FNL_INSPIRED Vol 2_Spring

40 INSPIRED VOL 2 here is undoubtedly at the present moment a rare consensus worldwide that we live in dark and difficult times; many will speak—each with- in their discipline, esoteric or not—of the end of a cycle. I am not one of those who cry out for the end of the world, but it is clear that it is the end of a certain world, a time that historians will certainly call decadent, in the strict sense of the fall of a system if not in the moral sense. With this obvious observation made, we can ask the fol- lowing question: What characterizes in the first place all the periods of decline? Of course, if we stick to the facts, it is a kind of economic, political, religious, or ethical collapse, or a combination of these. In short, a global collapse of all the structures upon which a civilization (small or large) is based. But why does this happen? And when does this happen? To the first question, we can answer that it happens be- cause everything that lives (including an abstract entity like a nation or a group of nations) grows, ages, and eventually dies. It is an absolute law of life that we sometimes forget for macroeconomic groups but that is just as true at the level of the individual as of a con- tinent and—since our world is now globalized—on a pandemic scale. To the second question of “When does this happen?,” we can put forward the idea, which will lead us very logically to astrology, that we have to look at cycles and more particularly the ends of cycles. For at least fifty years astrologers have warned, each in their own way and with more or less alarmism, that we are indeed at the end of a cycle, and even at the end of the “super cycle,” since most of the largest spiritual tra- ditions of our own time resulted in some way from the fall of a civilizational impetus arising centuries ago (and even two millennia). But let’s continue to explore these two essential ques- tions of “Why?” and “When?” In other words, once one accepts the idea that everything that we believe must decrease and perish, why does this rule exist every- where? CYCLE and REGENERATION by Philippe Regnicoli T