“Ancient Romans called summer's hottest days, during July and August, the diēs caniculārēs, or “dog days” of summer. This is the season of the Sirius-Sun conjunction, between July 3 and August 11, when the Sun resides in the Zodiac signs of Cancer and Leo.
Sirius A is a blue-white twin star in the Constellation Canis Major, about twice as large as our Sun and approximately 25 times more luminous. Sirius A is the brightest star in the Earth's night sky, visible somewhat below and to the left of the triple stars comprising Orion's Belt.
Sirius B is a small, white dwarf star that orbits Sirius A. Sirius B is 10,000 times dimmer than its larger, more luminous twin.
During the dog days of summer, Sirius appears on the eastern horizon just before sunrise. This is called the heliacal rising of Sirius. The Sun and Sirius rise together, appearing to observers on Earth as twin suns.
The ancient Egyptians noted the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred roughly every 365 days.
The Egyptians celebrated the heliacal rising of Sirius as the start of a New Year, a time when the combined heat of the twin Suns rejuvenated life on Earth.
Jane tending our garden at Bethabara Historical Park, Winston Salem, NC, 2021
Here in Jane’s Garden, in North Carolina, the dog days of summer are a trying time.
We are covered in sweat fighting infestations of destructive insects and uprooting the wild proliferation of weeds cropping up in the wake of summer thunderstorms in the mud, while harvesting an abundance of greens and beans, beets and herbs, and hopefully, potatoes soon.
At this time of year, we can sense the urgency in the air. Life calls to life and we recognize our kinship with other Earthly life forms working to capture the maximum amount of energy we can all gather from proliferating plant life at the zenith of its yearly life cycle.
We hear the buzz around us as pollinators pregnant with pollen rush to and fro.
Swallowtail Butterfly on Zinnia, Jane's Garden at Bethabara, 2021
Birds call to one another across the garden, perch on fences and in the bean teepees, and hunt for worms, grubs and other insects in the rows between our vegetables and herbs.
The cycle of plant growth is accelerating, and in North Carolina it is full on harvest time. Each day is a new challenge, and each day there is grand new growth to surprise us and keep us fully engaged in the dance of life.
No matter what the weather brings, working in the garden, we bend down and focus on what's happening right at our feet, and we feel connected to cosmic forces, sensing the outpouring of Universal Life Force energy that impels hordes of deer, foxes, bees, butterflies, moths, caterpillars, worms, ants and beetles to feast upon the ripening fruits, vegetables and flowers.
This is the same energy that pours out from the Sun and the distant stars as electromagnetic radiation, now alchemically transformed by Earth's plant life into cellulose, oxygen and an array of mineral rich organic compounds essential to the lives of oxygen breathing sentient beings.
The Universe, Thoth Tarot Deck, by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris
In the garden during the Cancer-Leo interval of the yearly seasonal cycle, we feel the same sense of connection to Universal Life and the vastness of the Cosmos that we achieve through meditation during the winter interval of the year, when initiates connect to the stars moving inexorably through the immensity of interstellar space, to the Christ Consciousness, and to the infinity of mirrors constituting Indra's Net.
Those stars, that energy, and the element of Akasha, or Space are the womb and source of all life.
Sensing this Cosmic connection, we also connect with our ancestors across the globe, who venerated the Dog Star, Sirius, at this time of the year.
Sirius is considered a sacred star in spiritual traditions around the world. Ancient Chinese astronomers associated Sirius with the wolf, while the Inuit called it the Moon-Dog. The Blackfoot tribe of North America called Sirius Dog Face.
For the Romans, the combined energy of the conjunction of the two brightest stars in our sky was thought to create sweltering heat so intense it could drive dogs to madness.
It is true that this period is often the hottest part of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and today we associate this period with intense heat and humidity.
For the ancient Egyptians, this event, season of the heliacal rising of Sirius, coincided with the Nile river's flood season, a crucial moment in the agricultural cycle when additional valuable fertile black river bottom soil was deposited on the flooded fields, creating the conditions for a successful planting season to come.
