be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
fear & purpose with the fixed star sirius, the star of the night
Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales
To dotlings under moonlight still art keen […]
Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
To show what source divine is, and prevail.
A bit over a year ago, I coined 2025 My Year with the Dog Stars, spending much of the year with the dog stars: Sirius and Procyon.
As I discussed then, Procyon figured heavily into my solar return in 2025, so I started my work with that star. His essential nature seemed to come to me more easily but Sirius remained a bit more mysterious at first.
Sirius is the only star I’ve ever experienced capturing me the way they did the first time I met them—
The first time I encountered the spirit of Sirius, rather than Sirius as an astronomical curiosity, was on New Years Eve a few years ago. I had been enjoying myself at a large party and stepped outside to get some fresh air shortly after midnight. When I opened the door and stepped out onto the patio the big twinkling dog was shining brighter than I’d ever noticed before. We were in the city, no other stars were visible in the sky except for it and through the smog and the gunpowder smoke of the illegal fireworks going off in the neighborhood, it appeared to glow with an emerald green light. I found it so entrancing and stood there, basking in it in the silence opened by a break in the fireworks, overcome by its massive presence—until someone set off an enormous number of firecrackers in the street below, causing me to drop my drink, shattering the glass on the floor and spilling some sticky cocktail all over my nice new shoes.
This kind of captures the vibe I started off with—Sirius’s spirits can be loud. They are very big. They can be iconoclastic. Maybe even a bit unsettling.
Throughout the year last year I took myself outside to venerate the dog stars frequently, at least once a week while they were in the sky.
My solar return was in early January and at that time we had the dog stars out for practically the whole night. As the year went on, their presence became scarcer and scarcer until Sirius finally disappeared in May. Living in a mountainous place with reasonably low light pollution, the abstraction of a planet’s mathematically predicted set and rise doesn’t always perfectly predict its last sighting. Still, I’m reasonably sure I was able to catch the last night Sirius could be seen above the horizon just after sunset in mid-May.
Jean-Louise Lemoyne, detail of Companion of Diana (1724)
I took a break from the dogs during the earliest part of summer then, later on in August, I began watching for Sirius’ rise from my home. I observed their first few weeks of rising in August, praying for its favor and studying their nature. My work with Procyon took a backseat for a few months.
During Sirius’ period of heliacal rise, I had selected as a benefic moment the night that Sirius would rise with Jupiter and Venus with the Moon bright in the sky applying to the close conjunction between Venus and Sirius. On that night, I built a Stele of Aphrodite on the wall of my home.
The Stele of Aphrodite is the name of a Greco-Egyptian amulet preserved in PGM VII, a working magician’s grimoire from late antiquity and a text that I have worked extensively with. The instructions for this amulet are relatively sparse but I’ve been making them for years now and through my research (both experimental and academic) I’ve managed to break the pieces down for myself. Following the attributions of Ptolemy, we often discuss Sirius as a star of Juptier and Mars. But, at least magically speaking, Sirius is also a star of Venus, making them perfectly suited to crafting this stele.
Through this all, I have learned the nature of this dog star for myself, especially their more Venusian side.
When I see Sirius discussed, I often see only one of their aspects portrayed. On the one hand, there is the Sirius we often encounter in magical texts: bringer of favor, peace, authority. Then there is also the Sirius we encounter in some predictive astrological texts, a Sirius that is harsh and drying, bringer of death and pestilence.
I think Sirius is both of these things and more. This star isn’t so easily constrained to binary morality.
What really brought it all together was the way that Hesiod explains the season Sirius, the famous dog days of summer. During my year with the dog stars I learned that the modern French word for heatwave is canicule, deriving from Canicula a Latin name for both Sirius and the season associated with its heliacal rise in antiquity.
