The hands of the clock show the time of events in daily life, but they would remain inert and motionless were they not propelled onward by a force in the hidden spring. Their stoppage might cause us to miss an appointment. The visible planets also mark events of life like the hands of a clock; they also are propelled in their courses by an unseen force analogous to the spring in a clock, except that the Great Spirits whose bodies they are never stop, and therefore we never miss an appointment registered upon the clock of destiny, although we may cancel it — under certain circumstances — as we do engagements in ordinary life.

   It is said of Edison that when he was night operator in a railway telegraph office, he put a pail upon a shelf, led a hose from a faucet into it, turned on a small stream of water calculated to fill the pail before the next train was due, placed his chair under the pail, and went to sleep. The overflowing water compelled him to waken and attend to business as no alarm could have done. We are all turning a constant stream of actions for good or ill into the reservoir of time, and the overflow is always coming back to us and impelling us to new deeds. It does not matter if we have gone to sleep as Edison; even the sleep of death cannot abrogate the deeds of the immortal spirit. A new birth brings each back exactly when his pail of time is full, so that he may reap what he has sown.

   It is of the greatest importance that you should understand this viewpoint very thoroughly. We do not have a certain fate because we are born at a certain moment and impelled by stellar rays then prevailing. If so, we should then have a right to rail at fate for being born under an evil star without choice or prerogative. We should then hate God for making us subject to such a fate. Edison would have had a right to be provoked if any one had awakened him in the manner described, but knowing that his own act before going to sleep had caused the wetting and realizing the benefit of the heroic treatment, he probably felt well pleased. So with us, if we realize that our own past acts are the determinators of our conditions and that the stars simply mark the most favorable time for harvesting what we have sown, we shall be more contented and seek to learn the lessons of life instead of railing because of what we lack in faculty or fortune.

   Let us consider how the heavens influence our lives through the twelve houses. Suppose we are out driving, and our road follows the sea-coast, but a mile inland. A breeze is blowing from the ocean and as it passes over the country separating us from the sea, it brings upon invisible wings, messages from that land which evoke pleasure or aversion according to their nature. In one place an aroma of new mown hay fills us with delight; perhaps we are nauseated by the oversweet smell of jasmine on the next stretch of our journey and later become really ill from the stench of stagnant marsh water. But then we enter a forest, and soon its grateful pine balm restores the normal health and spirits.

   In our journey from the cradle to the grave we carry the twelve houses with us in the auric atmosphere surrounding each one of us as the air envelops the flying earth. Each house mirrors part of the life; each holds some of our life lessons; each represents how we have worked or shirked before in that department of life's school. At the appropriate time of life we reap from each house what we have sown in past lives-that is, unless we forestall the harvest in time. Is our 11th house afflicted, do friends betray and forsake us, do they leave us heartsick, or nauseate us like the scent of jasmine and stagnant marsh water? Then let us examine the horoscope, for it reveals what is hidden in our auric atmosphere. The friends saw us and we them through the 11th angle, and something ill smelling must be there. It may be that we long to be befriended more than to befriend others. Let us cease to be like the debilitating jasmine and seek to emulate the sturdy strength of the invigorating pine tree; then we shall find friends flocking around, admiring our strength. Not all have such sturdy natures, but we can attract equally by kindliness, as soothing to sorrowing hearts as perfume of new mown hay to the senses, and thus we may rid the house of friends of affliction. — Max Heindel