For this reason, the Egyptians called Sirius the Star of Isis, who was venerated as the goddess of fertility.
Winged Goddess Isis. Collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain
Echoes of that ancient Egyptian mythology can be found in the wisdom teachings of Western students of the Kabbalah, in Theosophical literature and among current New Age practitioners who view Sirius as the spiritual Sun that vivifies the entire night sky, enabling spiritual initiations on planet Earth by transmitting its uniquely powerful energy signature across 8.611 light years of interstellar space to Earthly adepts.
According to the mother of Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky, Sirius was said to be Isis in the heaven and was called Isis-Sothis, for Isis was said to be in the constellation of the dog, as is declared on her monuments, and Sothis is the Greek name for Sirius.
Sirius is associated with Tarot Trump XVII, The Star. “The seventeenth numbered major trump is called Les Étoiles, (French for The Star), and portrays a young girl kneeling with one foot in water and the other on land. . .," recounts occultist and author Manly P. Hall in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
Trump XVII, The Star, Waite Tarot
"She has two urns, the contents of which she pours upon the land and sea."
"Above the girl’s head are eight stars, one of which is exceptionally large and bright."
"Count de Gébelin considers the great star to be Sothis or Sirius; the other seven are the sacred planets of the ancients. He believes the female figure to be Isis in the act of causing the inundations of the Nile which accompanied the rising of the Dog Star."
"The unclothed figure of Isis may well signify that Nature does not receive her garment of verdure until the rising of the Nile waters releases the germinal life of plants and flowers.”
The Thoth Tarot Deck, a more recent deck than the Rider-Waite deck, uses a seven-pointed star to represent the Star Goddess Isis, and the symbolism of the Thoth deck emphasizes the Cosmic implications of the Sirius-Isis mythological complex, rather than the traditional references to the Egyptian mystery school tradition and the flooding of the Nile river.
Tarot Trump XVII, The Star, Thoth Tarot Deck
In the Thoth Tarot deck, the seventeenth Trump, called The Star, reveals Isis, the Virgin Goddess, pouring forth her cosmic waters from the transcendent realm into the material Universe, where they manifest as the energy called Shakti, materializing as the Milky Way, the array of stars that illuminate and enliven the entirety of the natural realm. Crystals dominate the near foreground by her feet. The luminous liquid poured forth upon the ground from her cup has crystallized into Platonic versions of the hexagonal natural quartz crystal wands we all know and love.
This symbolism resonates with the ancient idea that the Dog Star, Sirius, associated with Isis, is our Spiritual Sun, which infuses the entirety of interstellar space with subtle energy and energizes spiritual initiations on planet Earth.
The nature of the Virgin Goddess Isis is Total Unconditional Love, unconstrained by factors of time and space. The spiraling forms of liquid light being poured forth from her cups represent the Universal Life Force Energy which creates, nourishes and sustains all the forms of Nature we perceive in this Multi Dimensional Universe.
The Virgin Goddess transfers that energy from the transcendent Source of all Creation into all forms that manifest in this material universe, and also returns that energy to Source when material manifestation of a particular, given form reaches an end-state.
Heptagon, Simple Approximate Construction
Petrus3743, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The seven pointed star, the Star of Isis, which derives from the heptagon, has a unique energy signature, which is related to the principles of sacred geometry.
The number seven is associated with the transcendent Virgin Goddess because seven is considered a "virgin" number. No number less than seven can be divided into it evenly, and no number can be multiplied by seven to produce another number, a "child", within the Holy Decad. The Decad, composed of numbers from 1-10, was considered to define the parameters of the original creation.
