Reflections on Helical Time

It is neither a loop nor a line but something beautiful as both.

In the East, time turns more like a loop. In the West, time flows more like a line.

Which is it, blood moon?

Prayerfully, we bid you give us an answer.

If we could stand in the future and look back into the past, time would seem round like a clock face, of turning seasons and annual rites. If we could stand in the present but aim at the future, we might want to draw back time’s arrow with a bowstring.

In meditations beside still waters, Eastern sages behold time as a circle. To them, it is not a path from birth to death but a wheel, turning, ever returning. Find life's rhythms in endless cycles, such as seeding, sprouting, ripening, and harvesting. In Vedic traditions, the Wheel of Time—Kalachakra—turns like a galaxy through cosmic ages, which always return as breath, death, and rebirth.

In Taoism, time flows as water—soft and yielding, without beginning or end.

But the Western philosophers, with eyes toward the heavens and minds tuned to the logic of progress, behold time as a line, ever forward, never returning. Time is an arrow shot from the bow of the past toward the future’s target. It lives in the domain of causes and consequences, like the straight, straight second hands of ticking clocks.

Time is the master of invention, ambition, and chronicled history unfolding with purpose. But let us not overlook the Great Story of creation, sin, flourishing, fall, and final judgment—from Alpha to Omega. In the West, this is humanity’s sole story. In the East, this is just the cycle of Empires.

In the Zen moment, time collapses into the eternal now. It is not a line, for there is neither before nor after. Time’s arrow halts mid-flight. The destination dissolves. There is no movement toward, nor memory behind.

It is also not a circle, for there is no repetition, no orbiting return. At that moment, there are no cycles nor watchers to trace the path. There is only the suchness of Now.

If anything, the Zen moment is a point—not in space—but in awareness. It is a flame that doesn’t flicker. An unmoved mover hides in all motion as the unturning center of the wheel. And in this eternal pause, all becomes clear, not in reason but in being.

What, then, when the circle must bow to the line, and the line must bend to the circle?

A spiral emerges—a helix—a strange unity of returning and becoming. In this, the wisdom of return is not lost, nor is the drive of unfolding.

A higher truth is born.

The helix turns, yet it moves forward. It repeats yet transcends. Each revolution is a return, though never quite the same—ever forward, always becoming. The soul's path is neither a circle that traps nor a line that forgets but a spiral that remembers and rises in novelty—until it finds a Zen moment in meditation or death.

Helical time unveils a sliver of the mystery.

We are neither bound to despair at recurrence nor deluded by the illusion of escape. We can be time weavers, conscious of our cycles yet free to evolve beyond them. Keep this conception alive like fire and share it, wick to wick.

If we forget our cycles, there will be repetition but no renewal. If we lose our purpose, we will forever miss the mark. In remembering, though, we rise with wisdom through the Ascending Orders. In focusing, we move through space toward our teloi, sojourning occasionally to remember.

So mark the seasons.

Reflect each year on what was done and what was learned. Meditate on the patterns. Walk the labyrinthine gardens, observing nature's spirals—shell, storm, galaxy—and see they are mirrors.

Let ritual remind you and practice refine you. Yet, live for the Mission and the other Eleven Dimensions. Our siblinghood’s souls, once tangled in fate, find they are threads in a tapestry.

Go and whisper what words can hardly hold: time is art in the spiral. Prophecy is not just prediction but pattern recognition. Listen carefully, as synchronicity is sussurous.

Ancient and unrelenting, Zurvan smiles—for he is master and companion.