THE YEAR OF THREE CONCLAVES

This year, 2025, may turn out to be one of the most important years in human history.

Few are in any doubt that the world faces a unique configuration of circumstances and crises and is, frankly, in a mess. There’s a lot of negativity swirling around this planet. Virtually everyone senses this. Few can deny that we’re enmeshed in a constricting miasma of uncertainty, that trouble and turmoil prevail and something even less appealing may await.

The world of 2025 has reached a critical point as two ages collide. We’re moving into a new cycle. The era of Pisces is slowly coming to an end. As it fades the incoming influence of Aquarius begins to shimmer into existence. Things will be very different.

This has created a febrile and fearful mindset almost everywhere. Many subscribe to grim and grisly end-of-the-world scenarios – but we have to be extremely cautious here. Speculating about the end times or an impending planetary meltdown is a very ancient, unfortunate and regular human trait. People have been at it for a long time.

Mercifully, these predictions nearly always turn out to be wrong or at least wildly overblown. (The biblical figures of Noah, Elijah and Ezekiel may have got it right but then they had divine or extra-planetary advice.)

Remember all the dire warnings about the new millennium back in 2000 – how because of Y2K bug computers were going to crash and planes would fall out of the skies. They didn’t. The doom-mongers salivated but they didn’t get their fill. Yet again Armageddon didn’t erupt.

Nevertheless, paranoia quickly ramped up again and fears of a global cataclysm got worse. Using the 5,126-year cycle of the Mayan Long Count Calendar some doom-laden millenarians concluded that 21^st December 2012 would see some kind of worldwide catastrophe or destruction. Like most predicted disasters it failed to materialise and life rumbled on.

Some New Agers viewed this date more positively. They regarded various astrological alignments and numerological formulae as signifying a new era in which humanity would undergo a spiritual transformation. To what extent this has become a reality, I’ve no idea, but there isn’t exactly overwhelming evidence of this.

This year is important because it’s become apparent within the last few days that for the first time in 1,400 years three rare and important events will coincide. Two of these occur not only in the same year but at almost the same time and may even overlap. One of these events has been decades in the planning. The second has only taken a few days and the third a few months.

Let’s begin with the second event. This is the conclave to elect a new pope following the death of Francis on 21^st April 2025. (This gathering of senior churchmen normally takes place between fifteen and twenty days after the pontiff’s death and can take hours, days or weeks but back in the thirteenth century it took two years and nine months to elect Pope Gregory.)

The Catholic Church’s 252 cardinals are sealed in the Sistine Chapel to begin various rounds of discussion and voting to elect the next pontiff. Of these only 135 are eligible to vote. The rest are excluded because they are over the age of eighty and no longer entitled to cast a ballot. When black smoke is emitted from the building’s chimney it means there remains a deadlock and no candidate has yet been chosen. White smoke signals that the church finally has a new leader.

Since St Peter, the first pope, vacated the position in 64 AD after thirty-four years at the helm, there have been a further 265 popes with dramatically varying periods in office. Peter remains the longest-serving followed by the thirty-one plus year reign of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878). In contrast, eleven popes have reigned for less than thirty-three days.

And until now, only two previous popes – Telesphorus, who was elected in circa 125 and Honorius I elected in 625 – have taken office in this twenty-fifth year of any century.

Down the years there have been predictions, from St Malachy and others, that Francis or his successor would be the last of his line and the final one to sit on the papal throne.

The death of a pope and the election of a successor holds crucial significance for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. After all they regard the holy father not only as their spiritual leader but as man’s closest and most direct conduit to God. And this is why the office includes the bonus of papal infallibility. Popes can never be wrong. Many, of course, have been but they don’t have to admit it however egregious their blunders.

The third event also focuses on Christianity – the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury to lead the world’s 100 million or so Anglicans – the third largest denomination after the Catholic and eastern Orthodox churches. This follows the resignation of Justin Welby who with others unsuccessfully tried to cover up child abuse within the church.

Under Welby’s leadership the Anglican Church was accused of forsaking its core values and adopting a radical liberal political stance which alienated traditionalists. Some even nicknamed him Archbishop Wokeby for espousing a left-wing agenda.

The election of his successor is now underway.

But let’s focus on the first of these events which will be even more momentous and far-reaching. Most people will be entirely unaware of this because they will never even have heard of it. It won’t receive blanket TV coverage or media exposure. Little or nothing will be reported about it even though its importance dwarfs the selection of church leaders by several orders of magnitude.

This event happens only once every hundred years in the twenty-fifth year of each century and it always occurs far away from prying eyes. It takes place during the time of the full moon, this year on 12^th May, and coincides with the Buddhist Wesak festival.

This time is always an important point in the year and this year even more so. The hidden guides of humanity, the occult hierarchy of adepts and high spiritual beings which oversee life on this planet, will meet to plan world events for the next century. They will set the tone and pace for important events although they rarely if ever intervene directly because this would essentially infringe human free will.

This regular meeting takes place in the twenty-fifth year of every century. In business parlance it’s an executive planning meeting. However, this isn’t some form of divine diktat. These Masters of Wisdom and their lesser and greater associates exert a subtle rather than direct influence on the world. They operate mainly by overshadowing individuals or organisations and introducing new ideas and initiatives they wish to be transmitted to the world.

According to the esotericist Alice Bailey, the 1925 conclave decided on three key moves.

The first of these was to introduce a fresh inflow of the Christ principle of pure unselfish love into the world to stimulate peace, worldwide understanding, goodwill, philanthropy and brotherhood.

The second was to stimulate the ‘principle of relationship’ and bring human beings closer together. This meant perfecting means of communication initially via the press and radio and later via television and digital media. The object was to remove barriers to interaction on the material plane in the hope of developing inner spiritual unity. Has this happened?

The third was the inflow of force from the Shamballa centre – ‘the most powerful force in the world today’, according to Bailey. But what is it?

In The Externalization of the Hierarchy, written in 1939, she explained:

‘This little known divine energy now streams out from Shamballa. It embodies in itself the energy which lies behind the world crisis of the moment. It is the Will of God to produce certain racial and momentous changes in the consciousness of the race which will completely alter man’s attitude to life and his grasp of the spiritual, esoteric and subjective essentials of living. It is this force which will bring about (in conjunction with the energy of love) that tremendous crisis—imminent in the human consciousness—which we call the second crisis, the initiation of the race into the Mystery of the Ages, into that which has been hid from the beginning.’

Bailey tells us that this mighty force has only ever been used twice before – at pivotal points in human development in the distant past. The first instance was when human beings first ‘individualised’ during the Lemurian period. The second and last time was during the struggle between the forces of light and darkness in the Atlantean epoch.

Since then, there’s been a hands-off approach. However, it’s speculated that among other items on this year’s agenda will be a timetable for the return or ‘externalisation’ of this spiritual hierarchy into the physical realms for the first time in millennia. In the future ‘gods and men’ may well walk together once again.

Given current world conditions it may be decided that the time still isn’t ripe for this to happen and this reappearance may be delayed by years or decades. It may be felt that for whatever reasons this momentous development isn’t yet appropriate because humanity simply isn’t ready.

Members of the hierarchy certainly won’t appear in a blaze of publicity or advertise themselves. This externalisation is unlikely to be some big-ticket Hollywood-style shindig. It will be far more subtle than that.

We have to remember that the Masters and their ilk face difficulties operating on the physical plane because under normal circumstances they operate at a far higher vibrational level. The material world is apparently a tough gig for them.

What effect might any of this development have on humankind? This is impossible to say but the implications are likely to be profound and will reverberate long after the roles of the next pope and Archbishop of Canterbury are distant memories.

But the crucial point to remember is that neither the hidden hierarchy nor ecclesiastical figures are here to save humanity like some comic book superhero. Humanity has to do that job itself. That’s the plan.