The Descent into the Underworld

The Venus Retrograde cycle spans 40 days and 40 nights (a magical number!) and is best represented by the world’s oldest recorded myth - Inanna’s Journey into the Underworld. Originating in Mesopotamia (Sumer), the Queen of Heaven and goddess of love, beauty and war, Inanna, decided to enter the Underworld, ruled by her dark sister Ereshkigal, to attend the funeral of her brother-in-law.

The descent requires Inanna to pass through 7 gates. At each gate, she has to strip away a piece of her royal garments or symbols of power (crown/necklaces/measuring rod), representing the complete stripping of one’s ego.

By the time she arrives at Ereshkigal’s throne room, Inanna is naked and powerless. Her sister strikes her dead and hangs her corpse from a meat hook to rot. 3 days later, Inanna’s faithful minister, Ninshubur, enlisted the help of Enki, who sent 2 genderless beings to the Underworld to recover Inanna’s corpse. She was then revived with the water of life and food.

Astrologers have used this myth that represented death-rebirth to illustrate Venus’ rebirth from Evening Star to Morning Star, with her disappearance from the night sky due to occultation by the Sun, explained as her journey into the Underworld. The myth embodies the Libra archetype of Cosmic Harmony and the balance between light and dark - Inanna cannot fully embody cosmic beauty without first descending into the shadows, facing her dark sister, and integrating both worlds before she is then reborn.

This year, this story arc is made more poignant as Venus travels between the signs of Libra and Scorpio during this Retrograde Cycle, literally dipping into the dark world of Scorpio before returning to Libra for integration and rebirth in her own home sign.

Venus’ return to Libra showcases how all things exist in a Cosmic Order that brings about balance so all things can exist in harmony. It is also significant this year because her Retrograde begins on 22°52’ Libra, which conjuncts the fixed stars Spica/Arcturus/Nekkar 24° Libra, bringing a touch of both Angelic light and Melchizedek wisdom.

Understanding astrology with the fixed stars as background provides additional understanding of the frequencies that are streaming through - after all, the firmament provides context. An anchor dropped in a field of grass will function quite differently from the same anchor dropped in the deep ocean.

In an attempt to fit entire storylines (as they appear through epiphanies or channelings) into linear language, there are some of the keywords/concepts that we’ll be working with at this Offering:

The Discovery of Descent = Sacredness of Value

• Value is inherent. Whether or not we believe in something, its value exists. For example, Truth is a moral value - it is not a thing to possess but a path to follow.

• Love is based on Value. Value is also based on Love.

• The Web of Value is the foundational undercurrent that gives Meaning to our actions and shapes our Purpose

• Through inward Re-flection, you will Re-design and Re-assess the value you ascribe to what truly matters in your life (Re-cognition).

“Since the laws of nature have the elements of beauty engraved in them, it should come as no surprise that aesthetic principles played a major role in the shaping of our thinking about the origin of the universe.”

- Mario Livio (Astronomer)

Re-defining Beauty = An Expression of Cosmic Harmony

• The essence of beauty is harmony - it brings attraction, attention, and intimacy as it defines the relations between things - both in its similarities and differences; both in the tension and resonance.

• Receptiveness to beauty and the valuation of beauty exists within us as a primal instinct of humankind

• To Re-claim the Divine Feminine Impulse and Re-trieve Beauty into your life (without shame or fear), by Re-examining your relationship with the Cosmos (macrocosm) and your expression in life (microcosm)

“Beauty is a matter of seeing through the surface to the depth, seeing through the parts to see the whole.”

- Matter With Things - Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, Dr. McGilchrist, Iain

Crafting Personal Relationship with both Light + Dark, Within + Without

• Neither truth nor moral ‘rightness’ is a thing we possess, but lies in a relationship to the particular circumstances in the world (depending on each other for definition and value), in a choice with consequences

• Beauty comprises both tension and its release, and reconciliation of opposites by their interaction - light exists because darkness does, and starlight can only be revealed in the night.

• This is not about the dark feminine VS love-and-light ideas of the goddess. It is really about Re-conciliation and Re-integration, finding the beauty of the Whole through one within the other, and Re-cognising the value of one because of the existence of the other.

“It’s usually writings where ‘brokenness’ is a feature where, for me, beauty shows up. In other words, I rarely find a ‘one way’ ticket to the sublime does it – that’s like a quick fix. It’s where there is a journey through something incomplete that puts me in touch with a deeper, truer experience of beauty.”

- Julian Marshall

The Offering in a Nutshell

This Offering for the Descent with Venus into the Underworld is about the Emergence of Light through the Darkness, finding Beauty in the Shadows (through wisdom, not romanticism), and the revelation of the entirety of the Cosmic Design where both light and dark serve as necessary components of the Whole.

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates … Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty … I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly”

- In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

Who this is for:

1. People with emphasis of Venus in Libra or Scorpio, or stronghold placements in these signs finding themselves in a “brace-brace” (for impact) position

2. Anyone on the Healing Path looking to take this trip into the Underworld to liberate some of the “skeletons in the closet” by the integration of both our Light and Dark Feminine

3. Magical practitioners who want to awaken their own “Seer” (Freya) abilities - be it working with the Runes or channeling Light Codes - what we “see” is the structure of Cosmic Order, what we “do” is to bring ourselves into Cosmic Harmony with the interconnectedness of all things, so we may Weave with the tapestry of life in its entirety.

A Channelled Offering

• 2 calls (each 75-90min)

1. To understand Venus in the chart (Sept 2026) + set direction/intention for the journey

2. To integrate the lessons learnt in a debrief (Nov/Dec)

• Channelled Artwork for Venus based on your chart placement - quantum energetic connection

• 2 Personal Emails with insights through the lens of the fixed stars + bindrune/affirmation from Binding With Light Oracle Deck

1. Personal Contemplation for Venus in Scorpio - for 3rd Oct 2026

2. Personal Contemplation for Venus in Libra - for 26th Oct 2026

Energetic Exchange: $666 (Total Value: $555 + $188 + $66 = $809 )

Please reach out via email for inquiries and sign-up links.

In addition to this channelled offering and to celebrate the Binding with Light Oracle Deck, which was birthed from my Underworld journey with Venus during her last Retrograde, i will be sharing a card each day on @musing_the_runes to support the collective on this journey of reflection.

The themes of Light and Dark are both beautifully represented throughout the entire project, but what struck me most was how much iridescent light was streaming through this descent - You can see absolutely see the dance of light through the art.

Please feel free to follow along on IG!

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

This upcoming Full Moon in Pisces Lunar Eclipse will bring release, if not relief, not just for this eclipse season, but for its cycle, which goes back to Sept 2025. A lunation in Pisces, in my opinion, is always going to be beautiful; think of the relationship between the moon and the tides, but sad stories can be hauntingly beautiful too - Pisces dissolves things on a very different level than any other sign, and leans deeply into the Unseen, so this can be a time of much uncertainty, confusion, and loss as it might be etheric and magical.

The Sun in Virgo brings more grounding than we’ve had for a while. It brings a much-needed respite, as the ruler of the season, Mercury, is fresh out of a Cazimi with the Sun, so we can expect some clarity or epiphanies that may shed some light on the circumstances this Eclipse Season has revealed. Yet this lunation has the luminaries square Uranus in Gemini (also ruled by Mercury), which brings volatility and a necessary breakdown, so stay fluid (as encouraged by these placements in mutable signs) and expect the unexpected.

This lunation, i’ve got my eye fixed on a couple of fixed star activations which we’ve been circling - it feels like echoes, frequencies reverberating through time and space, reminding us we’ve been here before. The cyclical nature of the flow of energy is profound at this lunar eclipse, where the Moon (who governs cycles) herself is eclipsed, and we lose the illumination that comes from reflection - some believe in the dark is where some of the hidden “shadows” of our Unconscious surface.

And no, personally i don’t see this as fear, i see this as a chance to touch the darkest parts of our psyche and bring to it as much acceptance and compassion as we are capable of. I once read that only under the cover of the darkness can parts of ourselves feel “safe” enough to come out to be seen and acknowledged. It always felt more like the things we’ve felt shame or guilt around, parts of our experiences we cannot bear to face in ourselves - and a Lunar Eclipse is where we are offered a chance for healing and release of the “Untouchable” parts of ourselves.

1. Mars conjunct Alhena - Alhena, a stargate granting clairvoyance, was featured heavily when we began this Summer Container, and Mars has arrived to provide the fuel to what we’ve glimpsed through the 7-7 and 8-8 portal

2. South Node conjunct Regulus while Moon conjunct Fomalhaut, activating the North and South Guardians of the 4 Persian Royal Stars - bringing both purification (detoxification) and prophecy (divine vision)

3. North Node conjunct GienahCyg, while Moon conjunct Deneb Adige, Sadalachbia, and Biham - the node and moon exchange places from the New Moon in Aquarius (Solar Eclipse) at 17th Feb 2026, bringing a strange echoing from that Solar Eclipse (which announced the lunar new year of the Fire Horse) reflected here through the Lunar Eclipse.

* You can follow the above links to the longer articles linked to the Star Myths for a deeper contemplation.

If you’d like to go deeper with your reflective work with the Nodes of the Moon, this is what i’ve been revisiting.

So instead of repeating things from past issues, i thought we’d do something a little different this lunation, and if you’ve been following along and journaling (scribbling notes here and there works fine too!), then these Reflection Prompts will really pay off. If not, then try your best to recall; check your calendar or emails/messages to try to see if you can pull out some “clues” - it doesn’t have to be complicated, just coherent. i hope this also shows the importance of journaling because it serves not just as a record of events, but also reflects a state of mind which can be very telling when we’re looking at behavioural patterns.

1. Mars conjunct Alhena

So at the Full Moon in Capricorn (end June), the Sun conjunct Alhena, which i termed the “Stargate of a Seer”, as its frequencies can be personified as the archetype or role of the visionary, fortuneteller, clairvoyant in earthly terms. This lunation is also a Full Moon, but it comes with a lunar eclipse, and we have Mars conjunct Alhena. Mars energises what we’ve glimpsed during the Stargate, under the illumination of a Saturn-ruled Full Moon, now encouraging us to act on what we have glimpsed or understood. A Full Moon brings the energies of a culmination or a point of release; the eclipse reveals something (which then brings about a new beginning or an end).

Prompt:

Think back upon the Alhena Stargate - what did you “see” or what did you ask to understand? Look at your life in the last 1-2 months - what difficulty have you encountered; what blocks are you grappling with at the moment? How can you now apply the insight you’ve received at the time, and make the necessary changes or adjustments? Mars in Cancer brings an emotional charge - so what “armour” do you need to put on to better protect yourself, or perhaps it is about letting down some walls so you can let in some of the energies that have been wanting to flow into your life?

2. South Node conjunct Regulus, Moon conjunct Fomalhaut

Perhaps the most exciting part of this lunation - we see the North and South Guardians of the 4 Royal Stars activated.

South Node encourages a reduction and simplification; Regulus is a “purification” space that encourages the release of Ego and toxic thoughts and emotions. Together, i think this grants a very real energetic shift of being able to shift out of ego-driven patterns of the small self and, for a moment (in the darkness of the eclipse), stop worrying or projecting and simply come into the heart space and connect deeply with the Higher Self with absolute honesty and humility. This can offer an undoing of a karmic knot so we can empty ourselves out of things we’ve been carrying that are no longer serving us.

The eclipsed Moon will conjunct the deeply creative frequencies of Fomalhaut, where one’s purity of intention is the “test” during that time of darkness, and for those “pure of heart”, the gift of Fomalhaut is that of Divine Inspiration and Vision. For those of us on a spiritual path, this reminds me very much of how the ancients used to practice sensory deprivation as a method of opening the third eye or training to see into the Unseen world. There is a practice where you close your eyes but focus your gaze from behind your eyelids onto where your Ajna is, and in the darkness, you meditate in stillness, waiting for a vision to be revealed to you.

Prompt:

Notice your life at the moment - something has been falling away, whether you’ve been praying for it or have been reluctantly resisting it. Imagine if you cut it off, gently, kindly and with as much love as you can - what is the best or worst that can happen? Ketu is a blade that can sever the bonds that bind; it is NOT meant to be violent. Use it with compassion.

If this resonates, i’ll suggest a quiet day with few distractions, fast or eat simply, reduce your media and social consumption, immerse yourself in ritual or dream work, and meditate as much as you can. As you can imagine, i will be spending the entire day channelling.

3. North Node in Aquarius

The North Node is properly in Aquarius now. Described as a “demon head” devouring all things with an insatiable appetite, i find the energies of the North Node’s evolutionary impulse sometimes to be overpowering, urgent, frantic even. It is not “bad”; the key is to be able to identify it so you can choose to work with it in moderation. It is like going grocery shopping and remembering that you have limited space in the fridge, so you cannot buy all the produce you see on the shelves, no matter how fresh and delicious they may seem.

This one takes us further back to the Solar Eclipse on 17th Feb 2026, when we ushered in the Fire Horse.

Prompt:

Where were you at the time, and what intentions did you set at that New Moon in Aquarius? What has worked for you at that time, and what might you have outgrown?

In a nutshell, 3 of the key fixed stars activated at this lunation, aside from Fomalhaut, which we have discussed, are:

Sadalachbia (7°04’ Pisces) is the Gamma Star of Aquarius, situated at the star on the Jar held by the Water Bearer, literally meaning “the lucky star of the tents”, considered by the ancient Persian astrologers as one of the most lucky stars. From the Jar, the Water Bearer pours out the new dream of life into the Cosmic Oceans (into the fixed star Formalhaut), reminding us of the infinite freedom that we have. In our own chalice are the dreams we dream up for ourselves + we pour these out into the world, so dream wisely + boldly.

Biham (7°11’ Pisces) is the Theta star of the Pegasus Constellation, representing the Left Eye of the Winged Horse. In the galactic myths, this stargate is said to function like a cosmic light-telescope, projecting a galactic passage through which we can see into + access the frequency streams of different stellar worlds.

Deneb Adige (5°40’ Pisces) in the galactic myths is said to be a magical space that is the stellar cradle of fairies and elves. Here there are Fire Elves (who care for the stars and ensure their starlights do not fade out); Elves who are Keepers of Trees (who guard and maintain forests for generations across centuries); and Fairies (who create the essences of plants and animals before they take physical form in the 3D world). I don’t know about you, but this sounds so incredibly Lemurian - where we meld our consciousness with the natural world - from bird to flower, tree to star.

The North Node conjuncts GienahCyg (28°06’ Aquarius), which is the Epsilon Star of the Constellation Deneb or Cygnus, The Swan. Derived from the Arabic al-janah meaning “the wing”, it represents the eastern outstretched wing of the Swan, which is a constellation often associated with Zeus + Orpheus in Greek mythology. In the galactic myths, this graceful constellation is described as a stellar being that is getting close to the end of the journey (of ascension), tasked with flying across the worlds + returning to the Goddess afterwards to bring to her the messages that it hears.

I love going deep into the myths and placements; we learn through story, so it makes the frequencies more personable and easier to relate to. But it does sometimes take you so deep and faraway that we end up disassociating and disconnected from our realities, which is something SO characteristic of the Pisces moon - our inner worlds dissolving into that etheric Oneness that so closely borders escapism.

So let’s synthesise all of the above and find a way of grounding through practical little steps, blessed by the Sun and Mercury in Virgo, which rejoices in “making sense” of things, and breaking things down into their components.

1. When the Royal Stars work together as a whole rather than just separate stars each symbolising a different meaning, Fomalhaut and Regulus are natural partners across an axis - Fomalhaut functions as a cosmic prison, anchoring or locking “demonic forces” so Regulus can sanitise and destroy the toxins or poisons that prevent further spiritual attacks. We can also understand this as being in a stable containment (where darkness brings stillness) that allows for the neutralisation of venom (which includes negative thoughts, self-limiting beliefs and unwanted “magical” influences).

   The Royal Stars provide guidance and direction, but each is also a “test”, an initiation gateway, which is why Purity of Intention is so important at this time - this gateway is not about “fighting monsters”, it is about bringing inner light into the darkness. Fomalhaut brings divine vision, but the light of Divinity can only shine through us when we first recognise that we are conduits of its expression - not in an ego-ic manner, but in a way where we understand that that is our service and mission.

