Ensouled Time Reclaimed – Spirituality and the Imaginal Online Course 2025
By Dr Lila Moore, All Rights Reserved
I invite you to reclaim your time in 2025—the time that belongs to your Self, your ensouled time. Join this transformative course and honor your ensouled time—time unbound, as it was once lived.
A Brief History of Time - From Magic to Science and Back to the Future
The Birth of Time as We Know It – A Magical Tale
Once upon a time, there was no time as we know it. Everybody lived forever under the changing lights in the sky. Even the weather did not drastically change—sometimes colder, sometimes warmer—but no one really cared. Death was not a reason to be sad because it was never a departure from life but part of the never-ending cycles of birth and rebirth. No one was oppressed or managed by time; everyone was embodying time and living in time. Particles, minerals, rocks, lakes, trees, animals, and humanoids were all manifestations of embodied time. Because time was not divided, there was no past or future. Instead, life unfolded in a continuous rhythm, a tradition passed on to the Hopi Indians, whose language had no tenses for time. The Hopi lived and spoke in the language of the Eternal Present.
This timeless paradise came to a halt when a dung beetle suddenly decided to mark the end and beginning of her perpetual cycle of work. Every morning, the dung beetle rolled the rising sun from the top of the hill, reaching the middle land by midday. Then, she began rolling the sun toward the sea, and as she drew closer to the great waters, the sun started to fade. Finally, harnessing all her power, she pushed the sun into the mouth of the mother of darkness, who swallowed it into the cosmic waters.
“I must tell this story,” said the beetle to herself, hoping someone would hear her. She was unaware that a scribe sitting on the bank of the Nile was watching her and marking her journey with beautiful shapes on wet clay. When the beetle noticed the scribe, she offered that they work together as a team. So, they began collaborating, marking the stations of her journey with beautiful shapes on a round sphere resembling the sun and moon.
Since then, time measuring, calendar-making, and horoscope creation became sacred work. The scribe and the beetle’s new art of time measurement grew into a magical ritual. The ritual was assigned to the Keepers of Time—priests, scribes, and priestesses—who appointed the dung beetle as their chief timekeeper, giving her the official name and image of the Scarab who Lives Forever.
Early History of Sacred Time Measurement
The zodiac, both as a model and as an astronomical and astrological object, developed during various periods of antiquity. One of the earliest examples is the depiction of the zodiac dedicated to the god Osiris on the ceiling of the temple of the goddess Hathor in Dendera, Egypt. Researchers Park and Eccles (2012, pp. 176-177) describe the Dendera zodiac, located in the Louvre Museum and measuring 2 square meters, as the "Egyptian star map" from the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
This zodiac was part of a worldview and religious belief system in which priests served as "watchers of the hours," a term that overlapped with the concept of "astrologer" in the Coptic Egyptian language. Another interesting point noted by Parker and Eccles is that access to the zodiac at Dendera was restricted to the Pharaoh and his priests only.
Hence, time-watching was a sacred and magical activity. Those who had access to the measurement of time regarded their work not as a mere functional service but as becoming part of an ensouled cosmos of time.
The use of astrology was widespread in Mesopotamia and Babylonian culture, where astronomical knowledge was primarily used for astrological purposes, such as creating personal horoscopes and predicting the future. Furthermore, Babylonian techniques for predicting the future through horoscopes were widespread and popular in the Greco-Roman world.
The Mechanical Clock and the Enslavement of Humanity
René Descartes (1596–1650), a key figure of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, saw the mechanical clock as a powerful metaphor for the natural world and human physiology. In his mechanistic philosophy, he described the universe and living beings as complex machines operating according to physical laws.
Descartes famously compared the human body to a mechanical automaton, emphasizing that bodily functions could be explained by mechanical principles without needing a soul or vital spirit for basic operations. His philosophy suggested a dualistic view where the body operated like a clockwork mechanism while the mind or soul remained a separate, non-physical entity.
The mechanical clock metaphorically reflected the Enlightenment's quest for discovering universal laws of nature and human reason's ability to understand and control the world. Indeed, the clock eventually turned into an instrument with which to control people and enslave humanity.
In Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, the clock appears prominently in the oppressive industrial setting. One of the most iconic moments featuring the clock involves the character Georgy and the massive "shift clock" in the underground machine halls. The clock symbolizes both the mechanization of labor and the dehumanizing control exerted over the workers by the ruling elite.
This image from Metropolis has since become a reality. Though not all workers endure harsh conditions, the internet introduced a blessing and a curse: unbound global working hours. This fluidity often stretches work into personal time, trespassing hours traditionally reserved for rest, play, meals, and bonding with loved ones, pets, and nature.
AI Time – No Competition between humans and Machines
The historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari warns against competing with AI time. According to Harari, artificial intelligence does not need rest or sleep. Unlike humans, AI never tires and can work tirelessly around the clock. In fact, AI does not require a clock at all, existing beyond human time. To preserve our humanity and remain in tune with the biosphere, we must surrender to natural rhythms, allowing our machines to perform tasks while we focus on living.
The Reclamation of Ensouled Time via Spirituality and the Imaginal
I invite you to reclaim your time in 2025—the time that belongs to your Self, your ensouled time. Access the time out of time that connects the personal and transpersonal, bridging the imaginal and spiritual inner worlds with the outer embodied realms of existence.
The Alef Trust's Spirituality and Imaginal course provides MSc students and open learners an Imaginal Laboratory for safe and informed imaginal practice and psychospiritual research. Explore Jung’s Red Book, Active Imagination, James Hillman’s Imaginal Method, and practices inspired by women’s spirituality, shamanism, technoetic arts and more. Engage in a rich blend of academic scholarship and personal transformation, reclaiming time for the soul’s creative expression and noetic wisdom.
A symbolic representation of time's spiritual depth could be seen in the sunray-decorated clock that once hung at the Theosophical Society headquarters at 50 Gloucester Place, London. This radiant design evokes cosmic order and the soul's relationship with time, aligning beautifully with the themes explored in the course.
Join this transformative course and honor your ensouled time—time unbound, as it was once lived.
References
Moore, Lila. Cybernetic Futures: Files and Manifestos (2025), Cybernetic Scribe. ISBN: 978-1-7393658-3-7.
Moore, Lila. Magical Tales: Immersive Self-Discovery and Feminine Empowerment in Augmented Reality (2025), Cybernetic Scribe. ISBN: 978-1-7393658-4-4.
Park, Rosalind and Eccles, Bernard, (2012). "Dating the Dendera Zodiac: Egypt's Famous Greco-Roman 'Zodiac'." ARAM Periodical, 24, pp. 175-19.
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