The Susquehanna River August 13th, 2011 6:23 AM

The Lion's Gate

In August there is an alignment between the sun (in Leo) and the star Sirius which is the brightest star in the sky. The alignment occurs from July 28 to Aug. 12ish—but August 8th is considered the energetic peak.

Called the Lion’s Gate, the 8th of August is thought to be a good day for any kind of manifestation work. This is a relatively new idea, but for me the numbers work.

Given my weakness for ancient culture and the goddess Inanna, eights always resonate. I like August 8th (8/8) and I like 8/8/2026 = 8+8+2+2+6=26 = 8 even better.

So last night, I did some manifestation work and made a sigil. Today I will probably make another. But there is more to Sirius than a single date and I thought it might be nice to share bits and pieces of an older post I wrote on this topic.

About Sirius

In the northern hemisphere Sirius is obscured by the rising sun through the long hot days of summer. In mid August it reappears in the morning skies. In the ambient light of a modern world, jaded by the glare of artificial light, we can all too easily overlook the stars, even our brightest. 

In ancient Egypt however things were very different. Back then, the day when Sirius rose just before the sun signaled the time when the Nile began to flood and the start of the Egyptian agricultural calendar. 

Like many of the stars, Sirius was personified by a goddess. Her name was Sopdet and and she was an important goddess of the Old Kingdom, serving as a guide to dead pharaohs journeying through the underworld.

Which reminds me of other goddesses, especially Inanna and her descent.

Sirius is a bright white star with a hint of blue. When the air is unsteady, or when the star itself is low to the horizon as it is now, it appears to radiate an entire spectrum of color. In mid-northern latitudes Sirius may be seen on August 12th, just before sunrise. 

And there was a time, when I was always there to greet it. I’ve shared a post about the first time, I met Sirius below.

The Susquehanna River August 13th, 2011 6:23 AM

I got to the river just before the sun crested, compass in hand to observe the southeast sky but saw no sign of the Dog Star. According to various internet sources Sirius was due to return to Northern skies today. Ancient people were very precise in their observations of the heavens. The internet, it seems, is not. But that was all right. Seeing the sun rise over the mountains was worth getting up for.

There is a resonant energy to the world just before dawn and there was a time when I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning just to feel the hum. On the way home from the river today, I remembered that time. I remembered how I used to sit in the kitchen and drink black coffee and write straight through until sunrise. 

I lived in the city then but I could see the better part of eastern sky above the vacant lot outside my back door. I got early up to write and see the sun come up almost every morning. In many ways, that apartment was my first real home and I made the most of it.

On the way back from the river this morning, I thought that I could do that here, too, if I wanted. Sirius is with us for a while now. And if I get the timing right, I should be able to catch it on some other morning.

The Present Day

Home Altar 1

Home Altar 2

 
Discovering Sigil Magic

I got interested in sigil magic in a roundabout way.

It began last month when I attended the Hay House Writers’ Workshop. On Day 3 of the online conference, Colette Baron Reid was a featured speaker. As part of her presentation she led us in an exercise to connect us with the spirit of our book.

We were told to get a piece of paper, and were led in a meditation. Then Colette asked us to make a dot on a piece of paper, ask the spirit of our book a question and draw whatever we saw or felt.

I was working on The Spirit Dream then and I knew that book had a spirit—a real one, or as real as these things get. So I asked my question.

What do you want for this book?

I didn’t hear anything. But I did see something—which happens rarely due to my aphantasia.

An 8 pointed star.

A symbol I associate with the spirit of dream.

I take symbols seriously because I believe that they’re how spirit talks to us. So the star meant something too me and the fact that I saw it meant something, too.

Though I was not clear on the details.

What Happened Next

I followed Colette’s instructions, drawing the 8 pointed star, enclosing it within rectangle and then drawing waves of energy emanating out into the ether—not even knowing that I had drawn my first sigil.

And while I didn't get an immediate answer to my question, answers did come.

By the time the workshop ended, I knew that I needed to put the source of my project first.

Not long after, I had a clear insight into what the spirit of my book really wanted.

To be heard.

So I started publishing it to my AuDHD Author Substack where it would be free to read.

And with that decided, I decided to explore the process Colette had given us.

I bought her book, The Art of Manifesting, and did some online reading about drawing and intention setting.

And that's how I found out about sigil magic.

What is a Sigil?

Just to be clear, Sigil magic doesn’t have to be some dark Seal of Solomon kind of thing. In it’s modern applications, in fact, it’s really just another way of manifesting.

I know that manifesting is controversial and my feelings about it are mixed. I was a critic of The Secret and I think New Thought is simplistic, at best. But this feels different.

In contemporary practice, a sigil is created from a statement of intent. All you have to do is formulate your intention, write it down, cross out the repeating letters and create a design from the letters that are left. This provides a symbol or focus point that you empower and release.

Sigils are popular in chaos magic, which teaches that there is no single way to empower a sigil. As in other forms of magic, a practitioner can choose whatever energy they want. Personal intent. Deities. Spirits. Sacred places. Ritual. Correspondences. Creative imagination.

The list goes on which is why sigil magic is sometimes considered gray. But it doesn’t have to be.

People have been using sigils in the form of amulets and talismans since Sumer and probably before. The 8 pointed star I drew is a symbol of Inanna, who I’ve associated with the spirit of my dream.

In ancient Sumer the 8 pointed star was used in amulets of Inanna. This is what convinced me that sigil magic is something I want to explore.

These are the books I’m working with:

• The Art of Manifesting: A Meditative Drawing Practice to Rewire Your Brain and Create Your Reality by Colette Baron Reid
• Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success by Frater UD
• Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic by Phil Hine
• Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian by Joshua Bowen and Megan Lewis

Ur-Nammu dedication tablet for the Temple of Inanna in Uruk (public domain)

Photo by Corbin Mathias on Unsplash

 The Video

 A short video about new content on metaphysics and ancient mysteries:

Photo by Josh Rangel on Unsplash

What are the astrological ages?

 Approximately every 2160 years, on the first day of spring, the sun rises in a new sign. This is the beginning of a new astrological age. 

The astrological ages or World Ages move backward through the zodiac.  

The Age of Taurus is estimated at 4300-2150 BCE. It included the Bronze Age, the invention of writing, the Near Eastern bull cults, and civilizations like Sumer, Ancient Egypt, and the Indus Valley.

Aries (circa 2150 BCE-1 CE) was the beginning of the Iron Age. It saw the rise and fall of several ancient cultures including the Akkadian Empire, Vedic India, and Ancient Greece.

The Age of Pisces began on or around 1 CE. It encompasses the rise of the Roman Empire and the West, Christianity, the Inquisition, colonialism, and two World Wars. 

While none of these ranges are exact, the Age of Aquarius is expected to begin on or around 2160. It is predicted to be a time of increased communication, innovation, and humanitarianism. 

I studied astrology and became fascinated by the astrological world ages. To me, this aspect of astrology was more interesting than any individual horoscope. 

So when I saw that my Jungian Dream School instructors had made a video on the Age of Aquarius, I was excited. After watching the video I felt called to learn more about Jung and the Astrological Ages.

Jung and the Astrological Ages

In watching the video, I learned that Jung believed that the astrological ages influenced the collective. He saw the passing age of Pisces as a time of dissolution. He believed that the old energies would diminish and that new energies would be activated in the coming Age of Aquarius. 

Jung wrote about the Age of Pisces and the influence of Christianity in Aion, which I am currently reading. To him, the psychological self was a totality that "must by definition include the light and dark aspects." 

Christianity, in the Age of Pisces, didn't allow for that.

In Aion, Jung talks about the issue with seeing Christ as unadulterated light. For Christians, God couldn't be a paradox. He had to be summun bonum (ultimate good). This caused the early Church Fathers to call evil an absence of good (a concept called privatio boni) because there is nothing of God in it.

Deviation from perceived good could not be tolerated in the heyday of the Christian age. Laws rigidly divided acceptable conduct from what couldn’t be tolerated. In some instances that worked. In others it was cruel and unnecessary.

The Dream School video

In the video, my Dream School instructors shared Jung’s believe that bringing the entire self into consciousness is superior to killing the bad and vanquishing it into hell. 

I think that's because vanquishing darkness doesn't actually work.

This was one of the problems I had with Christian morality. Extolling virtue and denying vice works for some people but not all. And I don't think it's the best way to deal with things from a psychological perspective, either. 

Dictating a moral code based on dualistic ideas about right and wrong isn’t necessarily effective. In the video, one of my instructors, Jungian Analyst Joseph Lee suggested that the Aquarian Age might bring about a new ethic based on how the self responds to our actions.

This would call for a morality based on dreams and inner work that connects us with self, instead of blind allegiance to religious law.

Joseph went on to point out that this is an individual approach to ethics. It allows for variation and may require a different kind of tolerance. It asks to accept that not everyone will be on the same page.

The Age of Aquarius is expected to be innovative, communicative, and diverse. I think we are already seeing that. But as my instructors pointed out World Ages don't go quietly--making the current upheaval largely reactive.