2. We’ve spoken about Karma with the South Node, but this Eclipse Moon is also occurring at a time when, here in Asia, is the end of the Hungry Ghost Festival, where the gates of the Hell realm are opened for the spirits to return to the land of the living. It is a time of working with the Ancestors, healing ourselves so we release them from their karmic bindings, and asking for their wisdom. If this resonates for you, connecting with the Ancestors is important at this time. There are lessons we can learn here (likely from the mistakes of those who have come before us), an inheritance to claim (perhaps a gift or blessings of sorts), and most of all, Forgiveness to be given and received.

   The Ho’opponopono prayer is one of my favourite gentle practices at this time: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

3. With Mars on Alhena and Moon (a reflective mirror) on Fomalhaut, i get a sense of greater integration - we get to “see” more, but we are also encouraged to “do” more with it. Mars infuse us with a sense of courage, which may mean that what we need to do is more difficult than usual, but there are no coincidences in cosmic order - if there is has been something that you know you have to do (especially if it has to do with the Uranian breaking down of something to be let go off), this lunation is a good time for that.

4. This lunation is conjunct many auspicious stars that seem to point towards visions and dreams of Cosmic Consciousness. i love that the North Node is landing at such an etheric space, so i’ll say prayers and spiritual practices/beliefs are really important at this lunation, but it’s NOT about getting lost in the astral. Heaven on Earth is about Integration - how can we bring the beautiful higher frequencies from the Upper Realms here into our present lives, and make tangible shifts (and improvements/service) to Mother Earth and people around us?

   So yes, do the transcendental meditation, return to the stars, and connect with Oneness.

   Then ground the insights you receive, first in your own life, fill your own cup, heal and nourish yourself, then from the overflow, share and pour into others around you who resonate with the frequencies you bring through.

5. Over the next month i’ll be speaking more about Venus and Arcturus, and hopefully explaining the mechanics of what is happening in the cosmic skies, but many of you signed up for this Summer Container knowing we’ll begin at Sirius and land at Arcturus, where the light pillars of knowledge are anchored. We all hope to be shown something through Arcturus which focuses us on a specific Knowledge so we come one step closer to our soul purpose. This year, Venus takes us into that frequency - she will sit closely with Arcturus with a Retrograde to take us into the Underworld and be reborn through this initiatory journey. This means that we will discover the Light (Knowledge) through the Venusian lens of values (virtues), beauty (peace and fairness), and the feminine FLOW of life itself. i thought i’d mention it so you can begin to keep an eye out for it as we now step into the last month of this Summer Container.

To everyone who has signed up for the Summer Container, i could never say this enough, but THANK YOU all for making this work possible. Given that Alhena is such a big part of this Summer Container, i thought it apt to mention that i feel like the Nordic Völva, travelling from village to village, doing healing with the stars, and shamanic work with the Runes, and being given sustenance along the way. The new project i’m looking at for Venus’ Retrograde will be about bringing that Seeress part of ourselves up into our conscious awareness, and awakening aspects of the Goddess Freya (Venus) within. It is not a stretch to think that it was the work we’ve been doing at this Summer Container that is bringing about the Unfolding of that next chapter. Thank you all so much for supporting my work. Blessed Moon 🤍

Channelled Artwork :: Lemurian Codes for Grounding during Eclipse Season

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

The Summer Series is made possible by the contributions of the participants of the Summer Container. i so appreciate your presence; thank you for being here.

At the same time, the sign of Leo is “supercharged” with a stellium consisting of the luminaries, Mercury and Jupiter (who meet once again), and the South Node making a fresh entry into this new axis.

An Eclipse is defined as a period of time where things which have been previously obscured may finally be revealed - which is often seen as a catalyst for bringing about change; hence it has traditionally been defined in astrology as a time of major beginnings and endings.

I’ve always felt that the eclipse portal can feel a bit like zipping through a wormhole, offering an opportunity for a quantum leap if we allow it to do what it’s here to do, with as little resistance on our part as humanly possible. Remember, though, that the “revelations” may come at this time, or may play out over the next 6 months (since we live on a denser 3D plane and energy shifts need time to take form in the physical world).

Because we have the South Node coming through Leo, and currently on 1 of the 4 Persian royal star Regulus, there is a focus on purification via cutting back - a little like reinventing your home by first going through a Marie Kondo decluttering, so you’ll find new floorspace again and be able to make over a new living space that better represents who you are now and are becoming. In Leo, where we are more self-focused (as we learn to become more confident and empowered within ourselves), this might also look like less need to justify our choices, especially when the choices we make that most align to our authenticity may more and more “go against the grain”, as we step into a new paradigm of individuation*.

8/8 brings a frequency alignment - a spiritual gateway, a multidimensional portal which you might sense or feel, rather than see or calculate (with our current linear mindsets/methodology), so trust your intuition even if you can’t “prove” it YET

But as you can already tell, this is a journey with a continuous storyline, and one of the keywords “REBIRTH“ means there will first be a “Death” before we go through the birth canal again and emerge again.

At 7/7, the Sun + Sirius (our spiritual sun) conjuncts = Sun streams higher-frequency light from Sirius through its sunrays

Now, just as we emerge from the 8/8 portal, the Sun is eclipsed = the light of the Sun is temporarily blocked

You know when you do an iOS update? Your phone/device downloads the new data packets, then it needs to reboot itself in order for the new software to be installed. This transit feels like that.

Just remember that during the reboot, the screen goes dark for a while; you cannot access your phone or turn it on or use any of the apps while you wait for the new look with the new software to emerge. Eclipse season, as we stretch across these next 2 lunations, from the solar eclipse to the lunar eclipse, is that period of time when we wait and try not to worry too much, nor hurry the process. This is the time we sit in the darkness of the cocoon and allow the metamorphosis to take place, learning to be okay with Not-Knowing and being able to breathe through the uncertainty.

*If you know your Human Design charts:

• Manifestors: While you never need permission or approval to initiate, remember you still have to “inform” as part of your strategy so you meet less resistance. That said, the sense i get is that the “swings” for manifestors will be greater - longer downtimes, quicker sudden impulses to “go” - trust your inner authority (emotional/splenic/ego) to guide you, but know that the more you rest, the more potential energy you are accumulating for when you feel ready to launch into the world.

• Projectors: Going inward to cocoon is probably “easy” for you - the lesson is for you to employ more rest and more self-care time WITHOUT the self-judgement and guilt. Repeat 3x as often as needed: “Self-Care is NOT a luxury; I am worthy of taking time for myself.” As you go into this eclipse cocoon, take this opportunity to “empty” yourself out as much as possible because chances are, you’ve been “taking in” everything from everyone while the collective has been in huge waves this last few months. The more open centers you have, the more you need to release all that you’ve absorbed that is not your own.

• Generators: i’ve found that Eclipse season can be very hard on generators because you are here to discover who you are, and Eclipse season is the time where things go into flux, and there might be a sense of having the ground shift beneath your feet. Going into a cocoon isn’t easy because there is little for you to respond to, so be extra patient with yourself at this time and do not make impulse decisions. Wait it out if you can; if not, then this is the time to follow the expression of the sacral, but whatever decision you make, try to always leave yourself wiggle room.

• Reflectors: Because you are so tied to the Lunar cycle, Eclipse season might end up being a really interesting time for you to “sample” energies so here’s an odd suggestion for you - IF you find yourself able to travel (or at least visit different places nearby), then try that and see if you may find new energies (streaming through the eclipse) to feel into, which will bring you new insights. Your “teflon” aura will keep you protected as you explore and experiment, allowing the Universe to surprise you.

Astrologically, there is a lot going on - i know we’ve been saying this all year now, but things are only going to become more intense as the year goes on - you know how some of us experience ringing in the ears or a high-pitched frequency tone when we sense frequencies shifting? It’s like that, except it’s building up to a fever-pitched pressure-cooker scream at this point, so in the spirit of the South Node (where less is always more), we’re going to focus on only 3 fixed stars this lunation.

But first, let’s talk about the general astrological weather:

1. Saturn retrograde in Aries (27th July 26 - 11th Dec, which seems to stretch suspiciously from the 8/8 to 12/12 portals). Not only do the luminaries trine Saturn, so does Jupiter in Leo for the next 12 months. Trines are a supportive aspect that can be interpreted as Jupiter and the luminaries supporting Saturn’s agenda at this time. Fire trines can be a time of igniting the Source spark within, bringing Creativity and inspiration, like the Ace of Wands card in Tarot. Saturn transits are never “easy”, and this one will involve an opportunity to re-evaluate past choices, especially where boundaries and foundations require rebuilding or strengthening.

Remember how earlier we spoke about the 8/8 portal being one of frequency alignment, and eclipse season being the cocoon before metamorphosis? After we emerge out of this time, the Saturn retrograde will be the energy we count on - not to push ahead yet, but to look back at our current and past decisions and identify where we are no longer aligned and what needs adjustment to these new frequencies that are streaming in. Saturn retrograde offers a “correction window” as we go through the dark “birthing canal” at this time of a Rebirth (7/7 - 8/8 portal) so we may undo some karmic knots by addressing any neglected responsibilities, and offer a re-alignment as we make course corrections to our current plans that no longer fit our long-term goals. My suggestion is to lean into Saturn at this time - his wisdom and patience will benefit us as we make the necessary adjustments and releases needed to “die” before we may rise as the phoenix from the ashes. It also means that we have to release our existing ideas and expectations if we truly wish to liberate ourselves towards this Rebirth, because we cannot fully step into a new frequency if we’re still clinging to old desires. Here is a channelling by Paul Selig that speaks to this.

2. There is also a beautiful Air Trine happening at this lunation, with Venus in her home sign of Libra, Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius. We know Uranus in Gemini may bring explosive revolutionary ideas, albeit likely unhinged; while Pluto in Aquarius brings transformative changes in cutting-edge advancements in technology and deep space. Graceful Venus seems a bit out of place with these “tech bros,” but in Libra, she is a master of harmonisation and balance - here she mediates with the “big boys” and asks the question “how can we bring real value through these new ideas and tools?” In our personal charts, i think we’ll see things like a new app or a piece of hardware that could help make things easier for us, or “level up” our work, or cut down resources. If there was a new app you’ve wanted to try, do a trial at this time. If you are working on new ideas, take time and space to flesh them out, and consider how you can make these brilliant projects aesthetically pleasing too. If we think of the eclipse as a cocoon, this air trine feels very supportive for jumping into new rabbit holes, having a deep dive brainstorm session with a good conversation partner, or planning a quiet retreat to ideate, then “package” these thoughts so they can be put out in the world. The Venusian presence helps find ways of communicating some of these truly “out-there” ideas and bring about meaningful exchanges with like-minded souls.

3. Aside from these fire and air trines, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects i’ve got my eye on is Mercury opposing Pluto, taking Jupiter’s place at 4° Leo from the last lunation, completing the Barbault’s Basket formed by the outer planets 2 weeks ago. I suppose we can see this as Mercury helping us understand and process what the Barbault’s Basket brought through, but this opposition brings to mind Mercury’s role as the Psychopomp, ferrying us between the land of the light and living (conscious mind) and the dark realm of the dead (unconscious mind). i love this for a Solar Eclipse - the imagery that comes forth is an opportunity to step into the heart of the darkened sun through an underground passageway that allows us to access parts of ourselves that were previously not available to us, and hence have previously obscured truths be revealed to us. It feels like this could be a very insightful time for those of us ready to “travel” with the ferryman.

Mercury and Jupiter last met during the Full Moon in Capricorn on 29th June, which was the first lunation where this Summer container first began. At that time, they were conjunct the fixed star Procyon, which presents as the energy of a labyrinth, which allows us an exploration of who we are (and are not) so we may be able to begin defining ourselves. This lunation, they meet at Praesepe, which Jupiter has been at since the last lunation, anchoring the principle of “roundtable” or true democracy or the “silver age” of Lemuria. Mercury now arrives to connect the dots, to facilitate communication, to create a network where this Jupitarian mindset may take form and actually materialise with a community of like-minded souls. Keep an eye out for people moving in and out of your circle at this time, especially for those of you looking for a soul-tribe or building community at this time.

With that in mind, let’s go on to fixed stars - the New Moon Solar Eclipse conjuncts fixed stars Merak, Rasalas, and Pherkad. In the galactic myths of the Stellar Nations, here is the symbolism associated with each of these beautiful stars:

• Rasala (Mu Leonis) - the eye of the Lion

Energetically, this is a 6th-dimensional world that represents a really pure and intuitive channel - there is an extremely refined inner sensing connected to this star frequency, similar to a good strategist. Personified, it could be a war general who prevails by way of his quickness, skillfulness, and smarts/wits, seeing through situations and people with perceptive observation, knowing what will happen before things unfold, and able to intuit the thoughts of people even before they are aware.

• Merak (Beta star of Ursa Major, the Big Bear/Big Dipper)

In the galactic myths, the Big Bear is associated with the 7 Wisdoms of Christ (Divine) Light, experienced through faith of the heart chakra, not through the intellect of the analytical mind. This is a pure emanation that vibrates at the 6th and 7th Dimensions, less “defined” with words and more felt with truly mature hearts - one becomes initiated into the wisdom of these mysteries through a sincere, deeply honest, devoted spiritual path, meaning you cannot think or analyse your way into these Wisdoms - you need to experience these for yourself to feel the frequency they represent.

Merak is the 2nd pillar of the Big Dipper, symbolising the wisdom of Unconditional Acceptance. No more, no less, that exactly.

Sit with that for a moment and allow this frequency to settle from your crown chakra into your heart space, then radiate outwards, encircling your entire being like an egg or a toroidal field. Unconditional Acceptance means we do not ask for more from the Universe, but we do not accept any less than we are designed for - it is with both humility AND with pride that we stand in our own Source light and command that we receive EXACTLY as we should.

While we trust our own Unfolding enough not to ask for more (this one is easy, isn’t it?), we also accept nothing less than we deserve, meaning we will NOT settle for anything less than what we are owed. Stay with that, and think of all the times you’ve given up on what you wanted because you thought it was “the right thing” to do - this is a time for reclaiming everything that you have not reached out for (for all the reasons) and setting the record straight again. Unconditional Acceptance means receiving ALL that you were meant to, not pushing the light away, not shrinking from the Radiance within, not dimming your light for anything or anyone because that is what you were always meant to BE.

• Pherkad (1 of the 3 stars of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear)

Ursa Minor is connected to the Big Bear in the lineage of the 7 Wisdoms of the Christ (Divine) Light, and also similar in function to the belt of Orion, in that the 3 stars of Ursa Minor represent the teacher archetype. These stars anchor the frequencies of transmission of the 7 Wisdoms - where one learns to teach and pass on these principles of faith, so others can receive these stellar rays as inner experiences.

Pherkad is an initiating star for priests, priestesses, spiritual companions, and guides to help those who are searching for their faith. In the galactic myths, they also represent the violet ray/flame and the Temple Builders, similar to figures like St. Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther who lead communities less as “authority figures” but as spiritual role models.

At this time, i see Pherkad activating many of the collective, offering us an opportunity to step up into these roles IF it resonates and if the frequencies align - more and more people will be creating communities or things like spiritual retreats, sharing their knowledge (lived experience rather than learnt information from books), based on spiritual values like compassion and inclusion. So, say medicine festivals, or plant foraging trips, or personal exploration into Theosophy or Anthroposophy to search for a way of taking “faith” to new levels within the self.

To synthesise the eclipsed energies of the luminaries at this new moon solar eclipse, the activation or “update” will focus on the Heart and Ajna (third eye) chakras - an expansion in feeling into the Divine by opening our hearts and letting more light in, which directly impacts the ability to see differently by way of elevating our perception of things and hence change the way we begin to live our lives. It means more discernment, more protection of our sovereignty, less dimming of our light, more stepping up in terms of our responsibilities and expressions as beings on a spiritual path as “beacons of light” for each other.

