👀 Following the Dog Star
A question about the Lion’s Gate
I have been watching Sirius.
Not on an astrology chart.
In the sky.
Night after night,
when the Colorado sky allows it,
I have watched the Dog Star make its journey.
And somewhere along the way,
I began wondering about something.
Every August,
people begin talking about the Lion’s Gate
the 8/8 portal
and Sirius is almost always part of the explanation.
But the more I watched the actual sky,
the more I wanted to know:
⭐ What Is Actually Happening in the Sky?
Part of my confusion disappeared when I stopped treating the Lion’s Gate
as one event and separated the different pieces of its story.
⭐ Sirius — The Dog Star
Sirius is a real star
the brightest star in our night sky
and belongs to the constellation Canis Major,
the Great Dog.
It has been watched and marked by human beings for thousands of years,
long before anyone called August 8 the Lion’s Gate.
☀️ Solar Conjunction
The Disappearance
Around early July,
the Sun reaches approximately the same ecliptic longitude as Sirius.
From Earth,
Sirius becomes lost in the brilliance of the Sun.
The star hasn’t gone anywhere.
We simply cannot see it.
And then the Sun continues on.
Little by little,
enough separation develops between them for Sirius to become visible again.
🌅 Heliacal Rising
The Return
Eventually Sirius makes its first visible appearance in the eastern sky
shortly before sunrise.
This is called its heliacal rising.
The heliacal rising of Sirius was enormously important in ancient Egypt,
where the star was known as Sopdet (later rendered by the Greeks as Sothis).
Its reappearance became associated with the annual Nile inundation
and the beginning of the Egyptian year.
But there isn’t one universal modern date for the heliacal rising.
Where you are on Earth matters.
So do the historical epoch,
atmospheric conditions and exactly how astronomers define sufficient visibility.
That means August 8 is not an astronomical date on which everyone on Earth
simultaneously witnesses Sirius return.
♌ So Where Does the Lion Come In?
By early August,
the tropical Sun is in Leo.
That gives us the Lion.
But Sirius itself is not in the constellation Leo.
It belongs to Canis Major.
So the Lion and the Dog enter this story for different reasons:
The Lion comes from the tropical position of the Sun.
The Dog comes from Sirius.
They are parts of the same modern story,
but they are not the same astronomical event.
8️⃣ And What About 8/8?
This is another layer.
The significance assigned specifically to 8/8 comes from
modern numerological and spiritual interpretations of the number eight.
It should be distinguished from the much older observation of Sirius
and its heliacal rising.
And that doesn’t mean August 8 cannot be meaningful to someone.
It simply means that numerology,
tropical astrology,
ancient observation of Sirius,
and modern Lion’s Gate teachings have been woven together over time.
Once I separated those threads,
something unexpected happened.
I didn’t find the story less interesting.
I found the sky more interesting.
Because Sirius doesn’t need an invented straight-line portal
to have a remarkable story.
The Dog Star disappears into the brilliance of the Sun.
For a time, we cannot see it.
And then one morning
it returns from the Light. ⭐
Perhaps there doesn’t need to be a portal.
The story happening in the sky is already extraordinary.
Sirius approaches the Sun and disappears into its light.
For a time, the Dog Star cannot be seen.
Then,
as the Sun moves onward,
Sirius becomes visible again in the morning sky.
It returns from the Light.
Continue to 👀 Look Again
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