Hesiod explains that during Sirius’ season, the star parches our skin and heads and brings forth a wearisome heat. Goats grow fat, wine gets sweeter and simultaneously women are lustful and unruly while men are at their weakest. Still, he says,
…at that time let me have a shady rock and wine of Biblis, a clot of curds and milk of drained goats…then also let me drink bright wine, sitting in the shade, when my heart is satisfied with food, and so, turning my head to face the fresh Zephyr [the west wind], from the everflowing spring which pours down unfouled thrice pour an offering of water, but make a fourth libation of wine. [1]
This season is hot to the point of exertion being hazardous to your health and, yet, is also the time when the land gives forth its richest sweetness. The rule of man wanes and women become restless.
Sirius rules a time in which there is nothing left to do but sit out on a shady bench, day drink, turn your face to catch whatever breeze you can and make extra offerings to spirits of the land.
The way I have learned to see Sirius is as both the fertile soil of the Nile valley and the deadly flooding that brings that vitality. Sirius is a dog with sharp teeth and a deadly bite and the protector of the pack.
That’s why I’m so excited to be releasing this class that I built with my friend Chloe Margherita, of Recent Bedroom:
The Spirit of the Night: Everything You Need to Know to Work with Sirius
We’ve prepared a series lectures on Sirius through 3 planetary lenses (Jupiter, Mars, Venus) + a zine of spells for working with the Big Dog Star. Our class will be dropping this Wednesday, 4/22, when the Moon finds her way back to Sirius this month.
Chloe’s work on Sirius was hugely influential on me—especially what she’s written about Sirius as a star of love. Sirius is an attractive star to many of us, whether because it is prominent in their nativity, they’re interested in magical work with the Behenian stars or even just because they have a close connection with dogs. We’ve both noticed that many people who are drawn to Sirius also experience some of the feelings of trepidation that I described for myself above.
By approaching Sirius through this Venusian aspect, my greatest lesson has been about what can be born from harmonizing the animal soul of the body with the supernal celestial soul. Chloe has really sold me on the idea of Sirius as an initiator star.
Really, Sirius is not a star—they’re The Star.
Through work with Sirius, the incongruences between the needs of my body and the desires of my mind became more clear than ever. I began to see that, actually, listening to my body is the secret to hearing the voice of my soul.
I began to see my soul’s work everywhere—most especially in my career, my relationships, and the land that I live upon. As I took steps towards wholeness in each of these realms, I was brought to situations that called me to rise to my fullest potential.
Doing this was scary.
Sometimes I had to do things that felt insurmountable. Sometimes my heart drove me to do things that my mind didn’t believe I could do, and sometimes my mind pushed me down paths that my body could no longer take.
When I reached one of these seemingly impassable obstacles, I returned to my practices with the dog stars, most especially Sirius. I respectfully gathered offerings for the star from my allies in embodiment: plants. Especially the old Arizona cypress whose branches my home is below.
As I burned offerings from the cypress in both its name and my own at my Stele of Aphrodite, I was guided slowly to a number of other healing practices. Ritual by ritual, I found the three parts of my soul coming into closer alignment.
I am learning that my creativity is a path of my embodiment. The things my career, my relationships, my commitments call me to do can only be manifest through my body. My body is the greatest ally of my spirit, not its opponent or obstacle. At least, that’s how it could be. These are lessons I’m still working on integrating.
Fear is not something to be avoided or shirked from. Fear is a sign I am confronting my purpose and, in finding the origins and solutions of fear, I learn how to direct my life in a more purposeful direction.
When Chloe approached me about putting together this class with me, I was so into her idea of building a dedicated container to share some of this gnosis.
Until then: I return you to this poem by George Meredith. This poem speaks to the exact side of Sirius I have found so healing, the mild, temperate, Venusian side.
Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales
To dotlings under moonlight still art keen
With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien
Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales:
Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails,
Reducing many lustrous to the lean:
Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
To show what source divine is, and prevails.
Long watches through, at one with godly night,
I mark thee planting joy in constant fire;
And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire
Life to the spirit, passion for the light,
Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight
Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.
— “The Star Sirius” by George Meredith, from Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883)