1. The world glamor. This sweeps an isolated unit, otherwise free from individual conditions producing depression, into the depths of a world reaction. This world glamor with its devitalizing and depressing results has its roots in various factors which we have only the time to briefly indicate:

1. Astrological factors, either affecting the planetary chart and hence individuals, or primarily racial. These two factors are oft overlooked.
2. The path of the sun in the heavens. The southern path tends to a lowered vibratory influence and aspirants should bear this in mind in autumn and the early winter months.
3. The dark half of the moon, the period towards the end of the waning moon, and the early new moon. This, as you well know, affects the meditation work.
4. Psychological factors and mass inhibitions due undoubtedly to forces external to the planet and to plans, obscure in their intent to ordinary humanity. These forces, playing upon the human race, affect the most sensitive; they in their turn affect their environment and gradually a momentum is established which sweeps through a race or a nation, through a period or a cycle of years, and produces conditions of profound depression and of mutual distrust. It causes a sad self-absorption and this we term a panic or a wave of unrest. The fact that the working out may be military, economic, social or political, that it may take the form of a war, of a religious inquisition, of financial stringency or international distrust is incidental. The causes lie back in the blue prints of the evolutionary process and are governed - even if unrealized - by the good Law. [308]