Returning Home to the Essence of Love
The Hermetic teaching says that when the soul leaves the Earth, it travels upward through the seven planetary spheres. At each step, it sheds something it once carried, leaving behind the weight of earthly illusions so it can return light and free.
When I read this, I recognized my own Twin Flame journey in it — the purification of consciousness through love. Every step of Union is not about getting something new, but about releasing what is false.
Through the Moon, the soul releases its urge to exaggerate or diminish. On the Twin Flame path, this means seeing clearly — not turning little moments into dramatic crises, not reducing the love to nothing when fear whispers “this is impossible.” Here we learn to hold balance, to see truth without distortion.
Through Mercury, the soul lets go of craftiness, the subtle ways we manipulate or mask. On the Twin Flame journey, this is the healing of games, strategies, and false selves. Love cannot be tricked or controlled — it only grows in truth and transparency.
Through Venus, passion softens into devotion. The fire of desire is not extinguished, but it becomes a sacred flame — no longer clinging or consuming, but illuminating the heart with the sweetness of love that asks for nothing in return.
Through the Sun, ambition dissolves. No striving for glory, no desperate timelines for Union. Instead, there is radiant purpose — shining as you are, knowing that love does not arrive as a trophy, but flows as a natural expression of who you already are.
Through Mars, the impulse to conquer or force is surrendered. What remains is courage, not aggression. The courage to stay open, to love when it feels vulnerable, to trust when the mind wants proof.
Through Jupiter, the hunger for wealth and expansion falls away. We stop looking for security outside ourselves — not in possessions, not even in Union as something to own. Instead, we rest in the abundance that already is: love as the true currency of the soul.
And through Saturn, the final illusion drops. The soul releases lying. On the Twin Flame path, this is the release of every false belief we ever carried: “I am unworthy. Love leaves me. We are separate.” What remains is only truth: Love never leaves. Union is eternal.
Step by step, planet by planet, we are purified. Not punished, but freed. Not tested, but invited into deeper alignment with Love itself.
This, to me, is what the ascension journey really is — a remembering of what cannot be lost, a return to what has always been true. The Twin Flame path, like the Hermetic path, is simply Love stripping away everything that is not Love.
And while the ancients only knew of these seven planets, today we can glimpse something even wider: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — the modern lights. If Saturn was once the final gate, Uranus brings liberation through awakening, Neptune offers dissolving into oneness, and Pluto delivers the deepest transformation. It feels to me that our journeys are not just about shedding, but also about opening into these higher invitations — to awaken, to merge with the whole, and to be reborn into the fullness of who we are.
What struck me when I placed the Hermetic sheddings alongside my Varvara Compass is how similar the two are in essence. The sheddings name what must fall away — exaggeration, grasping, craftiness, striving — while the Compass names what naturally arises when we let go: tranquility, belonging, beauty, groundedness, community. One is the clearing, the other is the flowering. Together they remind me that the spiritual journey is not about adding more to myself, but about releasing what clouds the truth of who I already am.
A Compass Between Worlds
In the teaching of the Hermetic sages, the soul, on its return to God, moves through the planetary spheres, shedding what no longer belongs: exaggeration, craftiness, passion, ambition, boldness, greed, deception. With each surrender, the soul grows lighter, freer, nearer to its origin.
Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that here on Earth, we live under the heavy weave of World 48. Forty-eight laws press upon us; life feels constrained, dense, and bound by necessity. Yet even here, we carry seeds of higher worlds — World 24 of harmony, World 12 of love, World 6 of union.
The Varvara Compass arises as a bridge between these cosmologies. Its five qualities — Groundedness, Community, Tranquility, Belonging, Beauty — anchor the soul in World 48 while pointing toward ascent. Groundedness and Community root us so we do not collapse under density. Tranquility and Belonging whisper of World 24, where patterns of peace and connection already sing. Beauty opens into World 12, the realm where Love is the law itself.
Thus the Compass is not only a map for living but a ladder of remembrance. It helps us endure the weight of this world while attuning to the higher frequencies already alive within us. To walk with it is to live as a pilgrim of the spheres, shedding what binds, embodying what frees.