We’re being asked to show up more fully for ourselves and for those who are resonant with our frequency, uplifting each other in these times of flux not by self-sacrificing but by allowing the fullness of light to come through. This means that we are not pouring from an empty cup and martyring ourselves.

It means we are setting the intention to go to the Universe/Source to say “I Accept” the fullness of my Divinity, i step out of my own way, i stop resisting the light due to self-limiting beliefs, then allow that to flow through you and into the collective.
For Reiki practitioners, you’ll know that the healing energy we channel is the life-force energy of the Universe; we’re never using our own limited human energies. That is the offering of this transit.

Leo is a sign very linked to the ego and pride, and in its shadow expression, this is true. i’d like to offer you to think about Leo as the sovereign soul within you, the Higher-Self expression rather than the small-self assertion. Ruled by the Sun, this sign offers us great potential and growth, so through this season, focus on the merger or alignment of your small-self and Higher-Self, and let the higher frequencies of your own Divinity flow through your I Am That I Am.

Blessed Moon!

Channelled Artwork for Eclipse Season 2026

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

The Summer Series is made possible by the contributions of the participants of the Summer Container. i so appreciate your presence; thank you for being here.

Another reason why i’ve tried to keep away is because i’ve been afraid to put this out publicly for fear of judgement and/or persecution. But with 8-8 approaching, and after reading some articles by writers i respect that felt more “limited” than my own point of view, i thought perhaps it was time to add my tiny tiny tiny voice to the conversation in an obscure faraway corner of the internet.

But first, disclaimers.

Most of you who are familiar with my work will know that i began by channeling art without offering any explanation of what i was channeling, mostly because i didn’t understand what i was doing or what i was really tapping into. It took the first few years to differentiate between the different frequency threads. In time, when i went full-time into this work (whatever this synesthesia-art is where i could “see” frequencies and put what i “heard” into a visual representation), i “re-branded” myself as a “mystic”, only because i didn’t know any other word that describes what it is i do, and it was the closest one i had.

All through this time, i’ve made it very clear that i was NOT an astrologer, even though i do use some astrological language in my expression. It’s the same logic for how i am multilingual (i speak and/or read 9 languages/dialetcts), but i will not describe myself as a linguist. So as you read this, know that this isn’t coming from the point of view of an astrologer or astronomer, or some expert in Egyptian star wisdom. This is coming from a Mystic trying to find words for what i “sense”, fitting the unexplainable into linear language, and sharing what can perhaps be only termed as “intuitive guidance” or what some might call “gnosis” (UPG).

And so, please take what resonates, and let the rest fall away. And if nothing resonates, please feel free to move on because none of my writing is here to “sell” anything.

7/7 - 8/8 Gateway

Every year, as this date approaches, you might see people talking about how this is “inaccurate” in terms of astrology or astronomy, which i do understand because when you look at the chart, aside from this being at about the midpoint of Leo Season (ruled by the Sun), the supposed “alignments” of the stars are not indicated on the charts. And then there’ll be the sensational content positioning this as one of the “most powerful manifestation portals” without even explaining why spiritually, and how this is even a stargate.

Based on what i learnt years ago, this “gateway” is associated with an alignment involving Sun, Earth, Sirius and Orion. So based on that premise, here’s how i’ve come to feel into what this means.

First, It’s a matter of perspective.
This time of year tracks the conjunction of Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky, with the Sun on 7/7, then the heliacal rising of Sirius at around 8/8. So if you are in Australia, Sirius may rise in July, but if you were in Egypt, it’d be in August. Both are “correct” for where they are, and both would be wrong if either insisted its version was the only “right” one.

So the astrologers are right - it’s NOT astrological.
Because Earth isn’t included in traditional astrology. (Though, it is in human design - every birth chart includes the Earth Sign, now isn’t that interesting? A tangent for another time.)

It’s also NOT astronomical - the timing of Sirius’ heliacal rising shifts depending on your viewing location on Earth - even the heliacal rising of Sirius in different parts of Egypt will result in different dates, so the astronomers are “right” too.

But what both are really doing, though, is viewing the sky from a single vantage point - Earth. And i’ve started to wonder if a manmade system, whether mathematical like astrology, or physics-based like astronomy, can ever fully describe something that is not quite operating on the same plane at all - the 8/8 portal as an energetic gateway. This is NOT a criticism of either discipline; it’s just a limitation built into any linear methodology that measures from “constricted” and fixed points of view.

The unverified quote by Tesla says “To understand the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, vibration”. Neither Astrology nor Astronomy does that. Both are beautiful languages or systems which try to pinpoint the cosmic frequencies by giving them descriptions and labels, but they’re NOT essentially designed to describe what frequency is.

The Egyptians, by contrast, have been working with sound and frequency directly for thousands of years, building structures that are aligned for resonances in ways we still do not have a modern vocabulary for.

So in that same line of thought, what if the 8/8 portal was not about straight-line (on a 2D graphic chart) planetary alignment, but about the alignment of frequency resonance instead? Also, energy does not travel in straight lines - it travels in waves. “Alignment” in the English language also feels limiting, because it seems to imply linearity (meaning “in a straight line”), but if everything at that level is wave-based, then could it be that we might be looking for the wrong “shapes”?

Many of history’s “great minds” were not specialists in a single field of study - not just an astrologer or astronomer, physician (medicine) or musician (frequencies), mathematician or philosopher. While we cannot all be Da Vinci or Hershel, have we become very “narrow” by comparison, with the mindset that “specialists = experts” to the extent that we rarely have lateral thinking across different fields? Archaeoastronomy is a good example - archaeologists studying ancient structures do not incorporate astronomical data on how these structures align to stars or the sun (solstices), and our understanding remains incomplete as a result. It’s left us with a “skewed” perspective, which is part of the linear ways of the Left (in human design), a masculine-oriented, process-driven structure where we break down everything into smaller pieces of “digestible” information, so much so that we lose the ability to see the “bigger” picture in its entirety.

The ancients who first tracked these “stargates” did so long before the invention of telescopes. These traditions get called “primitive” just because modern math and science have yet to confirm (nor dismiss!) their methodology, yet many of us have found great wisdom embedded in the “stories” passed down. Mythology today is considered make-believe because the ancient cultures no longer exist, and modern society begins viewing the sacred narratives as just folklore or fantasy.

Egypt, for example, has left us much to work with. In their myths and star lore, we find nuggets of wisdom that fill the space between where astrology and astronomy leave “gaps”. The “Raising of the Djet” tied to the Osiris-Horus-Isis mysteries points us to another frequency layer of this 8/8 portal - Resurrection + Rebirth.

Are these characters real? To be honest, when i was in Egypt, i wasn’t quite convinced. Modern media has made some of these myths out to be like Marvel plots and heroes, but when i was there, my sense was that Humans learn through story, and dramatic ones get enough attention to perpetuate and survive thousands of years. But the drama was never the point - the knowledge it carried is what was meant to last.

After all, Mysteries were never meant to be read literally. None of the spiritual texts in any traditions were ever made to be literal “dictionaries” or “step-by-step” manuals. They were all encoded; therefore, mystics spend lifetimes unraveling them through spirals of interpretations, unpacking them from all different depths, levels and perspectives - none of which are wrong; none are “absolutely correct” - they’re all just understood at different frequency levels (again, energy works in waves, not straight ruler lines).

Channelled Artwork for Venus-Jupiter-Sirius Conjunction at the 8-8 Portal 2025

Everything from here on out is my own understanding.

i understand the 7/7 - 8/8 portals as spiritual gateways best understood through frequency rather than clock time. Sure, there’s numerology (8 = infinity), or astrology (Leo season), or astronomy (heliacal rising of Sirius), but time-space is NOT what we think it is, and while i can’t define what it is, i know it is NOT a straight linear principle like notches on a ruler.

Time is a construct that doesn’t exist. It’s only in the 3D that our human linear minds need a structure of sorts to place things into - To try to process this alignment using “time” doesn’t make sense because anything star-related (not planets) is measured in light-years, not human time. Also, light bends, so how could the way we think about time be applied to things we aren’t remotely close to having much understanding for?

Space is real, but let’s not think “distance” in miles or kilometres. Let’s think of space in terms of 2D / 3D / 4D / 5D denominations. The difference between how something appears in 2D vs 3D is already significant; can we really even begin to understand how planets or stars will be in 4D / 5D as different planes of existence?

3000 years ago, in Egypt, there were no telescopes, so data was collected by observing and tracking the night sky across generations - a single astrologer would not have lived long enough to track a star pattern spanning centuries. If the ancients had some form of “spiritual technology”, my sense is that they were understanding the vibrations of these “stargates” through something akin to “remote viewing” or astral projection - the Egyptian understanding of the Mer-Ka-Ba suggest they saw the body as a vehicle for moving between planes, or for an inward journey through the Akasha to understand how all things are interconnected and woven together, from this life to the After Life. Neither astrology nor astronomy, as systems, really account for a vantage point outside time-space, which is part of why i do not think either can fully describe these energetic portals on its own.

With this as the frame, here is where i land:

• The 8/8 is likely tied to a frequency relationship between Earth and Sun (which are 2 points within our solar system) and the constellations Orion + Canis Major (home to Sirius), which are not in our solar system, so let’s call it the cosmic backdrop.
  

• It coincides with the heliacal rising of Sirius, also known as our spiritual Sun, which then makes the idea of Rebirth or Resurrection a natural read - the spiritual light within us is renewed. In Buddhist terms, this might be a brief glimpse into Rigpa (true nature/innermost essence of the mind), offering a moment of enlightenment. In Western esoterica, it may refer to the Christ essence within each of us, now that Christ is reborn in each of us as the Divine Spark within. It is worth noting that many different civilisations found ways of expressing this - several systems like i-Ching or Maya calendars line up perfectly in their long-termcycles because they were tracking the Sirius cycles, rather than the Earth calendar?

• A simple, straightforward synthesis :: i see the Sirius + Sun conjunction happening at 7/7 as a rebirth for our Sun. Astrologers see cazimi as combustion of the planets, but planets fall within the bounds of a solar system, which revolves around the Sun, so a Mercury Cazimi means Mercury goes through the rebirth after being purified by the rays of the Sun. But Sun-Sirius are not bound to any of these rules (none of the fixed star conjuncts do) - Sirius belongs to the firmament (cosmic backdrop), which contains many galaxies and solar systems, not just ours. So i understand the Sun-Sirius conjunction as a time when our Sun streams in the higher vibrational light frequencies of Sirius (25X brighter than the Sun) into the Solar System, which likely seems more like the Sun is undergoing a “purification” of its own light. Does it not make sense when we think of how the Egyptians saw the heliacal rising of Sirius as the new year - a new frequency paradigm?

• A more “expansive” viewpoint :: i understand the connection between the transit of 7/7 to 8/8 as a “birth canal”, related to how Sirius shifts in position to Orion. Zoomed out, a Cross forms between Sirius, Aldebaran, Rigel, and Betelgeuse, with the belt of Orion in the Center in the Autumn skies. So it’s less about “which is the most important star?” and more about looking at the bigger picture to try to understand the “grand plan”. Orion in the Galactic Myths is related to Cosmic Order, and how all things have their own time and place so all things may exist in perfect harmony. It is told in the stories that many of these stars of Orion were “destroyed” after the galactic wars, in the sense that they were battlegrounds which were “attacked” by the dark forces to try to weaken the Light forces. The heliacal rising of Sirius, Raising of the Djet which is Orion, symbolising the resurrection of Osiris, always seemed to me a reminder of how the Light always prevails in the end.

• A philosophical perspective covering a “longer” arc :: the focus on Orion expands to the Winter Hexagonal, which at the very least, is a reminder that the seasons are changing and ALWAYS cyclical - the same idea behind “this too shall pass”, or the Buddhist concept of Impermanence.

  ---

  My sense is that all myths are true, but every myth is also imperfect - each shaped by a civilisation constrained by where they were in time/space dimensions - different geographical region, different era of time. But today, we may be in a position to start piecing together what earlier traditions couldn’t, and in doing so, take another step back from the limited, linear pinhole view, and attempt to partially glimpse from the all-encompassing perspective of Source-view.

  On a personal level, how will we contemplate all of these and integrate them into our lives? What enlightenment or spiritual renewal is offered to us at this gateway, and what can we do to harness these energies coming through at this time?

  How do we see our personal myths unfolding as a part of this grand cosmic plan? And if the stars are a constant demonstration of the wisdom of the Divine Dreaming, then how do we harmonise this KNOWing in both our manifestations while also surrendering with the understanding that All is Well?

  

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

That sounds pretty threatening, but Death is not quite what we make it out to be. It is when leaves begin to turn yellow and fall onto the soil in little dry piles for beetles to hide in; it is when we walk upon the beach and begin picking up little seashells washed ashore. Life and Death are far more intertwined than the polarised opposites. Astrologers all have different interpretations of the Sun and Jupiter in Leo (ruled by the Sun), across from Moon and Pluto in Aquarius (ruled by Saturn), so let me also (humbly!) offer a perspective to consider this really powerful transit featuring the largest planet (hence greatest gravitational force) and the furthest planet (hence longest reach). Jupiter might be amplifying everything in Leo for the next year, but Pluto’s got 2 decades in Aquarius and will easily win the long game.

There is a very performative quality to Leo that gives it the reputation of being egotistical, like the Sun shining for all to see, so it might be praised and revered. We have that in all of us. Think back on the time when you (albeit reluctantly) wore the dress that would please your mother, or attended a camp or quiz because your teacher said you should. Call it masking, call it survival. We all do it, consciously or unconsciously, to a certain extent.

Aquarius can seem like the rebellious child, ripping up the dress or skipping school altogether to avoid what the teacher might say. In a higher frequency expression though, Pluto’s presence here offers an opportunity to let that performative side of us be laid to rest, not by suppressing or destroying it, but by offering a different way. It’s not lashing out at the world, screaming “stop making me do the things i don’t want to do!”. It’s offering insights as to who you really are, and what you really desire to do.

The difference is you’re not rebelling against what you don’t want, but you’re actively focused and anchored on what you do want. It does require you to first let the facades fall away to discover who you really are inside. Not to please anyone, not for mummy to pat you on the head, not to publish your “healing journey” on the internet to collect likes and validation from faceless strangers. Pluto doesn’t do that, because it doesn’t care.

The potential here is a shift from “i’m not doing that anymore” to “this is what truly lights me up”. If it seems like the same thing at first glance, it’s because it is very similar - Leo supports our authenticity as much as Aquarius does. With this transit being a Full Moon, lean towards Pluto in Aquarius first so you can shed off all of the false layers you’ve been taking on, then allow Jupiter to amplify that truer version of you. A word of caution - Jupiter expands without bias, so IF we go into the next year without taking up Pluto’s offer of compost, Jupiter will continue to blow up that bubble of the performative self until that bubble eventually bursts because it is not sustainable.

Okay, that was a little “heavy”, but i think you get the idea. Now, onto the fixed stars conjunct the luminaries.

Sun conjuncts fixed star Praesepe, also known as the beehive cluster atop the head of the crab. (How cute is that?) In the galactic myths, this is a 5th dimensional temple space said to be “sanctified by the goddess that has gifted the world with the sacred symbol of the “roundtable” - the true holy idea of democracy”, which is where the community is governing as one, and souls learn to co-exist as a single community, with no hierarchy or authority figure, but with each person bringing their gifts and abilities and contributing to the whole, referencing the “silver age” of Lemuria. Here, there is no “rulership,” but everyone shows up with personal leadership to guide others without enforcing authority over anyone - the community truly coming together in harmony.

The Moon in early Aquarius conjuncts several stars of the Eagle constellation, Aquila, who in Greek mythology is the eagle who carries Ganymede up to the realm of the Gods. In the galactic myths, the eagle descends to Earth for the sake of humans so it can “pick up” the humans who are ready and carry them up to the Milky Way, through the stargate Vega, which is a pillar of initiation for those who are destined to become leaders. So not only is this an awakening call to be initiated into one’s role in leadership, but it is also a reminder that “with great power comes great responsibility”, so at this time, we are being asked to step up with wisdom and dignity to do right by the community or task we’ve been entrusted with.

