Sirius

Definition

Sirius (Alpha Canis Majoris) is the brightest star in the whole night sky, at apparent magnitude minus 1.46, lying at roughly 14 degrees of tropical Cancer. It stood at the center of the Egyptian civil calendar as Sopdet (later Hellenized as Sothis): its heliacal rising — its first dawn reappearance after about 70 days lost in the Sun's glare — heralded the Nile flood and anchored the Sothic cycle. The Hermetic-Latin tradition lists it as the fifth Behenian fixed star.

In Tradition

In Egyptian calendar practice, the medieval Behenian fixed-star tradition, and modern Western fixed-star astrology, Sirius is read as a star of conspicuous renown, guardianship, and raised fortune when it sits close to a planet or an angle of the chart. The Hermes text *On the Fifteen Fixed Stars* prescribes a beryl-and-savine-juniper talisman for the favor of spirits and for peace between rulers and between spouses. Modern readings keep that honor-conferring sense while warning of pride and overreach.

In Practice

Modern fixed-star astrologers find Sirius's current position by taking the BM Bodleian MS. 52 reference point (14 Cancer 19, around 1265 CE) and carrying it forward by precession — roughly one degree every 72 years — which puts it near 14 degrees of Cancer today. A conjunction within one to two degrees of your Sun, Moon, Ascendant, or Midheaven is weighed for renown, public eminence, or themes of guardianship. Egyptian-tradition practitioners still watch its heliacal rising to anchor the calendar; modern fixed-star work follows the Picatrix-Agrippa talisman recipe — beryl, savine juniper, and wormwood — for the constructive uses named above.

Historical Origin

The Pyramid Texts and Sothic-cycle inscriptions attest Egypt's Sopdet/Sothis from the Old Kingdom on, around 2400 BCE; Faulkner's *Pyramid Texts* (1969) and Wilkinson's *Complete Gods* document it. The Hermes text *On the Fifteen Fixed Stars* (BM Bodleian MS. 52, around 1265 CE; Greer trans. 2017) places Sirius fifth in the Behenian sequence at 14 Cancer 19. Agrippa's *Three Books of Occult Philosophy* II.47 extends it; Vivian Robson's *Fixed Stars* (1923, public domain) consolidated the modern reading.

Further Reading

• Hermes Trismegistus, On the Fifteen Fixed Stars (Greer trans. 2017)
• Vivian Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology
• Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars