SIRIUS | The Dog Star

Astronomical information and designation: α Canis Major. Sirius is the largest and most brilliant star in the heavens, a binary star, brilliant white and yellow, situated in the mouth of the greater dog Canis Major.

Position: 15th degree Cancer (2025- 14° 23')

Planetary nature: Jupiter-Mars (Ptolemy), Moon-Jupiter-Mars (Alvidas)

Suggested orb: 1 deg. approx.

History of the star

Its popular Graeco-Egyptian name was "the Brightly Radiating One". In mythology, Sirius played an important role. The dog symbolism of Canis Major and its Lucida, Sirius, goes back to at least the 3rd millennium BC. In early astrology and poetry there is no end to the evil influences that were attributed to Sirius; "The brightest be, but sign to mortal man Of evil augury"... "Terrific glory! for his burning breath taints the red air with fevers, plagues and death" ... "The rampant Lyon hunts he fast with dogge of noisome breath. Whose baleful barking brings in bast pyne, plagues and dreerye death"... "The dogstar, that burning constellation, when he brings drought and diseases on sickly mortals, rises and saddens the sky with inauspicious light"... "Swift Sirius, scorching thirsty Ind, Was hot in heaven"... "Restless, Impetuous, Blazing"... But these expressions as to the hateful character of the Dog Star may have been induced in part from the evil reputation of the dog in the East, where dogs are rabid scavengers and do not have the exalted position in the home that is given to them nowadays in the West.

Astrological Influence

In astrology wealth and renown were the happy lot of all born under this and its companion Dog Procyon (alpha Canis Minor). Sirius was believed by the ancients to be the central Sun of the Milky Way. Because the star Sirius, is the centre of gravity of our local stellar cluster, our immediate neighbourhood, translates in the interpretation of the chart as "the largest one around" but also, more generically, as the greatest one around, or "the most" of whatever. It had been advanced that because Sirius is the Sun of the Sun, in as much as the Sun spins around Sirius just like the Earth spins around the Sun, and given that the Sun in the chart signifies the Ego, as the centre of personal identity, Sirius comes to mean in the chart The Super Ego, or an even higher centre of personal identity, the Over Self. 

Sirius in a horoscope gives honour, renown, wealth, ardour, faithfulness, devotion, passion and resentment, and makes its natives custodians, curators and guardians. It also gives danger of dog bites, and two examples of this effect will be found under Procyon. (Robson). Well connected, it promises fame, honours and riches. 

General influence of the star

Sirius with the Sun: Success in business, occupation connected with metals or other martial affairs, domestic harmony. If rising or culminating, kingly preferment.