Every one of the ten numbers in the Decad can be divided evenly into 360, the number of degrees in a circle -- except for seven. The heptagon consists of seven literally unmeasurable, thus virginal, or transcendent, angles, and another elusive, virginal angle from its center to its corners. Thus the ever-virginal heptagon cannot be captured or constructed by the Cosmic Geometer. The regular heptagon is the smallest polygon that cannot be constructed using only the three tools of the geometer, the compass, the straightedge and the pencil.
Thus the heptagon is associated with the transcendent aspect of the Great Virgin Goddess known to the Greeks as Pallas Athena (or as Minerva to the Romans), who was said not to have been born from the womb, as other gods and goddesses, but rather to have sprung from Zeus' brow. When the numerological values of the letters of Pallas Athena's title "Pallas" or "Maiden" are added together, they total 343, which equals 7 X 7 X 7, the volume of a cube whose sides are seven units long. The cube is considered to be symbolic of material creation, so the role of the transcendent Creatrix as Cosmic Mother is alluded to in the sacred geometry and numerology of her very title.
Seven Chakras, RootOfAllLight, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Seven is of course the number of colors in the rainbow, the number of notes in our Western musical scale, the number of endocrine glands in the human body, and the number of major chakras in the body.
The seventh, most elevated chakra is the crown chakra, which is associated with the colors violet, white or gold, and with the Higher Mind, Christ Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness or Krishna Consciousness.
In the yogic tradition, when, through arduous spiritual practices, the spiritual aspirant awakens the kundalini energy, which normally lies asleep, coiled in a spiral in the lowest chakra, near the perineum, the kundalini rises up the spine, slowly piercing each of the seven chakras until it reaches the crown chakra. When the spiritual aspirant succeeds in raising the kundalini to the crown, this is said to be the marriage of Shiva and Shakti, and confers enlightenment upon the yogi, who has achieved Realization.
The Union of Shiva-Shakti in the Self-Realized Yogi
The seven-sided star pictured in the Thoth Tarot is associated with the energy signature of the Goddess Isis, who is associated with divinely ordained synchronicities, the bliss of unconditional love blessed by harmonious constellations of stars, and the "mystico unio" of adepts on the path of meditation.
The seven sided star is sacred to lovers everywhere, because the seven sided star symbolizes the eternal yearning of the soul for Unity with the Source of all Creation, the unending desire of the incarnated Being for the Virgin Goddess who resides both within and beyond this Space-Time continuum.
Colorized image of a missionary from the Middle Ages
who found the point where the earth and sky touch:
from Camille Flammarion's 1888 book L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire
When a human being enters into a love relationship with another human being, whether that be a relationship based upon mutual receptivity and affinity, karma, or an unwavering desire for a partnership designed to accelerate the spiritual development of both parties, there is a magical moment when the Universe seems to signal its approval of the Union.
Lovers could tell a million stories about the crazy chain of coincidences that brought them together in this life. The synchronicities that manifest in the outer world to bring the two lovers together are a reflection of the pure inner desire for Unconditional Love that burns in the hearts of the two lovers.
Spiritual students around the world could tell a million stories about the amazing string of unusual events that brought them to their Teachers. It is quite common for the student to be "guided" to the Teacher when the time is right. "When the student is ready, the Teacher will come," as they say.
This type of synchronistic meeting is also the reflection in the outer world of a pure desire for Divine Love and accelerated spiritual advancement.
Sirius A and Sirius B
NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
So whether you desire a pure and uplifting love relationship with a soulmate or simply aspire to accelerated spiritual development in your life, the Virgin Goddess will oversee your efforts and respond to your desire -- if it is pure and free of the "lust of result".
In other words, you must be willing to accept the Design of the Universe, and in asking for the Grace of the Virgin Goddess, you must be willing to accept her Guidance, even if it leads you to Realms far removed from what you picture in your mind's eye as an answer to your prayers.
If you desire a Greater Love in your life, lift your eyes unto the Night Sky this Full Moon as the Sun enters Leo in conjunction with Sirius and sing the praises of She who Illuminates the Night and Gives Life Upon the Earth, for she is also your Mother and She loves you dearly.