to be just.”
Gurdjieff
Dear Reader
February always seems like a threshold, The last breath of Winter leading us into the exuberance of Spring. I think of it as a bridge between the year that has gone and the one that beckons us. But this year it is, perhaps, more of a bridge than usual.
On February 20th, at 11:52 AM, an exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction occurred at 0° Aries, which for those who do not know, is the very beginning of the Zodiac. It is regarded as a profound astrological event by astrologers I know. The last Saturn-Neptune conjunction was in 1989, before the Berlin Wall fell. The last such conjunction in Aries was in 1702 and the last time they conjoined at 0° Aries around 7,000 BCE.
As if this wasn’t enough to seize our attention, the Chinese New Year kicked off on February 17th. The year of the Fire Horse is off and running. Promptly, a day later, on February 18th (Ash Wednesday) the weeks of Lent began. And Ramadan, which rarely runs parallel with Lent, also began—on February 17th through 19th—the date varies according to location.
So February this year turns out to be a conjunction of conjunctions.
Also in February, we published a new book by Rodney Collin, a collection of his writings entitled The Mirror of Light and Other Works.
Click here if you’re interested.
Regards
RB
Christ and the Compression of Times
Man falls through time, slowly at first, each minute, each day, each month brimming with change: then faster and faster, till the years flash by indistinguishable, empty of all experience.
Thirty years Jesus grew, studied, learned, foresaw.
Three years Christ ministered—what teachings, …
Trouble With Gravity
Our knowledge of gravity in space derives from Newton’s “law of gravity” and his laws of motion: We observe that:
– The inner planets (like Mercury) feel a strong gravitational from the Sun which constitutes 99% of the mass of the whole solar system. So they whip around the Sun quickly to avoid being pulled in.
– The outer planets (like Neptune) feel a much weaker gravitational pull and orbit much more slowly.
Gurdjieff’s Dogs
In Chapter I of The Tales, we encounter the story about Karapet of Tiflis and the dog catcher. This is clearly an allegory, but one that may be difficult for the reader to understand unless he is familiar with what the word “dog” symbolized to Gurdjieff. There is a wealth of material that explains this in the record of Gurdjieff’s Paris meetings.
Here are a few extracts:
Inner Considering
Inner considering is a form of identifying — which is to say, it is a kind of sleep. It is mechanical through and through, a habitual drain on your energy that owes nothing of consciousness and returns nothing of value.
It wears many faces. The most persistent is the making of inner accounts: a continuous mental ledger in which one tallies up real or imagined grievances, recording what others owe, nursing …