Isn’t it interesting? This full moon seems to point us towards rethinking leadership - Leo in its highest expression shifts away from ego-ic performative authority towards alignment to a higher order and service to one’s community. The Eagle constellation uplifts those who are truly ready to step into this role towards their higher calling. Collectively, perhaps this might be a clarion call - our current state of the world is far from what Praesepe symbolises, but we have seen a rising in the Lemurian ways, so there is hope for us yet. Personally i hope this also means a shift in perspective with regards to our relationship with Mother Earth, where we can live with her instead of simply on her - my sense is that we will see more people (including many of you in this container) who resonate with this frequency thread step up as stewards of the land, guardians of the elementals, protectors of plants and animals, practitioners of earth healing, awakeners of dragon lines.

But beyond this, i’d like to encourage each of us to redefine “leadership” - it doesn’t always mean having a big community under one’s purview, or even being “in charge” of a small group of people. In recent years, the concept of Self Leadership has been rising as the call towards individuation becomes more urgent - the practice of leading oneself by using our own values, self-awareness, and clarity of goals/motivations to guide our life and actions. This means we have to take full responsibility for our decisions instead of relinquishing choice to an external authority, which does put more on us because it requires us to be fully accountable for our actions, which ultimately offers us the opportunity to truly become co-creators in our life journey. If we think of the symbolism of Praesepe, role model leadership is how we guide others rather than relying on traditional “rank and file”, though it must be said that resonance will take on a far more critical role in this model where we find our soul tribes of like-minded souls rather than the more “tribal” behaviour of banding with people just for the sake of “survival”. We’re shifting away from having an identity based on our role in the tribe (e.g. i’m a grandfather, i’m a provider, i’m the eldest child) to a way of life where we first discover who we are, then decide if we want to come into community with people with similar beliefs.

A Full Moon brings the energies of Release - In the fixed air sign of Aquarius, it is a time to examine our mindsets and see how/where we might be stuck in outdated ways of thinking that no longer serve the future that we envision. There may also be modalities that we have used for many years that require some reassessment because they may no longer work for who we are now and all that we are becoming. Ideas around healthy boundaries and collaboration will be up for evaluation - the line between self-love VS selfish to be redrawn, and baggage around self-growth to be released. Both Leo and Aquarius encourage Individuation, and this full moon asks that we toss out as much stigma and stubborn thinking as we can, including the need for external validation, because the time of outsourcing our authority to another system/modality/guru is coming to an end. We need to re-learn to show up fully for ourselves, and step up as the highest version of ourselves before we can contribute to the greater world around us. We often ask, “What is my soul mission?” What if it was to become actualised, meaning for the soul to take form through our human experiment, which also translates to the soul being fully expressed through this lifetime. It really isn’t easy, but it is worth it, for the highest potential here is Self-Realisation.

This lunation leads into the 8/8 Lion’s Gate portal, and also leads into the shifting of the nodal axis and the opening into eclipse season. We know that we are in a time of shifting paradigms - the old ways will not work there, so the sooner we can release them, the more ease we will have as we transit into the new frequency timelines, both personally and collectively. As i’ve been meditating on this transit all week, the one phrase that keeps repeating itself is “humility is sovereignty” - it is the alignment from “i” (small self) to “I” (Higher Self) in a my will-Thy Will kind of way - if you are familiar with the language of the Upper Room (channelled by Paul Selig), this is about being in accord to a higher frequency vibration. Alternatively, in the language of Human Design/Gene Keys, this is going from the Conscious mind (what i think i am/the passenger) to the Unconscious Self (who i actually am/the vehicle) where we strip away all constructs that we’ve taken on via the external world. In the Eastern Mysteries, this goes from the ordinary mind (discriminating awareness that possesses a sense of duality and grasps at things) to the Nature of the Mind (innermost primordial essence, Rigpa).

At this Leo-Aquarius axis, we oscillate between fixed fire and fixed air - we explore the oldest question in humanity - “who am i?”, through the embodiment of the wisdom of both inner heart and higher mind - this purification by fire is an invitation to step into the highest potential version of ourselves by first releasing the thinking mind. Blessed Moon!

Light Codes for Alignment and Integration

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

So instead of going “big” this New Moon, we begin this cycle by doing a focused contemplation around the fixed stars that are activated by the conjunction of Sun-Moon-Mercury - Note that Mercury is fresh out of its Cazimi with the Sun + still in retrograde in the sign of Cancer, with ruler Moon co-present + serving also as ruler of this lunation. The Cazimi occurs as Mercury enters the heart of the sun and is associated with a rebirth as a morning star (after being combusted by the heat and light of the sun), bringing about an announcement or moment of clarity as it emerges. I often see Mercury Retrograde as a time of reflection + introspection; with Neptune now also in retrograde, the fog lifts and the mist clears - this is a window that offers clarity and realisation, one i hope we’ll work with as we begin a new cycle at this New Moon.

Before we begin, I’d like that you to take a moment to consider the 7-7 Sirius Gateway - what insights + experiences did you notice? Remember, this is not an isolated event. This is a continual Unfolding where one moment leads to another, so first consider what new ideas popped up or what event occurred that required action? What did you create lately? What fell away? And how did you cope with the changes or opportunities that cropped up both in your inner landscape and external environment? Remember our connection with Sirius is not over - it has disappeared from the night sky for now as it is obscured by the Sun’s light, but it’s building up towards an alignment with Orion at the 8-8 portal, so if we are conscious of it, we can continue to harness its frequencies and work with it all through till the Lion’s Gate Portal.

This New Moon, the Sun-Moon-Mercury stellium conjuncts the twin stars, Castor and Pollux, in the zodiacal sign of Cancer, where Sirius resides. To help us find the frequency threads and start to understand how they are woven, I’m going to share some background so you begin to see the invisible cosmic structure that holds everything together. Many of you are familiar with Anthroposophy or the work of Rudolf Steiner. You’ll know that Steiner lectured a lot about the planets as spheres of consciousness that are also on an evolutionary arc rather than burning balls of gas floating aimlessly along in space. He also spoke a lot about the Universe and our relationship with it. What you may not know is that there is a rather niche field called Astrosophy, consisting mostly of astrological and astronomical teachings by Willi Sucher + Jonathan Hilton, built upon the foundation of the teachings of Steiner. In some ways, these can be thought of as anthroposophical Star Wisdom. If this sparks your interest, you can find a most generous collection of their resources here.

So here, we can see that the Twin stars (we’re focusing on the presence of the fixed stars Castor and Pollux, rather than the Zodiacal sign of Gemini) represent the polarity of being both a human being and also a spiritual soul - this is the spiritual impulse that “wrestles with the 2 aberrations of the human soul - flightiness vs Earth-boundness”.

The image that comes is that of the human looking into a mirror and seeing his divine soul-self in the reflection, the realisation that we are a spiritual being having a physical earth-bound experience. It is also the understanding that we are simultaneously the expression of the soul made manifest in a 3D reality, and also a human personality learning to embody and integrate the spiritual aspects of oneself. We see this in Steiner’s teachings on spiritual development as the path to becoming our Higher Selves or the highest version of ourselves.

Channelled Artwork for New Moon in Cancer with Mercury Cazimi, 2026

In The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, Hillman introduced the “Acorn Theory”. This theory states that each person is born with an innate, unique blueprint or destiny—an acorn that holds the image of the fully formed oak tree. To describe the psychological force that guides us toward this higher calling, Hillman resurrected the ancient Neoplatonic concept of the daimon (or inner genius/angel). Each of our lives is formed by a unique personal daimon that is equated to our life essence - it is a force of fate that calls us to our path, accompanies us and guides us, and it remembers our destiny. Much like Steiner’s description of our relationship with the angelic realm, Hillman noted that this higher spark feels a dual connection to both isolation on Earth and universal order:

“[Your daimon] can’t shed its own supernal calling, sensing itself both in lonely exile and in cosmic harmony.”

We also see this duality represented in systems like Human Design, where there are the design (unconscious) and personality (conscious) aspects of ourselves. Understanding this helps us step more fully into an authentic self that was not conditioned by external forces, which lines up with Steiner’s teachings that the activated higher self operates independently of outer, emotional currents, enabling objective, spiritually aligned decisions in silence. The mechanics of HD shift us from having the conscious mind try to control everything, to surrendering and shifting into Passenger consciousness, allowing life (the flow of cosmic impulse through the physical body as an innate wisdom) to take the reins.

So integrating these different modalities:

• The vehicle/body/design crystal represents the unconscious innate wisdom of the body - equivalent to Steiner’s physical/etheric bodies.

• The driver/magnetic monopole is always magnetising to us what is aligned to our frequency (destiny) - which can be equated to Steiner’s angel/higher self or Hillman’s daimon.

• The passenger/conscious mind/personality crystal represents the thinking brain trying to make sense of everything that we are experiencing. It is not meant to be the vehicle or the driver; rather it is meant to be a traveller enjoying the view out the window and having a wonderful ride.

When we find a way of bringing the polarity into union, the conscious thinking mind stops trying to make decisions based on logic, fear, conditioning, or projection (or what Jung would call “shadow”). We “step aside” (out of our own way) and trust our Daimon or Higher Self or Angelic Guides to align us to our highest potentials or destiny. And we shift out of survival mode, trying to micromanage all aspects of our lives and controlling everything and everyone, rather than gaining enlightenment, step into the role of a sacred witness, and the observer of the Unfolding of all things.

Why is this important?

Remember how in the last lunation, we had Mercury + Jupiter conjunct fixed star Procyon - a labyrinth-like space where we are asked to meander along a journey, exploring all aspects of ourselves and the environment, so we can eventually arrive at center, realising who we really are, defining ourselves in the most authentic way possible, and creating from that space?

At the last moon, if you’ve journaled about this, you might have a list of attributes or experiences drawn up. A Mercury Retrograde is a time of reflection, reassessment, re-evaluation. At this New Moon, after the consideration of the cosmic reminder from Caster and Pollux, it’s worthwhile coming back to this same list and asking yourself if this was aligned to just the human you, or if your soul-self had a different calling for you. Chances are, it might be revealed to you in the next 2 weeks that there might be something missing or misaligned that requires adjustment.

This New Moon offers an opportunity for refinement which is really important, because as we travel this space between the 7-7 and 8-8 portal, Sirius will begin a motion called the raising of the djet, where in the skies, she appears to “push” Orion as she rises - a Mystery Teaching of Rebirth and Resurrection, as we see in the myths of how Isis brings her husband Osiris back to life. This used to be one of the ceremonies for the Pharaoh, who took the place of Horus in this ritual of Renewal. (3:33 as I’m typing this) Cancer was regarded as the portal for birthing into the world. Sirius found within this region is associated with Isis, who is also known as the Great Mother.

When you embarked upon this Summer Container, you knew on some level you were ready for transformation. The passageway (between 7-7 and 8-8) we find ourselves in now gives us a chance to fine-tune (because of the Mercury Retrograde configuration with this New Moon) the version of ourselves that we are going to resurrect at the alignment of 8-8 so the question is this - will we raise a version of ourselves that is still mostly rooted in the past, or can we find new insight that will allow us to consciously rebirth a new version of ourselves that is more aligned to our Higher Self? This lunation’s deep contemplation of the Light and Dark of Castor and Pollux ultimately prompts us towards bringing both our earth-bound self and our divine self into Union.

This is a New Moon, which is a portal that brings new beginnings. Make your intention list, and include within it the intention to allow things to dissolve. It’s not the same as the “release” energy of the Full Moons; if anything, this is an active process of offering up parts of your life to fall apart, to disintegrate, and to break away and dissolve. It may even look like you are deliberately “destroying” things or parts of your life that you know do not belong in the future you envision for yourself. It may come with a lot of tears (it’s a Cancer moon after all), but angry, determined tears almost, as you declare to the Universe that you have a dream (in this case, an intention list), and you’re not giving up. You can imagine when Isis was collecting all the broken-up body parts of her dead husband from along the Nile and going, “This is a shitshow!” yet continue trudging forward anyway.

Just to put this into perspective - this is the new moon before the 8/8 portal, so we can think of it as an opening that leads into the 8/8 when Sirius + Orion + Sun + Earth come into alignment, allowing us to become receivers of these (hopefully magical) cosmic “beams”. 4 days after the 8/8 portal, we’ll step into Eclipse Season, when real transformation begins, so you can think of this next month as a time to “soften” ourselves as we get ready to enter the cocoon of metamorphosis with as little resistance as possible. Blessed Moon.

Channelled Light Codes for the Summer Container

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

I also marvel at how poetic it is that i’m returning to this series after a year since the first post was published, during the Mercury Retrograde in Cancer, where Sirius resides. Thank you for taking this journey with me. Blessed Sirius Gateway!

Channelled Art for the Sirius Gateway 2026

Babylonian & Mesopotamian Traditions

One of the earliest recorded observations of Sirius appears in the Babylonian astronomical compendium MUL.APIN (𒀯𒀳), dating back to approximately 1000 BCE, where 66 stars and constellations were compiled (from earlier Sumerian and Akkadian traditions), including indications like their rising, setting, and culmination dates. Sirius’s heliacal rising is associated with the summer solstice, which brings the hottest period of the year, and was noted to appear in the Eastern sky roughly 3 weeks after the solstice.

It was notated as KAK.SI.DI, the Arrow Star. This designation positioned it as an arrow directed toward Orion. From Richard Hinckley Allen’s classical scholarship on Akkadian / Assyrian sources, a cluster of names reveals different conceptual layers around the symbolism of the star - Arrow (weapon, direction), Dog (companion, guardian), Director (guide, leader) and Blazing One (overwhelming brightness).

• Kal-bu Sa-mas — “the Dog of the Sun” (Assyrian)

• Mul-lik-ud — “the Star Dog of the Sun” (Akkadian)

• Kak-shisha / Du-shisha — “the Dog that Leads” / “the Director” (Akkadian/Chaldean)

• Kak-shidi — “the Creator of Prosperity” (a name the Persians also applied to it)

• Su-ku-du — “the Restless, Impetuous, Blazing” (Assyrian, capturing its scintillation and colour changes to Sirius’ light)

• Mes-ri-e — possibly “the Leading One”

In Mesopotamian culture, Sirius was also associated with the goddess Ishtar, marking important agricultural periods. Earlier Sumerian sources associate it with Ninurta, the hunter deity whose god-goddess wife Bau/Gula was more associated with Venus and healing abilities. Later, when Innana absorbed Bau’s attributes, she was then viewed as a huntress with links to both Venus and Sirius both. This gives Sirius a link to the Creative and Destructive aspects of the Divine Feminine Impulse.

The MUL.APIN was the first formal compendium of star lists, the Three Stars Each texts, cataloging 36 stars, 3 for each month. Its origins trace back to the 12th Century BCE, and represents a tripartite division of the heavens:

• Northern hemisphere belonging to Enlil

• Equator belonging to Anu

• Southern hemisphere belonging to Enki

Sirius sits in the Southern Path in the realm of Enki, the God of Wisdom, Deep Waters, and Sacred Craft. Enki rules that which is in the Lower Worlds, deep waters, the underworld threshold, and hidden knowledge. Sirius as “the Dog that Leads” in Enki’s domain represents bright guidance in the liminal realm of the God of the Abyss.

Persian & Zoroastrian Traditions

Most theologically developed in the Zoroastrian tradition, Sirius is known as Tishtrya (Avestan), Tishtar (Middle Persia), Tir (New Persian), and is a Yazata - the commander in chief of all stars. It was venerated as a “god-being life force” (ahü), and “knower of riddles, most learned master” (ratü), symbolising both vital life force energy and being a master of hidden knowledge.

The Tishtar Yasht, the 8th hymn of the 21 Yashts, is dedicated to Tishtrya as a rainbringer who keeps the drought demon at bay. We discuss more of Tishtrya in the Royal Stars Series.

The etymology of the Arrow potentially traces back to a shared Indo-Iranian conceptual root for Sirius as a piercing, directed, and pointed light. In Indo-Iranian the word tigra/tigri meaning “arrow” is associated with the tri-star in the Avesta, the Persian tigra means “arrow/pointed”, the Armenian Tigran/Tigranes and Greek and Latin tigris means “tiger, pointed, sharp”.

