Steelhenge Amsterdam: Step Out of the “Cloud” and Feel the Cosmos!
If you’re looking for a unique spiritual experience—something truly different—you can’t miss Steelhenge! Yes, it’s winter and a bit chilly, but that’s more than made up for at Stenen Hoofd, on the IJ in Amsterdam. There, with a wink to the famous Stonehenge, stands an installation of 12 astro-stands, each 6 meters tall. These steel columns represent the signs of the zodiac, arranged in a circle in the order of the zodiac, illuminated and accompanied by a hypnotic blend of light and sound.
Stepping into this grand circle, you enter a magical psychosphere that remains deeply grounded. That’s the whole point: the forces these columns represent are, after all, our primal foundation. Steelhenge calls them back into our memory. The location—a small peninsula (Earth) on the IJ (Water)—is perfectly chosen, exposed under the open sky (Air) and set against the backdrop of urban bustle and harbor industry (Fire).
With Steelhenge, creator and former Robodock initiator Maik ter Veer presents a unique fusion of art and esotericism. This is no luxury in a time when the uprooted, digitized human moves daily from screen to screen, from reaction to reaction, in a tempo where sensory input remains stuck in the mind and loses its sense of meaning.
We are exposed to so much “cloud information” every day that we rarely allow it to sink from our mental layer to our emotional and intuitive layers. The damage this does to our (social) soul was sharply articulated by the French philosopher Jacques Ellul, who noted that our capacity for reflection is increasingly eroding into a dulled pattern of mere reflexes.
Reflection is the feedback to our consciousness after cognitive input has settled into our emotional and intuitive reality. Only then can we truly grasp information and avoid drifting away from ourselves or our humanity. The time and deceleration this requires stand in stark contrast to the normalization of overstressed deadlines and the invasive media indoctrination of the current “normal” and “reality.”
Otherwise, we risk becoming dull concepts, passively programmed by the spirit of politically correct superficiality—with TikTok trends and war propaganda as two current examples of a growing list of blind spots. Alienated from themselves, more and more people derive their identity (in the absence of real grounding) from the alienation of others, especially when that alienation follows a popular pattern on social media.
Our Inner Fire is Our True Core
At the center of the zodiacal ring of astro-stands stands an imposing fire pot, as if transplanted from a Roman temple. On February 17, Steelhenge officially opens with, among other things, a Vesta ritual. Vesta symbolized for the Romans the central fire of creation, as well as the inner, static, inviolable fire within ourselves—the core, the natural anchor of our soul. Everything that forms and revolves around it through the embellishments of heredity, culture, birth chart, life path, affinities, trends, etc., is less rooted than the Vestal Fire.
Long before temples, priesthoods, and metaphysical systems, humans knew the tribal fire: the central fire of the community, which was never allowed to go out. This fire was not an instrument but a presence—a living center where survival, identity, memory, and sacrality converged. It was not primarily a fire that consumed, but a fire that preserved. In this sense, the tribal fire is the archetypal root of all later forms of sacred, static fire.
From this primordial fire arose the idea that fire is not merely a natural force, but a carrier of consciousness, a symbol of the inner core, a place where the visible and the invisible meet. The tribal fire thus became the first temple: a circle of people around an unchanging center, where time was suspended and community was affirmed.
In Roman tradition, this primordial principle was refined into the Vestal fire—a fire that does not move or destroy, but preserves order. Vesta is not a transforming goddess but a static axis: she stands for certainty, home, state, and continuity. This fire burns not to change, but to endure. Thus, the tribal fire is internalized as a state and cosmic principle.
In Vedic and later Hindu contexts, the same principle appears as Agni and ultimately as ātman: the inner fire that needs no fuel, produces no smoke, but is consciousness itself. What was once a physical fire in the center of the tribe now becomes an inner center in the heart of the human. The fire moves from outside to inside, without losing its static nature.
In Kabbalah, this primordial light is reformulated as nitzotz, the divine spark hidden in all things. This spark is not subject to burning, but to revelation. It is an echo of the tribal fire in the cosmos itself: a light that never goes out, but sometimes becomes obscured. The human task is not to create the fire, but to reveal it.
In Zoroastrianism, this principle appears as Ātar, the holy fire of truth and cosmic order, and in Christian mysticism as the uncreated light—a fire without heat, without movement, without destruction. In Taoist inner alchemy, a distinction is made between fire that burns and fire that illuminates: the latter is still, circulating, indestructible.
All these forms share one structure: they are not fires of transformation, but fires of identity. Not forces that convert matter, but centers that carry meaning. They are metaphysical hearts—static, inviolable, sustaining.
The tribal fire is thus not merely an anthropological phenomenon, but a primordial archetype of consciousness. It is the first image of what would later be called the soul, the Self, the spark, the spirit, or the divine presence. Every later cultural variant is a refinement, abstraction, or internalization of that original fire that once burned in the center of the circle—and still, in other forms, remains the center of religion, mysticism, and being human.
We Are All a Unique Kaleidoscope Stand of the Zodiac
In the original mystical systems, that inner flame connects us to the cosmos because it is derived from the primordial fire. Just as light passing through a prism forms a colored spectrum of sub-frequencies, so the masculine and feminine—as the primordial forces of expansion and contraction—form the prism of the primordial fire.
This is first divided into the masculine Elements Fire and Air and the feminine Elements Water and Earth. These Elements then produce the spectrum—not of rainbow colors, but of the zodiac. This consists of the Fire signs Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius; the Air signs Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius; the Water signs Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces; and finally the Earth signs Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn.
Through the position of the planets and ascendant at the moment of our first cry as newborns—captured in our birth chart—a unique connection with the cosmos is made. Astrological elements can be seen as the periodic table of the soul, just as our body is built from elements of the classical periodic table such as hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, iron, and so on.
Because everyone is born on a different date, time, and/or location, all those astrological elements are in a different kaleidoscopic arrangement, giving each of us a unique character, appearance, and life purpose.
From birth, because our birth chart is fixed as a personal blueprint, we embark on a unique adventure—one that is both our personal drama and a cosmic drama. A cosmic drama, because celestial bodies continually move forward and, through so-called aspects, continue to link with the planets in our birth chart.
This insight is universal. That’s why you find astrological systems—linking systems between the human individual and the cosmos—spread across the planet. In addition to Western astrology, there are also Chinese, Vedic, and Mayan astrology. Their systems may differ, but the core idea is the same: we are not loose cannonballs, not animated clumps of protein, but always connected to the primordial creation.
Steelhenge Makes the Mysteries of Astrology Directly Understandable for Everyone
The symbolism and text that Maik has incorporated into the astro-stands perfectly reflect the twelve archetypes and their archaic characteristics, which turn us into actors and actresses in the cosmic play of our own lives. Steelhenge invites us not only to look at the sky, but to recognize ourselves in it—as living links between earth and stars, between origin and destiny.
Saturn Conjunct Neptune at the Vernal Equinox: Cosmic Reset
An important day within the Steelhenge project is Astrodam, where you can listen to top astrologers for five days in a row. On February 20, the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is exact. This could become a very important mundane conjunction (old structures dissolve, imagination forms the new), because it occurs at the Vernal Equinox, 0 degrees Aries. That’s why extra attention is paid to this on February 21.
Written by Benjamin Adamah
Published on Ocult Blog