my year with the dog stars
thoughts on dogs (and my soul)
Claude Paradin, “CE FATAL A TA RACE • THIS IS FATAL TO YOUR RACE” (1551) from Devises heroïques, a collection of symbols and mottoes used in heraldry
I write to you today under the conjunction of the Moon and still retrograding Mars on the degree of the fixed star Sirius, the big dog star.
This also marks the day that she alights in the 7th lunar station, Dhirā’, who is the station I intended to discuss this month (after we met 6 Han’a last month). I prepared my essay on this station to be released this month but then found another piece of writing wanting to come out.
Today I think I’m ready to tell you about one of my research projects for this year: the dog stars.
The two stars that are most conventionally labeled as the dog stars are Sirius and Procyon. Sirius is the alpha star in Canis Major, The Big Dog, and Procyon is the brightest star in Canis Minor, the Little Dog. Both stars reside in Cancer these days, with Sirius being found at 14º and Procyon at 26º. Cancer is my profected sign for the year and I’ve found myself drawn into the stories of these stars more than ever.
Next month, after Mars has had the chance to clear some space from 7th station, we’ll talk about Dhirā’ who governs the second half of the sign of Cancer and is indicated by Castor and Pollux.
For now let’s talk about dogs.
i. present
I don’t tend to look extensively at my solar returns years in advance. It’s just not always the best practice for me. I struggle sometimes to live in the present and truly notice where I’m at, it’s easy for my waning Moon to get lost in the past or my exalted Mars to become inflamed with ambition for the future. It might seem somewhat paradoxical, but existing in the present as much as I can is actually one of the motivations that lead me to astrology (and perhaps explains my fascination with electional/inceptional/horary astrology and my smaller interest in natal and mundane).
It was probably about a little over a year ago that I cast my solar return for 2025 in advance, just to suss out the vibes a little bit. I had been looking forward to my Cancer year for a while—I mean look around at all the Moon work I’ve been doing! I thought that surely my Cancer year would be the year that it all came home to roost.
My 2025 relocated solar return with Mars and Procyon on the ascendant
Imagine my dismay when I saw that my solar return would be marked by Mars retrograde and in his fall in my profected sign for the year. Even worse, I checked my relocated chart and found that I would have Mars on the ascendant in my solar return for the place I would live in the coming year.
When I showed this chart to my friend Chloe, she immediately observed the proximity of Mars to the ecliptic degree of the smaller dog star, Procyon.
When I started talking to Chloe about this, I honestly couldn’t have told you much about Procyon. It’s one of the Behenian stars, the 15 stars most commonly worked with in astrology and magic. William Lilly says that Procyon makes a “petulant saucy fellow, prone to anger, proud, careless, violent [and] giddy.” John Michael Greer’s translation of Hermes on the 15 Fixed Stars teaches us that Procyon’s magic “grants the favor of God and man, gives men the favor of the spirits of the air, gives great power over magic, and keeps men healthy.” Beyond that random grab bag of lore, I didn’t really have much else.
I’ve come across Sirius many times and each time been a bit unsettled by the intensity and hugeness of its spirit. For any stargazer (especially one starting off in an urban environment) Sirius is often one of the first stars we become aware of—as the brightest thing in the sky aside from our luminaries, it’s almost impossible to miss.
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.
In noticing the presence of this very afflicted Mars so prominent in my solar return this year, I decided that a slow immersion into the pattern of the dog stars was called for. I have a tough but hopefully satisfying year ahead of me, upon Chloe’s advice and the urging of my own spirits, I determined that Sirius and Procyon will be my allies for the year.
After all, dogs are often ascribed to the rulership of Mars or the Moon. My Cancer year is ruled by the Moon but with Mars present in the solar return—and in my nativity the Moon and Mars are conjoined. If ever there would be a dog year for me it would be this one.
ii. past
Dogs have figured heavily into my life. I mostly grew up in a chaotic house with 3 brothers and a pack of dogs whose numbers constantly waxed and waned. At least in part because I knew I was trans from a young age, I rarely felt comfortable around the family and always had my guard up. Most of the memories I have from that time of my life that aren’t completely strung out on cortisol are with the pack.
I spent as much time as I could sequestered into one of my preferred hiding places in the house, reading or otherwise escaping. It was a wild space there, rarely did anyone ever notice I had disappeared or go hunting for me—except for a dog who would invariably come find me. If I was lucky, I would get away with hiding out until long after everyone else had gone to sleep and have run of the house, as long as I stayed quiet and kept it dark. Sometimes I felt more like a dog than a person.
During the days I would spend as much time as I could outside, leaving the shared spaces inside to my brothers to feud over the xbox. We usually kept the dogs outside during the day so it was easy to disappear with them into their hiding places during the endless sticky summer. They were feral and so was I.
Me and dogs. It’s a whole thing.
iii. future
I started my dog year off reading what I could find about the lore of these stars from my usual sources. Sirius’s lore is honestly overwhelming, especially if we broaden our horizons outside of Hellenistic star lore. Less attention has been given to Procyon but there’s still plenty to dig into.
Someday I hope to write some more definitive thoughts on these stars, but I’m still learning too!
One thing I’ve done in these cases is turn to my friends who have more experience with these stars, especially Chloe, Hawk, Héloïse, Ione and Kira. I’ve been able to contextualize some of my experiences through their gnosis, magical experimentation and insight from client research. They’ve drawn my eyes to a few distinctive features:
Procyon is a star of protection, the kind of protection that comes from being a wily feral little creature that rolls with the punches (which I learned from Chloe’s essay on the stars of protection)
One of Sirius’s many facets is that of embodied, sensual love (which I learned about in Chloe’s Stars of Love lecture)
Another of Sirius’s facets is a connection to the crossroads goddess, Hecate, as well as Ares/Mars and Anubis (as mentioned in Anonymous of 379’s Treatise on the Bright Fixed Stars)
The third decan of Cancer is also associated with Hecate, following the 36 Airs of the Zodiac and Cosmas of Jerusalem [1]
One of my endeavors with this Procyon-Cancer year is to pursue witchcraft, the most Mars in Cancer x Procyon-Sirius activity I could dream of embodying. I’d like to take time this year to put aside some of the more complex ceremonial rituals and sink into the earth and my own body, the little clump of earth that I inhabit.
My first intentional ritual contact with Sirus came through a guided visualization exercise as part of a rite in Jack Grayle’s Hekataeon [2] which I performed In January when Mars retrograded over Procyon’s degree. As part of the ritual, we envision the star Sirius in our minds eye and draw its light into our forehead. The effects even this single small exercise had on me were profound and it took several days of integration afterwards to fully grasp how deeply I had been effected.
In the following nights, I took myself outside as often as possible to observe Mars slowly moving between Pollux and Castor, flanked by the two barking dogs. I repeated this visualization exercise numerous times with Procyon, gazing upwards at the stars and memorizing their positions, then visualizing them in my mind’s eye, taking extra care to inspect Sirius and Procyon. As I focus my attention, Procyon’s light grows brighter and brighter, casting his rays onto me down below, where I slowly breathe their influence in until my energy body has harmonized with him.
I haven’t been brave enough to return to Sirius yet.
After my first couple months with the dog stars I can say for certain that they are drawing my attention to my animal soul more than ever. It seems paradoxical for a star to draw us back into our sublunar containers, but that is exactly what these visionary exercises have done for me. The best way I can describe it right now is that it felt like Sirius taught me, viscerally, a way to bring my animal soul and my spirit into deeper alignment. What would it mean for the animal part of me to be able to join the higher parts of my soul in my inspection of the heavens? It seems that Sirius is showing me a way forward. Procyon has been teaching me a way of surrendering myself to the soft hands of fate. Finding my place in the pack gives me a place to hold on to amid all of the frightening potential futures. It feels so terrible to be alone but the more I immerse myself in my role in the collective, the softer it feels.
A dog needs a job.
Notes
[1] The 36 Airs of the Zodiac reference comes from the reference tables at the back of Austin Coppock’s 36 Faces which I have heard ultimately originates from a Project Hindsight translation, both of which are extremely out of print. I linked to a convenient table on the internet of Cosmas of Jerusalem’s list which comes from this authoritative academic master-text on the decans, written in German:
Gundel, Wilhelm and Siegfried Schott. 1936. Dekane und Dekansterbilder. J. J. Augustin.
In researching for this article, I learned that Schott was a member of many Nazi organizations and dismissed from his positions during denazification and that, although I don’t know much about Gundel, his son’s dissertation advisor was also a prominent Nazi…
[2] The Hekataeon is also currently out of print though it comes in and out of print quite frequently—I believe its 5th printing or so was the one that just sold out. I’m starting to sense a theme here.