Compilation - Channelled Artwork for Sirius 2024

Polynesian Traditions

Sirius served as the body of a “great bird” constellation called Manu, with Canopus as the southern wingtip and Procyon the northern wingtip, essentially dividing the Polynesian night sky into two hemispheres via a cosmological axis. Manu means “bird” in most Polynesian languages - the great seabird, Albatross, was the emblem of the navigator of the crossings between worlds.

Sirius is at the structural center of Manu - the declination of Sirius matches the latitude of the archipelago of Fiji at 17S, passing directly over the islands each sidereal day, so it’s not only a symbolic center but an overhead zenith star for one of the great Pacific archipelagoes.

Māori

As the Sirius in the morning sky marked summer in Greece, it marked the arrival of winter for the Māori. Its name Takurua refers to both the star and the season of Winter. The Māori also knew Sirius as Rehua, a name shared across the Polynesian traditions, appearing in the star compass lists as a navigation star, associated with the chief of stars - a being of abundance.

Hawai’i

Sirius’ culmination at the winter solstice was marked by a celebration in Hawaii known as Ka’ulua, “Queen of Heaven”.

Tahiti, Marquesas, and the Festivity Stars

Many other Polynesian names have been recorded, including Tau-ua in the Marquesas Islands, Rehua in New Zealand, and in Tahiti, Ta’urua-fau-papa “Festivity of original high chiefs” and Ta’urua-e-hiti-i-te-tara-te-feiai “Festivity who rises with prayers and religious ceremonies”.

When the bright stars Sirius and Pollux set at exactly the same time, the latitude is 18S - the latitude of Tahiti. The Polynesian navigators who watched the skies closely used the simultaneous setting of specific star pairs as latitude calculators, and Sirius was one of the primary stellar anchors of this system.

Aboriginal Australian Traditions

The Aboriginal Sky Knowledge of Australia is the oldest continual transmission of astronomical tradition on Earth, dating back at least 65,000 years - Sirius appears in 2 well-documented regional traditions and a songline that spans across the continent.

The Boorong (Victoria)

Warepil is the male wedge-tailed eagle and chief of the Nuh-rum-bung-goo-tyras, the elders who created the land. The wings of Warepil spread to either side of Sirius onto less bright stars. At night, the celestial eagle soars high in the sky, and Warepil is considered one of the spirit elders who were the first beings to inhabit Earth. The Boorong tradition pairs Warepil with a second eagle, the star Rigel in Orion, which is its female counterpart. Sirius and Rigel, the 2 brightest stars that flank Orion in the southern winter sky, became a pair of eagles with Warepil as the ancestor of ancestors.

The Wardaman (Northern Territory)

It is said that bats fly up the track of the Milky Way, through the constellation of Scorpio on the way to the Southern Cross, and trade spiritual songs as they go. The Song informs people about initiation, which was managed by the family of stars in Scorpio. Sirius, who was known as Guyaru, the Night Owl, is also a custodian of Song and initiatory knowledge, a keeper of sacred knowledge passed between worlds.

The Songline of Mulliyan-ga (the Eagle Hawk)

A Dreaming track sung across the land places Sirius at a waypoint, running from Achernar in the West overhead to Canopus, to Sirius, then to the East. Mulliyan-ga fought and was defeated by the caterpillar Yipirinya after traveling east, and his spirit remains in Achernar. This connects the Arrente people of Alice Springs with the Euahlayi people of Northwest New South Wales.

Mesoamerican Traditions

Mesoamerican astronomy was principally organised around Venus, but in Maya tradition, the first day of the Mayan year was determined by the relative position of Sirius to the sun.

In Inca astronomy, Sirius was known as Willkawara “the Sacred Star”, and symbolised the protection of agricultural life, especially tubers, which in Andean culture refer to the potatoes and root vegetables that were the foundation of the civilisation. Sirius’ helical rising was tied to the agricultural calendar, similar to the Egyptian.

Compilation - Channelled Artwork for Sirius 2024

North American Shamanic Traditions

Among many of the native american traditions, the canine association with Sirius as the Dog star is prominent.

Alaskan Inuit

“Moon Dog” :: Sirius is seen as a luminous satellite, a reflective guardian

Blackfoot

“Dog Face” :: To the Blackfoot, the Milky Way was known as the Wolf Trail, or the Route to Heaven. Sirius was the face, seen as the beginning point on earth of the Milky Way’s journey towards the heavens.

Northern Osage

“Wolf that hangs by the side of Heaven” :: Sirius is seen as a threshold guardian.

Cherokee

To the Cherokee, the “Path of Souls” refers to the journey of the dead along the Milky Way. The 2 bright stars, Sirius and Antares, were dual guardians of this path, where a spirit cannot enter without passing through these 2 guardians.

Skidi Pawnee

“The Wolf Star” :: The Pawnee felt such kinship to the wolf that the cyclical appearance and disappearance of the Wolf Star indicated the wolf coming and going from the spirit world, running down the trail of the Wolf Road, which was the Milky Way.

In the Creation legend, it was said that a great council was held to which all animals were invited. For some unknown reason, the brightest star of the South, the Wolf Star, was not invited. He watched from a distance, silent and angry, while everyone discussed how to create the earth. After the great council, the Wolf Star directed his resentment at the Storm that Comes out of the West, who had been charged by the others with going around the earth to ensure that things went well. Sometimes Sirius is also called “Fools the Wolves” because it rises just before the morning star and tricks the wolves into howling before the first light, so it continues to remind people that when it was time to build the earth, he was forgotten.

Seri and Tohono O’odham Tribes

“Dog that follows mountain sheep” :: Sirius is seen as a loyal companion to the sacred mountain sheep in this great hunt of existence.

Norse Traditions

In Old Norse, Sirius was known as Lokabrenna, “Loki’s Torch”, which indicated Sirius being an astronomical marker like the Dog Days of Summer. There were records of Hedeby, a Viking trading settlement at the southern tip of Jutland, stating that the inhabitants worship Sirius.

Vedic / Sanskrit Tradition

In Sanskrit, Sirius has 2 principal names - Mrigavyādha, “deer hunter”, or Lubdhaka, “hunter”. As Mrigavyādha, the star represents Rudra (Shiva).

In the myths, Prajapati, the creator god, represented by Orion, was overcome by desire for his daughter Rohini (Aldebaran), which invoked the wrath of Rudra (Shiva). Prajapati transformed into a deer to flee away, but Rudra slays him by piercing him with an arrow - the Orion belt stars are part of the arrow shot from the hand of the avenger, Sirius. The deity of destruction, Rudra/Shiva, is identified with Sirius as an executor of cosmic justice against transgression.

Sirius also appears in the Mahabharata as Svana, a dog of profound loyalty, sometimes known as the god Dharma, taking the form of Svana, the dog of Prince Yudhishthira. The prince and his 4 brothers and dog set out on a long, arduous journey to find the kingdom of heaven. One by one, his brothers abandoned the search until only the prince and his dog were left. Finally, they arrived at the gates of heaven, but the gatekeeper, Lord Indra, denied the dog entrance. The prince replied that he would not enter if his faithful servant was denied - he passed the test, and both were allowed through.

Chinese Tradition

The main reference for Sirius is “The Celestial Wolf” 天狼星, residing in “the well” 井宿 mansion of the 28 Lunar Mansions. The Records of the Grand Historian 史记 describes a white, dog-like celestial deity associated with the star. In the myths, the celestial dog 哮天犬 belonged to a god of justice 二郎神, who was also famed for his archery skills. Both he and his hound were seen to be the nemesis of evil spirits and demons, and they were keepers of Divine Order, though some scholars interpret the star as an omen of invasion.

Through these many traditions, there are a few interesting themes that seem to have developed independently across the different civilisations and cultures - Sirius is linked to the Arrow and dog/wolf, seen as a guardian or guide that provides Direction. It is also the brightest star in our skies that stands in this liminal space between worlds and is associated with the keeping of Cosmic Order (morals and justice).

It is not difficult to see why Sirius has caught the eye of astronomers across time and space - it blazes, scintillates, changes colours, disappears for 70 days, then rises again. It brings the floods and the heat; it is in constant conversation with the revolving of days, marking the threshold between what was and what must come next.

Sirius represents a very bright light in our sky - some call it our Spiritual Sun, or the blue sun. During this Sirius Gateway, where our Solar Sun streams the frequencies from our Spiritual Sun to us, filtered in a way where we can better receive and absorb the high-frequency stellar rays, where can we direct this energy? What is the guidance it represents, and where are we being steered towards?

All pleasantries aside, as we’ve seen, Sirius heralds the shift of a new season; it is a marker of time, and the invitation here is to flow with the cosmic forces rather than to cling to what is past. “A new chapter” always sounds good, but it does require us to first go through a conscious death, letting our current realities fall away.

Letting go of what we know and are familiar with is not easy, but this is why we need a guardian or guide - to remind us to release all that we have so as to step into a higher-vibrational reality. The wheel keeps turning; that is the natural order of things.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence. Thank you for being here.

We work with the lunations because the Sun + Moon are the main sources that stream light to Earth, meaning they carry the stellar rays to us in the most “absorb-able” way - think how Plants respond to the Luminaries, growing with the Sun + flowering with the Moon.

While this Summer Container is less about traditional astrology and more focused on the fixed stars, we are still looking at the key planetary players when they bring in prominent stellar rays from the starry realms.

The Cosmic Weather at this lunation to contemplate:

1. Mars freshly entering Gemini + immediately conjunct Uranus, re-activating the Pleiades Star Cluster from the Pleiades Gateway end of May.

   We’re being asked to examine our relationship with the Divine Feminine energies again - is it about healing the wounded feminine within? Is it about trusting it more + allowing it to lead in a more prominent way? Is it a matriarchal energy you’re being asked to step into or draw towards? Is it about new and radical ways to help others step into their sacred feminine energy?

2. Mercury draws close to conjunct Jupiter, conjunct fixed star Procyon, which was where the benefics Jupiter + Venus met (9th June), again reiterating the message of Procyon, which is described in the galactic myths as a kind of solitary inner-scape, where we retreat inward into a labyrinth-like journey into one’s grounded-center to discover + define one’s I AM.

   When Venus + Jupiter met here, we were invited to sit with our own limitations + get to know our deepest fears or pains as a clarifying exercise. Mercury’s arrival here helps bring these feelings + realisations into words, so we may articulate + find clarity - this is a part of the inner search towards self-realisation, which leads to self-definition.

   In the simplest words, what is your WHY? Why are you doing what you do? Ultimately, what is your soul trying to achieve? When this becomes clear, many decisions around your identity, mission, job, spiritual path become clarified as well. It’s likely to shed light on areas that are no longer necessary or applicable anymore, which then become excess “baggage” or outdated attachments for you to begin shedding.

3. The Nodes of the Moon sitting at the Northern + Southern Gateway, Regulus + Fomalhaut of the 4 Persian Royal Stars, anchoring a purification of sorts. Fomalhaut functions as a bit of a cosmic “containment unit” while Regulus serves to neutralise or exorcise what is no longer necessary. So here’s the contemplation for this placement, which you can apply to an observation of the collective and also directly to your own personal lives:

   Where do our vital energies need to be protected, and what are the parasitic/vampiric energies siphoning from us?

   Look to distractions that keep you away from being focused on your spiritual development - this is not about spiritual bypassing; it is about not getting so wrapped up in the “busyness” of the “real world” that you lose sight of what’s really important and impacting your personal frequency.

Gemini Constellation with Key Stars

At this lunation, the Sun conjuncts a few fixed stars from the constellation Gemini, ruled by Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, said to be stargates in the galactic myths.

Our key focus for this lunation is fixed star, Alhena, a 6th dimensional initiating temple whose frequencies can be personified as the archetype or role of the visionary, fortuneteller, clairvoyant in earthly terms. In the stories, the priestesses of Alhena are able to see into the future by understanding the structure of time, viewing time portals, and sensing the codes of remembrance, so people come to them for guidance regarding the future.

This sounds “glamorous”, but it is not an easy fate - even prophets can be questioned, doubted or accused because those receiving the messages may be unable to hear the answers they receive and so blame the clairvoyant, or project their rage and disappointment of their lives onto the divine messenger. If you have Alhena activated in your chart, this is absolutely something to be aware of if you choose to activate these stellar frequencies. If you do not have Alhena in your chart, you could absolutely ask for advice and guidance at this time since the Sun streams the rays of Alhena to all of us on Earth. If you felt strongly called to develop your own clairvoyance, this would be a good time to go into ritual and ask sincerely - a teacher/course/mentor may appear if it was meant for your highest good.

Another star activated at this lunation in this group of stargates is Tejat at 5° Cancer. It’s galactic story speaks to an emotional injury where messengers (psychics, channellers, healers) are rarely thanked for their service, in fact, their messages are likely to arrive at a critical time to turn a bad situation around, but the situation is usually dire, so the receivers of the messages rarely are in any headspace to express gratitude for the deliverers, or sometimes these messages can be hard to hear in the moment.

It sounds like a simple matter - complete your mission and don’t expect thanks. It’s a little more complicated than that. Imagine being a seer or healer, and being able to see through a person or situation with great clarity, yet not be able to deliver messages safely because those you care about or those you’re supposed to help reject you, doubt you, push you away, and perhaps even persecute you for the wisdom you have. Alternatively, you could deliver really good information that truly helps the receiver, and they become so swept away by the turn of events that they move on without any regard for the work you’ve done to help them get there. Either way, if you have Tejat activated in your personal chart, healing this trauma is part of your inner work for this lifetime, in order for you to step more fully into your soul mission. If you do not have Tejat in your chart but feel the softening in your soul as you read this story, you may befriend a mystic or visionary and provide help and support to them so they can continue their mission.

This Full Moon in Capricorn illuminates the way to the 7-7 Sirius Gateway, which opens from 3rd - 9th July, peaking on the 6th or 7th, depending on where you are on Earth. A Stellar Gateway is when the Sun aligns with a fixed star and streams its light directly to us through the Sun beams, which is our main source of light.

Full Moons are about release, so at this lunation, set the intention to release as much as you can of what no longer aligns to your highest good, so that when the Sirius Gateway opens, you’d have made space for more light from our Spiritual Sun to stream through for upgrades and integration.

There will likely be another channeling for the Sirius Gateway itself, but if you’d like to start immersing yourself in the frequencies, my collated writing on Sirius can be found at Sirius Stargazing

Blessed Moon!

Channelled Artwork for Full Moon in Capricorn

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

This was an unexpected supplement to the substantially long post on the Northern traditions, but i had a “visitation” by Tobacco today, and once i saw the words “Eastern Doorway” i understood that this needed to be included in the series, so here we are. So as mentioned, the First Nations people do not use the same language as the Persian Royal Stars, but the 4 cardinal directions are represented here too, and the understanding i received (through gnosis), is that if a practitioner was already working with the 4 Sacred Medicines, he/she can work with the 4 Royal Stars using this tradition without conforming to the recommended plants in the Picatrix.

In Indigenous and First Nations teachings, the Four Sacred Medicines are Tobacco, Sweetgrass, Sage and Cedar. These plants are central to everyday life, used in offerings, smudging, rituals, and healing ceremonies. Each holds their own energetic properties, represents one of the 4 cardinal directions, and is deeply connected to the teachings of the Medicine Wheel.

Tobacco (Asemaa) - Eastern Doorway

It is considered the first medicine gifted by the Creator, symbolising gratitude, love, and humility. It is believed to open the door to the spirit world, and so is used to communicate with the Creator, express gratitude and respect, request guidance, and carry our prayers to the Great Spirit.

Asemaa acts as the primary “activator” of the plant spirits; indigenous teachings state that plants cannot fully share their medicinal gifts until tobacco has been offered to wake their spirits. It is also offered when asking for teachings or before making a request of the earth.

i find Tobacco’s “activator” role a beautiful correlation to the Zoroastrian tradition, where the Eastern Star Tishtrya (Aldebaran) is the “star commander” of all of the other stars, taking charge of the other fixed stars of Ahura Mazda. i can absolutely see tobacco being a perfect offering to Tishtrya to bring the rains and blessings to us.

Sweetgrass (Wiingushk) - Southern Doorway

Known as the sacred hair of Mother Earth, it is known for its sweet, vanilla-like aroma, which represents love, kindness, caring, and is used to invite positive and harmonious energies into a space or ceremony after a cleansing.

Sweetgrass is almost always woven into a braid - a traditional braid uses 21 strands, divided into 3 groups of 7. The first 7 strands honour the past 7 generations behind us. The middle 7 represent the 7 Grandfather teachings (Wisdom, Love, Respect, Bravery, Honesty, Humility, and Truth). The final 7 strands look ahead to protect the next 7 generations to come. Visually, all 3 braids come together to represent the alignment of body, mind, and spirit.

At first glance, this seems the most different from the role of Fomalhaut as a defensive galactic “jail”. However, as i contemplate how Fomalhaut is also the place where we are granted spiritual, visionary, and artistic abilities, the 7 Grandfather teachings (spiritual) and braiding (artistic) seem to fit pretty well. The meditative process of braiding could likely serve as a trance or ritual that will allow the spiritual visions to come forth.

Sage (Mashkwoodewashk) - Western Doorway

A purifying medicine, Sage represents the mental state and introspection of adulthood. It is used to cleanse mind, body, and spirit, helping with the release of heavy, troubled or negative thoughts. Most commonly used in smudging to prepare a space or person for healing, it prepares the human mind to receive sacred teachings safely, and helps people approach ceremonies with a clean heart.

During a smudge, the smoke is gently brushed over the eyes (to see good things), the ears (to hear kindness), the mouth (to speak truthfully), and the heart (to maintain love and empathy).

In the Zoroastrian cosmology, the West is governed by Antares, which deals with the distribution of Tishtrya’s rainfall, also by extension, the distribution of life force energies through the gates of life and death. Sage’s connection here is indirect but profound - it is used to prepare us for ceremonies where we receive spiritual teachings, which will inevitably change us if done correctly, bringing about the death of the old version of us, and the emergence of a new version - a reorientation of our lifeforce energy and spiritual path.

Cedar (Giizhik) - Northern Doorway

Associated with the North, Winter, and the Physical Body, Cedar is a symbol of strength and protection, and a powerful protector and structural guardian. It is often used to purify a home or ceremonial area, acting as a shield from the unknown forces.

Cedar branches are often laid out on the floors of sweat lodges or hung above the entryways of homes to form a spiritual shield that blocks negative energies from entering. Medicinally, its needles are steeped as a tea, rich in Vitamin C, and used for detoxing the organs while preventing physical illness.

Winter is one of the things most traditions can agree on. In the Persian system, Regulus is sometimes termed a “bodyguard” who protects the gates of the gods, and is invoked to neutralise toxins of all sorts. We see this in parallel here with Cedar, all the way through to the use in sweat lodges as places where toxins in the physical bodies are expelled. Also, out of all 4 sacred plants, Cedar is the only tree, stretching towards the North, and also serving as the Tree of Life.

The Medicine Wheel utilises the concept of seasons and cycles, and the 4 sacred plants to teach Mino-Bimaadiziwin, “Walking a Good Path”. It is a foundational philosophy that emphasises a life of peace, balance, and harmony with all of creation, for oneself and for one’s community, and future generations. This relies on one’s ability to balance all parts of self - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual - while upholding and fulfilling one’s responsibilities. This echoes the Zoroastrian cosmology of the 4 Royal Stars not functioning autonomously, but as a complete tactical “system”.

Channelled Artwork :: Cosmic Axis Mundi

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

Both the 7-7 and 8-8 Portals are really linked to Sirius, our spiritual sun, and the brightest star in our night sky. As explored in the Sirius Stargazing Series, this star has been linked to the Mystery School of Knowledges, Teaching, Healing and Rebirth. But can we work with this energy more specifically than just setting intentions for “wisdom and awakening”?

Of course. We can absolutely work with the Cosmic Flow by understanding the stellar rays that we will be receiving at the Luna Portals, meaning by identifying the fixed stars that will be sharing their unique frequencies to us streaming through the luminaries, we can then focus and flow with their energies, and enter into the 7-7 + 8-8 portals in a more specific manner. After all, we know that focused intention is at the heart of all magical workings.

• We begin with a full moon where we set intentions for the gift of Vision this summer season, asking Sirius to grant us the ability to see into the Unseen workings through the 12 knowledges, explore the dark and light aspects of your chosen Mystery School, Anchor the Lemurian (Feminine) Way, then begin to make space for shifts during Eclipse Season.

• The Solar Eclipse will challenge us to exercise Radical Acceptance like never before; the Lunar Eclipse will invite us into Galactic Healing - not only Earth but the other star systems, after which we will be asked to step up in your communities in a much larger way to contribute to the Ascension.

• Finally, we will close this series with a channelled talisman from the (likely Lemurian) Dragons for protection (only for the container) as we prepare for a major release of what is still frozen in your hearts.

As you can see from the chart, I don’t think anyone could come up with a better “curriculum” than the stars have themselves. Just through this little exercise, you can see how “magical” the weaving of the stars can be. It’s a wonderful guidance system to work with, clear in its direction but allowing plenty of space for us to relate to them personally, and embody the stellar rays in a way that is relevant to our lives.

i don’t believe in gatekeeping, so i will be publishing much of the transit breakdown here on substack - our Spiritual Sun, Sirius, shines on all without bias, so since we’re working primarily with Sirius this Summer, i thought it only right that this is shared to those who are ready to find it.

Please subscribe if you haven’t already so you get notified prior to the lunations, and have enough time to prepare, to meditate on the themes, to sit with the energies, then observe the unfolding at the lunation. i would suggest you have a little notebook to track what happens, what comes up, what arises emotionally, what messages come by your way. The more consciously we work with the stellar rays, the more we’ll be able to notice them more obviously; in time, the pattern/weaving/wyrd will eventually reveal itself to you.

For those who are ready to “commit” to the inner work, or feel called to work with Sirius more deeply, here is the offering:

• You get an email just before each lunation (new moon + full moon each month) that brings you a message + guided contemplation specific to your personal chart, so you can be very focused about how to work with the stellar energies.

• There is only 1 singular intention here: Alignment to Soul Self + Highest Potential Timeline

• This will be for a package of 3 months (July/Sept/Oct 2026). The exchange is $66, which works out to $22/month, though you can always donate more if you feel like this brought you value. Your contribution allows me to put all this out to the public too, so Thank You.

• Sign Up period: 15th June - 22nd June 2026

DM or leave a comment below + i will email you an intake form, which will also come with your personal fixed star chart. As always, you can always reach out with your questions.

In your luna-emails, you will receive the “additional” layer to the substack posts, relating specifically to your personal charts. It will give you personal information on WHY this energy is being filtered into your life + HOW to work with it. Our charts are full of cosmic breadcrumbs, helping us find clarity in the decisions we make on how we want to live this life.

For example, you’ll see that at the Lunar Eclipse, Fixed Star Fomalhaut is heavily activated by the Sun + Moon in Pisces. It is a beautiful gateway of Divine Dreaming + in my chart, i have it exactly conjunct my Venus. This gave me confidence to essentially dedicate my life to channeling the light language artwork with no safety net, and it’s been unfolding in a really beautiful way. And since it is activated by this lunar eclipse, i will be focused on bringing forth really etheric pieces from the Divine Dreaming, probably connecting to the cosmic ocean where Fomalhaut resides.

This post is going out for the Solstice, where the Sun is at its peak, arriving in Cancer season, home of the Moon - reminding us of the light we have come to shine.

Some of the most amazing structures were built for the Solstice. From Stonehenge (UK) to Karnak Temple (Egypt), to Machu Picchu (Peru) to Chichen Itza (Yucatan), the ancients have always known to ALIGN themselves to the light.

So, let this be one of the keywords you work with for the Solstice - ALIGNMENT, which is what this entire Summer Container is intended for.

Blessings! ✨💛✨

Alignment of Sirius (Spiritual Sun), Sun and Earth

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a fixed star reading or commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

“Trust the Flow” is what my HD teacher said to me - trust that the impulse to do/learn/study/create something will come naturally to me, even if i don’t understand what it is meant for. Apparently, Quad Rights have amazing memory; some call this the “black hole” mind where we take in things in their entirety passively, without memorising or taking notes. Whatever we absorb is rarely forgotten, but will only come out naturally when we are asked by the right people or placed in the right environment.

Sounds good, right? Except here’s the caveat: despite us taking in everything in our periphery, we cannot call anything up on command - we cannot access our knowledge “on demand” (or deadline) - it stays “ambient” until the right invitation or question arrives. Which is why we’re also described as being a well that people draw from.

It is challenging, but so can every other trait in HD or life. It can be fun if i can stay in the observer frame of mind + watch how this “extraction” works. So when i come into aura with a person, + look at their charts or read their cards, + things start pouring out of me, i know that there is energetic alignment - these great questions they ask bring out the depth of what I’ve stored, so they’ll receive what they need from this interaction + i get to witness the Cosmic Orchestration at work.

It’s for the same reason why i cannot stop at linearity.

The books that say this = that, or A = B, and stop there? That doesn’t work for me. The Quad Right vision is periphery, meaning it is panoramic, seeing the entire horizon at once with a wide-angle lens. The Feminine quality of the Quad Right means we take things in without “focus”, meaning we do not “hunt” for specific details; we breathe everything in in a non-specific way.

Working with the Stars has shown me this side of myself. I started at really good resources that function more like “dictionaries”, then began to feel deeply limited by what i was learning. How could “multi-dimensional” be reduced to 1 or 2 definitions?

So i began working with the myths, because they were formed after hundreds, if not thousands of years of observation + lived experiences. Think of the Maya working with Pleiades, the Egyptians and Sirius (Isis), or the Aboriginal Australians with Fomalhaut of the Southern Skies. Their relationship with the stars is profound, and that is why i couldn’t stop at astrology. I had to go on to Astronomy + work not only with the charts, but also the actual Night Sky. This gave me a foundation to understand + interpret all that i pull forth from the Akash.

And as i allowed myself to soften my focus + float along, i began to develop a sort of “bird’s eye view” of the stars. They can mean many things indeed - they stood for different things in different times, for different cultures. Star Lore is as old as humanity - the ancients have always looked up to the Night Sky for guidance.

All were true based on the Earthbound perspective of the observers in this time-space continuum. All are not the “whole” truth, because we’ve never been able to observe the stars from a non-Earthbound perspective.

New Star Codes for Alignment

How do the Star Myths differ from Astrology?

They’re related of course - IMHO astronomy + astrology were never designed to be 2 separate systems. But somehow in the masculine development of our world, breaking everything down + separating everything, they became 2 unrelated cousins, same as Psychology + Philosophy, Philosophy + Religion… i could go on, but that’s not the point here.

I see astrology as the mathematical sequence that runs in the background; it’s a GPS system that allows us to track time-space as we know it - transits, positions, cycles etc. But the Star Myths were first observed by the ancients + meaning was given based on lived experience - when the Pleiades reached this part of the sky, it means the rainy season is arriving. These meanings were not assigned values; they were records of weather patterns + the interactions of Earth + the Celestial spheres. They are a living, breathing, constantly evolving map of our understanding of the Unfolding of the Cosmos, of which we belong.

Why do the Star Lores differ from one another?

The myths differed because the observers were situated at different locations on earth, so say, the Maya + Egyptians saw the Pleiades as symbolising different things. Our modern masculine-cultured mindset becomes nervous at this - how could 1 thing have different meanings? Can’t we just fix it at 1? 1 would be clearer, easier to control. Multi-dimensional means more than 1, or even 2. So the star lore taught in the wisdom traditions of the Andes is true, so are the teaching traditions of Persia, and also the oral traditions of Siberian shamanism. Resonance will show you where you feel drawn towards, and you don’t have to choose + be stuck at “just 1”. What if you had a past life in Egypt AND Persia AND Australia? Tracing the star myths across these different lineages may be a way for you to begin retrieving those past life memories - after all, the stars have been silently witnessing our entire Earth evolution all this time. Who else better to be record keepers?

So where does that leave us?

In my Quad Right way, i will continue to research across as many cultures as i can access. I will read books, visit websites, travel to places to watch the night sky for myself + speak to the local indigenous people so i may document their stories. At the same time, i will continue to lean into my meditations, channel the stars through the art, connect to the Akashic Records, and bring through information from there. None of which i can prove, but Gnosis is felt, not learnt. And in this way, the study + intuitive knowing form a balance between mathematics vs mystical, science vs experience, knowledge vs wisdom. Union between our own sacred masculine + feminine impulses within oneself.

I often say i’m not an astrologer. And i’m definitely not an astronomer. I’m a mystic who “sees” into the weaving of the stars, the eternal keepers of wisdom + the home of the Akash. This will be the work that i shall continue for the rest of my time on this earthly experience, which I’m pretty sure is my soul’s final physical journey.

When i look at my own chart, Achernar is a fixed star activated by both my Sun + Moon. In the Galactic myths, it is defined as “it is not through intellectual processes + efforts that you wish to gather the information necessary for the understanding; instead, you enter the world where the codes of knowledge come to life. So you simply get inside – and knowledge will be a part of yourself.”

Tell me that doesn’t align with the Quad Right manner of “Osmosis”?

Is that the only way?

No, of course not. I share my way so you understand that you can find yours too, no matter how “weird” or “different” or even outright delulu it seems compared to everyone else’s. So use the different modalities you have on hand - astrology, star myths, psychology, alchemy, human design, ancestral knowledge- and lay them side by side and find the common threads that surface. Feel how they create resonances within you, meditate with them + allow the visions to show you which frequency threads to pull on + follow. Just to be clear, we’re talking about intuition here, an innate wisdom stemming from connection to the Higher Self, not some ego-tripping feel-good narrative where you have to convince yourself you’re some Egyptian princess or Persian prince just to feel “special”.

I absolutely encourage tracking transits - focused intent is an important part of energetic alignment, + the more you immerse yourself in this material, the more in tune you become. But once the “connection” is established, you have to surrender + let the stars guide the way. It’s a little bit like “follow the yellow brick road” at this point, though it’s more like follow the trail of stars that are laid out before you (starting with your natal chart). Do you have to get-to-know ALL of your stars? Well, you can certainly try, though you might discover that some of the major stars will continue to teach + guide you for decades - each time you evolve, the stellar frequency reveals a little more, a greater perspective, a deeper understanding.

Studying from a more structured modality gives us language to understand the night sky - constellations, stars, transits, cycles, relation to agriculture or calendars - all of these are ways of logically processing the information we take in. But the journey into the stellar rays themselves- that’s mostly mystical, because science hasn’t found a way to quantify the rays nor define the light (besides burning balls of gas). We do know that the stars are light-years away from us, meaning they are ahead of us in time, which is probably why the Akashic Records are accessible through some of the Stargates. Readers can channel messages from the Akash for you, but trust me, nothing is as visceral (both affirming + shocking) as you glimpsing it for yourself. Working with the Stargates is one of the ways to connect to the Akasha (also of course, raising your frequency through spiritual development to ensure that your vibration is high enough to connect + remain stable enough to “lock in” for enough time to pull through visions).

This isn’t about one way OR the other, but bringing both into union within yourself, so in a studiously systematic way to start you off, below is the list of books I’ve found useful (in varying degrees) over the years, so a reading list of sorts, in no particular order.