What this means to me

Jung witnessed two World Wars in the course of his lifetime. He had personal visions of Europe covered in blood and, ultimately, as a site of great desolation. He felt that the only real chance for humanity was for individuals to do the inner work that releases shadow and connects with the self. 

Whether this will actually happen in the Age of Aquarius is yet to be determined, but it gives me hope.

_____________

I'm going to be learning more about this topic, so if you're interested please check back or sign up for The Mystic Review newsletter @ MysticReview.substack.com!

You can watch the Dream School Age of Aquarius video in this post: MysticReview.com/2026/04/dreams-tarot-and-age-of-aquarius

From the temples of ancient Sumer to the forests of Native America, the owl appears as a frequent and remarkably consistent symbol of the spirit world.

First drawn on prehistoric cave walls, the owl can be associated with religion as early as 2000 BCE as evidenced by the The Queen of the Night Relief, a 4000 year old terracotta base relief presently located in the British Museum in London.  The relief depicts a  winged Sumerian goddess flanked by two large owls and the owls are not decorative but highly symbolic. 

The goddess was called Inanna or 'Divine Lady Owl'.  She was  strongly linked to the underworld through The Descent of Innana.

The story is told on a series of clay tablet from the Queen of the Night period and tells of Inanna's descent into the underworld during the dark of the moon. 

In Pagan Europe, the ancient Celts also saw the owl as a symbol of the underworld while in other cultures the symbolism centered on the soul.  In Australia the aboriginal people believed owls to be the souls of  women. The  Ainu of Japan held the Eagle Owl to be alternately a a divine ancestor or a messenger of the gods.  In Romania, folk tales say that forgiven souls fly to heaven in the guise of Snowy Owls. 

In the Americas, the Aztec god of death, was often depicted with owls and the Hopi god of death was believed to be an owl.  In Mexico, the Little Owl was called "messenger of the lord of the land of the dead", and flew between the land of the living and the dead.  In the Sierras, native peoples believed that the Great Horned Owl captured the souls of the departed and carried them to the underworld.  Several different Native Northern American traditions including the Mojave believed that the soul turned into an owl at death.

The mythology of multiple cultures places the symbolism of the owl firmly in the spirit world.  His mythic role however is largely positive.  As a messenger of the gods he is sacred, a bearer of divine knowledge and a facilitator of communication between the worlds.  As a guide, he bridges the gap between life and death, but more correctly: the space between this reality and the next.

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

One of the first unusually vivid dreams I can recall was a dream I had in high school. 

In this odd, but memorable dream, a single bright section of an orange transformed into a tiny infant right before my eyes. At the mall a few days later, I saw an album in a record store window. On its cover was a dreamy sort of image of a baby. The name of the album was Tangerine Dream.  

I made the connection and bought it on the spot.

Later, listening to my new album through my headphones, I had a vision. In it, a group of men in dark robes were trudging up a hill. Behind them, a grove of trees had been cut down, and on each stump a man had been beheaded.

I had an interest in King Arthur from an early which may be why I recognized the men as Druids. Given that interest, I'm sure a lot of people would just chalk a vision like that up to imagination, but because I have aphantasia visions are few and far between for me (and those I do have are not deliberately self-generated). So it was unusual for me to see any kind imagery in any state. 

What really got my attention however was the emotion I felt. 

The scene was grisly, but I wasn't the least bit horrified. Instead, as the hauntingly beautiful music built to its crescendo, I felt a bittersweet sense of loss. I understood those retreating figures. I knew their way of life was ending and that loss moved me.

It wasn't until many years later, that my interest in Celtic spirituality would move me to become a member of the OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). 

Did my dream and the resulting vision predict this interest? Or is there something genetic that travels downstream through time that speaks to us? Or is it only coincidence?

That is the mystery.

You can visit the OBOD website at Druidry.org

St. Brigid's Cross (made by me)

My son Josh has done a lot of work on our family tree. He's found out all kinds of interesting people. Kings, queens, saints, women hung for witchcraft, Ray Bradbury and more.

This interests me, especially as I become more and more convinced that the tree in the Spirit Dream is our family tree. Though I am still unsure just what it means.

I got my Ancestry DNA done recently, as well. A lot of stuff washes out (like Swedish and French). Other comes through—like Scottish, Native American and Irish, which was told was there but didn't know about for sure.

I'm happy about this because I have an interest in Native and Celtic culture. I understand, of course, that culture is something handed down and I know that the genetic part doesn't really matter, but I still like the idea that there is a connection.

I also find it interesting that some of the historical figures that have interested me the most over the years, have popped in my family tree (and the family trees of millions of other people, I'm sure).