• Classical Mythology of the Constellations - Annette Giesecke

• Starlore of the Constellations - Geoffrey Cornelius

• Stories in the Stars. An Atlas of Constellations - Susanna Hislop

• Written in the Stars - Alison Davis

• The Sky Atlas - Edward Brooke-Hitching

• Conceptions of Cosmos - Helge S. Kragh

• Hamlet’s Mill - Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend

• Star Stories. Constellations and People - Anthony Aveni

• Star Lore - William Tyler Olcott

• Fixed Star, Sign and Constellation Magic - Christopher Warnock

• Eratosthenes and Hyginus. Constellation Myths - Robin Hard

• Stellar Nations - Soul Families Vol 1 + 2 - Dr. Beatrix Czeizel + Anikó Greskó

• Stellar Destinies - Dr. Beatrix Czeizel + Anikó Greskó

• 36 Faces - Austin Coppick

• Wheel of Stars - darkstarastrology

• Picatrix - Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (The Aim of the Sage)

• De Quindecim Stellis - Regulus Hess + Christopher Warnock

• The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology - Vivian E Robson

• Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars - Bernadette Brady

• What We See In The Stars - Kelsey Oseid

• Mayan Astronomy: History of the Maya’s Measurements of the Planets and stars - Charles River Editors

• Third Scientific Lecture-Course: Astronomy GA 323 - Rudolf Steiner

• Isis Sophia III: Our Relationship with the Stars - Willi Sucher

• Cosmic Memory (Prehistory of Earth and Man) - Rudolf Steiner

• A Treatise on the Seven Rays - Vol. I: Esoteric Psychology - Alice A Bailey

How to get your Fixed Star Chart?

Astroseek offers a really good + free resource - fill in your birth data + in the selection, i usually set conjunctions of either 2° or 3°. You can use whichever whole sign system you are used to. You’ll then get your birth chart with a whole list of fixed stars that are “active” in your birth chart.

There are usually more stars in the list than one expects. It’s beautiful to think that so many stars, understood as stellar rays or frequencies, are present to lend us their light at the moment of our birth. If anything, it shows us that we were never here to dim our light - how could we? We have so much (star) light in us.

This post was inspired by some really great questions that came out of the Summer Offering. Thank you to everyone who brought great questions with energetically aligned intentions.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a fixed star reading or commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

So let me preface this by saying there are a lot of fixed stars in the skies; Astro-seek provides a list of 286 of them, so as the luminaries + planets move through the skies all through the year, they conjunct (meet up with) many of these stars, then stream these stellar frequencies to us here on Earth via their own planetary rays. To simplify it, you can visualise it this way - imagine each star has its own shade of glitter + each planet has its own colour of ray. When a planet conjuncts a star, its own ray of light is now also filled with glitter of that particular star (colour), so as it moves through the cycles through the year, we get that same ray of light from that particular planet but with different coloured glitter from the different stars. It’s a bit like a disco version of Care Bears!

Connecting with the fixed stars gives us a way of understanding the backdrop of our Unfolding, but if we tried to work with all of the stars, we’d be glued to charts + books every day, trying to “figure it out”.

That doesn’t mean we can’t work with the starry firmament though. Some stars are just more noticeable in the night sky, like the bright red of Arcturus, the orange of Aldebaran, the disco ball that is Vega; while others are just so well documented in history that we’ve all heard stories of them, like the Egyptian Pyramids aligned to Orion, Templo Mayor and Teotihuacan aligned to the Pleiades, or Gobekli Tepe and Stonehenge aligned to Sirius.

So in my practice, i work with a careful selection of stars each season, which will of course include the 4 Royal Stars with each turn of the wheel. This year, i thought i’d share my process more openly + take you along with me because i think there is value in learning about them, especially if you enjoy contemplation, mythology, philosophy, and if you’re also on the healing journey or a seeker on the path. i have a much more “open-ended” methodology - a reflective practice that allows us to glimpse into the patterns of the cosmic tapestry with which we are woven into while also weaving with. It may not offer quick solutions (do this for success or do that to get rich), but it allows you to find and decide meaning for yourself instead of having a book or teacher define your universe for you.

Here’s my list of selected stars to work with this Summer.

The New Moon in Gemini kicks us off in the spirit of learning with its conjunction with Orion’s Belt, offering a doorway into the 12 Knowledges of the Melchizedek Order, preparing us for what’s to come. And within the next month, our Sun conjuncts Polaris and Sirius, offering us the opportunity to go deeper with our learning, before arriving at Procyon (which was the point of the Jupiter-Venus conjunction) where we get to make tangible shifts as we collect our “rewards” for the inner work done in Gemini + Cancer season.

We then move into a slightly different stream, by shifting into the Wisdom schools, purifying ourselves at Regulus (Northern Guardian), as we enter Eclipse Season. In September, stars of the constellations of Leo + Virgo provide awakening + support around the healing arts, so we may not only learn to help ourselves but can also be of service to those around us as well.

I’ve included the month of October here even though it’s technically Autumn Season, just so you can see the flow from this New Moon in Gemini. October is a big month with major players like Spica + Arcturus offering us massive frequency upgrades - if you’ve taken up the studies through the way of the Knowledges, Arcturus will offer you a huge boost; and if you’ve been working with the Wisdom schools + purification, the Spica will bring further soul alignment through the angelic realms.

There is an immensely beautiful storyline unfolding - know that all of your decisions and efforts (no matter how little) contribute to the progression of your personal developmental arc.

In 3 weeks, the sun arrives at Sirius, our spiritual sun, which is a powerful initiation gate. If you work with Sirius, have Sirius in your chart, or want to learn more, you can revisit my in-depth Series and begin contemplating and meditating on it. The Masters of Sirius were great teachers in the legends - if there were ever a time for you to set an intention to call them in, and ask them for guidance, this New Moon would be it.

The 7-7 portal (Sun-Sirius conjunction) also opens a month-long “bridge” that links to the 8-8 portal, where our Earth + Sun (in Leo) + Orion’s Belt + Sirius align, which feels like basking on a pool chair, except we’re getting bathed in a steady stream of higher frequencies that heal our physical bodies + activate our 12-strand DNA, + upgrade our light bodies.

As you can see, while farmers labour over the crops in Summer, we too are asked to tend to our inner gardens at this time.

On that note, i’d like to do another experiment.

i’m doing a lot more focused intention + application this year with my work with the fixed stars + stellar frequencies, and one of the questions i get asked most is “does this relate to my chart personally?” While a reading can identify the stars in your chart, knowing how to work with them daily is something quite different.

Yet i see many people here who are genuinely curious, and many more who are willing to + already putting in the inner work. So, i wanted to offer a hybrid of personal coaching through the lens of the fixed stars in an empowering way. This isn’t exactly an astrological reading “telling” you what to do, but a mystical one that utilises astrology as one of its tools, bringing you into a state of gnosis (KNOWing) within yourself.

So here’s the offer:

• My publications on Substack + IG will still cover the general transit, but you get an email just before each lunation (new moon + full moon each month) that brings you a message + guided contemplation specific to your personal chart, so you can be very focused about how to work with the stellar energies.

• There is only 1 singular intention here: Alignment to Soul Self + Highest Potential Timeline

• This will be for a package of 3 months (July/Aug/Sept 2026). The exchange is $66, which works out to $22/month, though you can always donate more if you feel like this brought you value.

• Sign Up period: 15th June - 22nd June 2026

DM or leave a comment below + i will email you an intake form, which will also come with your personal fixed star chart. As always, you can always reach out with your questions.

What it gives me is an opportunity to collect data + observe the patterns of the stellar transits in real time, through the personal charts of actual human beings. What it gives you is a tangible way of focusing on the stellar rays, empowering you to make adjustments + steer your life towards greater alignment with the Cosmos. As within, So without.

There will be no one to check your “homework”, but i believe that anyone who signs up for this is ready + serious about putting in the inner work.

i’m putting out the intention for the Universe to bring to this offering resonant souls, seeking to come into harmony with the cosmos.

When i think of the Belt of Orion, i always think of the 3 great pyramids in Egypt perfectly aligned just under them - As above, So below. We were always meant to be aligned to the macrocosmic Universe, of which we are the microcosmic expressions.

Make moon water. Set your intentions, explore the Knowledges, take up a course, learn something meaningful. This is a powerful gateway for growth + intellectual development that sets off an energetic throughline that extends into October.

Blessed New Moon in Gemini! ✨🌙✨

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

As we did when we began this series, the thought of ancient astronomy brings us to Babylonian times - the clay tablets, zodiac, and planetary records that developed into the Greek and Western astronomical traditions. This lineage is rigorous and serves as the foundation of the traditions we have inherited today, with the earliest systematic records dating to 700 BCE, while earlier Assyrian and Sumerian traditions reach back to 1200 BCE.

Yet the chambered tomb tradition in Britain and Ireland began around 4000 BCE, remaining active through to approximately 2000 BCE, predating the earliest Babylonian star catalogues by over 800 years, and the formal systematic Babylonian astronomical record by over 1,300 years. The great tomb passage in Ireland’s Boyne Valley, Newgrange, dates back to 3200 BCE, older than the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge’s stone phase, and the Sumerian writing. These megalithic builders had no writing, no formal astronomical school, no institutional tradition. What they had was land and sky, and the patience to observe the celestial patterns.

Celtic and Megalithic astronomy looks different because it was an older tradition, oral instead of written, architectural instead of mathematical. While the Babylonians recorded the sky in cuneiform and passed down these teachings for posterity, the ancient Celts embedded their knowledge directly in the monuments and passages that aligned with the sun and stars, and required you to physically be there to receive the transmission. Both are precise. Both are reverent.

The Megalithic Layer - An Architecture of Observation

In the megalithic tradition, the observatories were also tombs, as the ancestors were keepers of the cosmic knowledge and so, to align the burial chamber with the solstice sunrise was to connect the dead with the turning of the year, and to connect the living who gathered there at the liminal moments with both.

At Newgrange (3200 BCE), the winter solstice sunrise enters through a precisely cut roof-box above the entrance and travels the full length of the 19m passage to illuminate the inner chamber for 17 minutes. This alignment was deliberate, calculated through years of observation and has held for over 5,000 years. Most Irish stone circles are oriented to the winter sunset in the southwest, suggesting calendrical purposes relative to the solar year. The 4 solar markers, solstices and equinoxes, are marked across the megalithic landscape with remarkable consistency.

The megalithic star lore did not survive as written records, but traces can be found in architecture, Irish mythology, and old Welsh naming traditions.

• Cygnus, the Swan - Newgrange’s passage tomb is linked to a line of sight pointing towards the rising place of Deneb, the tail of Cygnus, reflecting the constellation’s position near Polaris - the Swan, a sacred bird in the tradition associated with the Otherworld.

• Taurus, the Bull - in megalithic Portugal, researchers found a 6,000-year-old passage tomb oriented towards the Serra de Estrela (Star Mountain Range), which allows a viewer to see the heliacal rising of Aldebaran in early spring, which was a signal for herders to move their livestock from low valleys to high mountain pastures.

• Leo, the hound - Seen by the Irish as Cú, the hound - there were no lions in north Europe, but the hunting hound was considered a noble creature.

• Orion, giant-hunter - Many of the giants in Irish/Celtic myth were inspired by the Orion constellation, a giant figure with belt and weapon

• The Pleiades, An Stróilín — “The straggling little stars” - were watched for timekeeping across Ireland, their rising and setting indicating the most sacred points of the Celtic year.

The Druids were the priestly, scholarly, judicial class of the Celtic society. They trained for 20 years, learning about the sky, law, genealogies, and sacred stories by oral tradition only - knowledge transmitted through relationship, which cannot be seized or reinterpreted by a conquering power. When Rome/Christianity destroyed them, the astronomical knowledge became hidden - into the festivals, folk practices, names for stars in vernacular languages, and the stories told to children at the threshold of the seasons.

Wheel of the Year as Celtic compass rose - 4 directions, 4 festivals, 4 seasonal qualities

The Wheel Of the Year :: The Celtic Four Directions

The 4 great Celtic festivals are the cross-quarter days which, together with the solstices and equinoxes, divide the year into 7 equal portions. Beneath the solar structure of the wheel lies an older, stellar mechanism. The 2 most celebrated festivals, Beltane and Samhain, are actually tracking the Pleiades. At Beltane, the Pleiades rise heliacally, just before dawn in the east, announcing the light half of the year. At Samhain, the Pleiades culminate at midnight in the West at Antares, where the veil thins. The Northern traditions lit bonfires at both fire festivals, which sycnchronistically mirror the Maya lighting the New Fire in the South. Again, we see this East-West axis marked by Aldebaran and Antares serving as a geometric anchor to a sacred stellar tradition.

When much of the ancient ways were deemed “pagan” and erased by Christianity, the Celts continued hiding their knowledge in stories passed down, veiled in the fairy lore that possibly seems “harmless”. We see this in the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were the divine bearers of druidecht (druidry), fis (knowledge), and fáitsine (prophecy), who withdrew underground into the sídhe, the fairy mounds, and ancient megalithic monuments. In the Lebor Gabála Érenn (the Book of Invasions), they are described as arriving from four mystical cities, each oriented to a direction, each associated with a seasonal star:

“Wind comes from the spring star in the East, fire from the summer star in the South; water from the autumn star in the West, wisdom, silence, and death from the winter star in the North.”

These bearers of cosmic knowledge became the hidden folk or fairy people, unseen by the world and only accessible during the liminal, Beltane and Samhain. The sídhe, fairy mounds, are the ancient passage tombs astrologically aligned by the megalithic builders thousands of years ago before the Celts arrived. The Celts inherited them, recognised them for what they are, and encoded their understanding of the divine race within them. So these fairy mounds are threshold places, which when aligned to Samhain (via Antares), become physical portals of that crossing into the Otherworld.

The Celtic Wheel of the Year and Persian Royal Stars are both expressions of the celestial compass rose, mapping the 4-fold geometry of the year’s turning, albeit with different names. Aldebaran, the eastern guardian, is Beltane, the eastern threshold; Antares, the western guardian, is Samhain, the western threshold. In Persia it is a star, in the Celtic tradition it is a festival. Instead of pointing at the stars, the Celts pointed at the earth so we might feel the moment, understanding this is the threshold - the star lore is now earthbound, embodied, experiential, and impossible to confiscate.

The Norse Vikings

What the Church could not eradicate from the Celts, who embedded knowledge in monuments that were difficult to destroy and fairy-lore that was impossible to un-tell, they accomplished with the Norse. We know that they must have had astronomical traditions - they were seafarers who crossed the North Atlantic; they have rune names that encode the Pole Star; they have mythical creatures who represent cycles and seasons. Yet the knowledge that was passed down by oral tradition by skalds and practitioners was mostly lost until the Eddas, which were notations in the 13th century by Christian Icelanders like Snorri Sturluson.

But like the Celts, what remaining knowledge was hidden - in the myths and symbols. To retrieve this, we have to read the stories a little differently.

The Elder Futhark runes are symbols that serve as a map for the cosmology of the Nordic myths, and when looking for astronomical knowledge, might be seen as coordinates.

• ᛏ Tiwaz :: Named after the God Tyr, who was Sky-Father and Sword-God. He was a warrior whose duty defined the life he led, one of duty and sacrifice, characterised by Divine Justice, immovable faith and high order. Teiwaz is arrow-shaped, likened to a spear which points in a direction, suggesting motion, and steering us towards the Pole Star (Polaris) or Tir-Star, which is always upon the course of the shifting night sky and consistently pointed north. The Tir-Star is sometimes called a need-nail or a sky pillar that holds the worlds in place, and around which the heavens revolve. This central and unmoving position is symbolised by the cosmic column, Irminsul, which upholds the entire universe. This is the sacred pillar of the Sky God, supporting the Ordered Worlds.

• ᛋ Solwulu :: Sol is the rune of the Goddess of the Sun, Sunna, who drives the solar chariot across the heavens, bringing light to the lands and oceans below. All 3 surviving rune poems describe the sun explicitly in terms of its use by sailors: light for sailors, the joy of the traveller returning home, the brightness that guides the journey. Viking navigation depended on solar positioning with extraordinary precision, using shadow boards, the *sólarsteinn* (Iceland spar crystals that locate the sun through overcast skies), and careful horizon reading. Sol is how we find our way back home (North).

• ᛁ Isa :: Isa is frozen water, holding in the rolling astral tides and reducing all things to the simplest possible form – a single line binding heaven and earth. Ice and fire are the two key elements in the Norse creational myths, the polarities of light and dark, masculine and feminine, order and chaos, which are the manifestations of Hagalaz and will be the final forces predicted to reign over the world at the end of days. Sometimes Isa is portrayed as a cold yet beautiful bridge between dimensions, one that must be crossed before the ice melts and the opportunity fades - meaning this is the liminal space where we find connection of sky and earth, referring to the Milky Way, which can only be seen in the season of Winter.

• ᛃ Jera :: The rotation of the seasons brought an understanding of the universal laws that kept all things in running order, the turning of the wheel endlessly churning and regenerating itself with each revolution. The rune of Harvest and cyclical time represents the calendar and the shift of the seasons - the ancients only had 2, winter and summer.

• The 3 Aetts :: the division of the 24 runes into 3 paths represents the worlds of Yggdrasil, the Axis Mundi (Asgard-Midgard-Underworld), providing a way of understanding the cosmic architecture, similar to the 3 Paths of the Gods in Babylonian traditions (Enlil-Anu-Ea).

In Norse cosmology, the star associated with Odin is Orion, while Loki’s torch is associated with Sirius, the brightest star. The trickster god has 3 children, all of whom have a part to play in bringing about Ragnarök, the end of the world. Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, was described as encircling Midgard, which represents the Ecliptic belt, marking the boundary between the celestial world above and the chaos below the horizon. It is said that when he releases his tail, Ragnarök begins. This refers to the precession of the equinox, when the precession has moved far enough that the nodes and markers no longer align, heralding the time of a new cycle.

Fenrir, the great wolf, appears to be a contradiction - researchers identify him with Scorpio (the southern constellation at the western node of the sky, where the ecliptic and Milky Way intersect most dramatically), while Norse astronomical tradition places his counterpart Garm, at the Hyades in Taurus given that the V-shaped cluster forms the wolf’s open mouth at the eastern node, adjacent to Aldebaran and the Pleiades. I see this aligned beautifully with the Aldebaran-Antares axis in the Persian tradition - a test of integrity and the release of fear and rage. We see both themes in his story - the God’s fear of Fenrir caused them to try to trick him into being chained, which resulted in the test of integrity that forced Fenrir to take Tyr’s arm - this is the self-fulfilling prophecy of Ragnarök where Fenrir eventually kills Odin, the All-Father.

Fenrir’s children are Sköll and Hati, the wolves that chase the sun and moon respectively. In the Prose Edda, these wolves will keep the sun and moon moving in perpetual motion, and whenever Sköll gets close enough to almost swallow the sun, a solar eclipse occurs. Eventually, the chase ends with the cataclysmic events of Ragnarök; both wolves will capture and devour their prey, plunging the world into absolute darkness. Tracking of the Sun and Moon was important for the people, and these stories show that the Norse tracked, understood, and had explanations for celestial mechanics and predictions of the cosmic cycles.

Hel, described as half-living, half-dead, crosses freely between the world of the living and the dead. Her name means “to conceal” - the wisdom hidden in the liminal; her astronomical identification is a “crossing point” where the Milky Way (Helweg, the road to Hel’s realm) intersects the ecliptic. This is where the equator crosses the sun’s path - one path of the living sun, the other the path of departed souls.

This crossing happens at 2 points in the sky - 1 near Gemini-Taurus, close to the Pleiades and Aldebaran, at Heimdall’s upper gate and the beginning of Bifröst. The other is at Scorpius-Ophiuchus where Antares is, at the galactic center where the dark rift opens into the cosmic underworld. Hel stands at the southern crossing - Helweg runs from Heimdall’s gate in the north of the Milky Way all the way down to Hel’s crossing in the south, both flanking an end of the spindle of the Milky Way itself, ascent or descent, depending on the direction of the soul.

The Hellewagen, Wagon of the Dead, travels the Helweg and has been identified by Norse astronomical researchers with the constellation Pegasus, which lies along the Milky Way’s path extending southward towards the southern fish, where Fomalhaut lights up the celestial seas. Here in the myth, we see that the soul’s journey ends at The Solitary One in the primordial ocean.

Ragnarök - The Precession of the Equinox

The structural parallel between Ragnarök and the Maya Bacab system is not incidental. The 4 Bacabs (guardians) held up the sky at the 4 cardinal directions, and at the end of each great cycle, they “released” their positions, the sky fell, and when the 4 new Bacabs took their places at the 4 nodes, a new cycle began. Ragnarök follows the same logic. The Fimbulwinter comes - 3 winters without summer; the agricultural calendar fails, the seasonal structure breaks down. Then the serpent releases his tail, and the wolf breaks his chain, and the world collapses.

But then, a new earth arises and Baldr, the shining god who was first to die, is the first to return. In the myths, a daughter of the sun replaces the sun who was swallowed, and the surviving gods, younger and less burdened by the weight of the old order, led the new humans into the next era. A new rotation of guardians begins. Ragnarök is not an apocalypse; it is metabolé (cosmic metabolism).

Because the Milky Way rises lower in the northern skies, the dark rift is less dramatically visible, which means the Norse could not see the galactic center with the same clarity as the Maya at their laitude, yet we know they found it - In the myths, we see that they placed the road of the dead along the length of the Milky Way, had Fenrir guarding the western crossing (Antares), and Heimdall at its northern gate. Hel, the original Crone, and the Queen of the Underworld, sits at the threshold, between worlds.

From Siberia to North America

The Siberian and Central Asian shamanic traditions approach the 4-fold structure from a vertical angle, organised around the World Tree (or Axis Mundi) rather than 4 directions of the horizon. The horizontal structure is present nonetheless, woven into the drum, tent and landscape. The World Tree connects the Upper World (celestial gods and spirits), the Middle World (humans and animals), and the Lower World (ancestors and transformation). The Pole Star sits at the Apex of this axis, the nail of the sky, a fixed point around which all else rotates. Shamanic flight travels this axis, ascending through multiple heavenly layers to reach the summit to meet the highest spirits. We see this in the structure of the tent (yurt) - the smoke hole at the top is the portal to the sky, the central hearth is the axis, the circular form mirrors the circular vault of the heavens. As above, So below.

Within this vertical cosmology, the 4 directions organise the middle world. In the shamanistic traditions, the governing entity is Möngke Tenger, the Eternal Blue Sky overseeing 99 Tenger (sky deities or heavenly spirits) who represent the cosmic forces of the Universe. The Tengers are categorised based on cardinal directions, morality, function, and their relationship with humanity. In this practice, all things are interconnected, infused with spirit, and hence, all should exist in harmony with each other.

The 55 Western Tengers are the White Deities, benevolent in nature, peaceful and life-giving. Led by Qormusata Tngri (Khormusta), an active ruler of the sky tied to the origin of fire and creation, they protect humanity, summon rains, bring fertility, guard livestock, bestow prosperity and grant healing. Close to the people, they are called on to bless marriages and livestock, pray for rain and conduct purification rituals.

The 44 Eastern Tengers are the Black Deities, said to be terrifying, destructive and wrathful. Led by Ataa Ulaan Tenger, the Fierce Red Sky God, they represent the destructive forces of nature and karma that must be appeased, redirected or balanced. They are not evil, but seen as spiritual warriors associated with the force needed to neutralise adversity, illness, (military) conflict and natural disasters. Black Shamans are feared for their immense power, but are called on to fight malevolent spirits, break curses and guide souls into the Afterlife.

Illustration :: Symbols on the Tengerism Shaman Drum

The Cosmic Hunt

One of the oldest known myths originating in the Upper Paleolithic era, deeply woven into Siberian shamanism and Tengerism, and preserved for over 15,000 years, the Cosmic Hunt traces back to the time of the ancient hunter-gatherers, explaining the movement of the stars through an endless pursuit across the celestial skies. It is a cosmology that provides a way of understanding how the universe functions, explaining the cycle of seasons as well as the Milky Way.

Each tribe has its own variation, but the foundational narrative details a massive, sacred animal that steals the sun or flees from earthly hunters and leaps into the heavens to escape. Usually a Celestial Elk or Bear, it is pursued by a hunter (usually an ancestral hero or shamanic figure) into the realm of the sky, aided by tracking dogs. This hunt never truly ends - the animal, hunter, and hounds are frozen in time, living on as the stars we see in the night sky. This predates the Greek names for constellations, so we see the Cosmic Hunt mapped using 2 variants.

• The Big Dipper (Ursa Major) :: In Western and Central Siberian traditions, the primary theatre of the hunt is represented by the Big Dipper. The Bowl represents the body of the Celestial Elk or Bear running across the sky, the 3 handle stars represent the 3 hunters in pursuit, and Alcor (a tiny star next to Mizar) is either the loyal hunting dog or the cooking pot the hunters brought along to prepare the game.

• Orion’s Belt :: In South Siberian and Central Asian Tengerist traditions, Orion’s Belt represents 3 stags, deer or antelopes running in a straight line, while Betelgeuse is often seen as the arrow shot by the celestial hunter which pierces the game.

The Medicine Wheel

Somewhere between 15,000 - 20,000 years ago, the Cosmic Hunt crossed the Bering crossing into the Americas, with the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers following and tracking large game from Siberia into North America, who brought their oral traditions, sky maps, and shamanistic worldviews. Researchers proved that the Eurasian and Native American versions share an identical ancestral blueprint, traveling with the migratory waves. The Big Dipper tradition is preserved by the tribes in northeastern and western North America, while the Orion Belt Variant settled primarily in the American Southwest and Great Basin. Details were adapted by the Indigenous nations to fit their local environment, but for most part, they had preserved the ancient framework - the most notable change being that the prey transformed to the Celestial Bear (Muzzu-kumiq), reflecting the apex animal of their region.

The Medicine Wheel demonstrates the 4 directional cosmology as an astronomical instrument serving as a map (7 sacred directions both horizontally and vertically), observations of astronomy, ceremonial space, calendar and a teaching about the nature of existence. The oldest confirmed example, the Majorville Medicine Wheel in Alberta, is approximately 5,000 years old, parallel to Stonehenge’s early phases and the megalithic builders of Ireland.

The Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming (80 feet diameter, 28 spokes mirroring the lunar cycle, set at 9,642 feet elevation) was part of an archaeoastronomical investigation by John Eddy in 1974 which revealed this stellar observation:

From a single cairn (Cairn F), sighting along different spokes marks the heliacal risings of 4 key stars:

• Fomalhaut - rises 28 days before the summer solstice (warning: to prepare)

• Aldebaran - rises 2 days before the solstice (signal: the time has arrived)

• Rigel - rises 28 days after the solstice (first marker of departure)

• Sirius - rises 28 days after Rigel, at summer’s end (final marker: leave the mountain before winter)

The wheel’s other cairn alignments mark the summer solstice sunrise and sunset exactly. The 28 spokes track the lunar movements. Astronomer Jack Robinson confirmed that the Fomalhaut alignment held with precision during the period 1200 - 1700 AC. Here, 2 of the 4 Persian Royal Stars are featured as primary solstice markers.

The Pawnee Lodge

Most structurally equivalent to the Persian Royal Stars, the Skidi Pawnee tradition sites that the 4 posts of the Pawnee earth lodge that hold up the roof represent the 4 stars that hold up the sky. The Lodge is the microcosm of the Cosmos.

In the stories, Capella and Antares are married, while Vega and Sirius are married. Together they hold up the sky. The Pawnee also organised their village layout to mirror the sky: “The huts in each village were arranged according to a pattern reflecting the special star group above. The Council of Chiefs represented their style of governance, where decisions were made in a circle.” Polaris was their key star, the representation of the Supreme God Tirawahat.

The Andean Cross

Note: I’ve grouped the Andean cosmological tradition in this post because they mirror the northern shamanic systems, despite having developed independently. As such, it made sense to discuss them together.

The central Andean cosmological symbol is the Chakana, the Andean Cross, a stepped cross derived from the Southern Cross (Crux constellation), which serves the Southern Skies the same way Polaris does for the Northern Skies, marking the south celestial pole and anchoring the rotating heavens.

Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, literally means “the four quarters of the world”. Its capital Cusco was seen as the axis mundi, and from it 4 sacred roads radiated to the 4 quarters of the empire, mirroring the 4 stars of the Southern Cross and 4 divisions of the cosmos. Andean cosmology is reflected in the sky (Crux), the earth (Cusco and its roads), and the human body (4 limbs from a central core).

The Cosmic Hunt has been documented as one of the oldest mythological complexes we can trace, said to predate the separation of Siberian and North American peoples, making it potentially the oldest continuous myth on earth, carried across the Bering Land Bridge during the last glacial maximum. For the Evenki tribe of Siberia, the elk is eternally hunted; in the Plains nations of North America, the buffalo below mirrors the great animal above. The hunt is sacred to life here on earth, and cosmically enacted in the ever-turning seasons and skies.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

So let’s begin. A Blue Moon is not blue, but it is a rare occurance. Given the moon’s 28-day cycle, we get a New Moon and a Full Moon every month. When we end up with 2 full moons in a month, the 2nd is called a blue moon. Given that we had a full moon on May 1st, and will have another tomorrow on May 31st, tomorrow’s moon qualifies as a blue moon.

31st May is also Vesak Day this year, a day when Buddhists celebrate 3 major milestones in the life of Gautama Buddha - his birth, death, and the achieving of enlightenment. Calculated using a lunar system, it falls on the day of the first full moon in the ancient month of Vaisakha, so the dates change every year since we are using the Gregorian calendar.

So on to the chart, where we can look at the actual data (mathematical points) of this Blue Moon. As always, there are a lot of fixed stars that will be activated in the chart, given that there are many stars in the night sky, but i’ve labelled the stars we’ve been discussing so we can get more familiar with their stellar frequencies, and also understand the gravitas of this chart.

We can see the geometry of the fixed cross instantly, with the luminaries activating the East-West axis that is watched over by Aldebaran and Antares. The Sun-Aldebaran conjunction also makes this the Aldebaran Gateway, because the Sun is our primary source of light in this solar system. Fomalhaut has been activated for a while by way of the North Node. And for my location (this won’t be for everyone), Regulus joins the party by way of the MC at the time of this lunation.

We continue to have Uranus streaming Pleiades frequencies to us - the Pleiades being very much linked to Aldebaran in the myths. Also 2 very prominent stars, Sirius and Polaris (the Pole Star), are also sharing their stellar rays to us, filtered through the lens of Venus and Mercury, respectively. Sirius, in the Avestan tradition, was the first star associated with Tishtrya, before it was changed to Aldebaran. Polaris is the North Star, which is at the top of the vertical axis of the holographic celestial compass rose that the 4 royal stars form.

In a nutshell, a way of orientation is illuminated at this full moon, with the protection of the 3 guardians/archangels and blessings of ascended master Buddha. A full moon is a time of culmination and release - the Sun-Aldebaran conjunction brings life-giving rains to support this release; Moon-Antares brings wisdom in that distribution, so where in our life have we either held on to or given too much and need to let go in order to achieve better balance and orientation? North Node-Fomalhaut yearns for something more divinely inspired - something needs to give, because we cannot gain visionary perspective without first dissolving more of this density that holds us back.

Uranus-Pleiades brings revolutionary perception shifts to support the healing and rise of the Divine Feminine impulse, Venus-Sirius (Isis) indicates a rebirth of this impulse after trial-by-fire, and Mercury-Polaris brings new meanings to the understanding of what and where our True North is. Lean into the receptive and intuitive wisdom within, that release of control (masculine) can be incredibly clarifying at this time.

i wish i could say “look at all these amazing stars, what an auspicious time this is!”, but this is a karmic pressure point. It’s certainly not perilous, but there is Destiny at work here. With the presence of 3 guardians, we’re almost certainly at a point of initiation, which means we’re going to be tested collectively. Our integrity and sovereignty will be tried, and our choices and actions will show if we are who we say we are, and reflect where we are in the vibrational field. Some of us will step through the portal, some won’t. Intentional choices matter greatly at these points of inflexion; purification needs to occur. After all, rebirth and renewal come only after certain “death”, and an emptying needs to first occur before the Universe can pour its celestial waters into you.

i could go on forever, but i’m not sure that is conducive, so let’s just focus on 1 repeating pattern as an anchor for your full moon rituals - Life-giving Water. Aldebaran is the rain-bringer, Antares distributes it to maintain cosmic harmony; Isis (Sirius) pours the water of life to regenerate the dead (by way of her Ankh), and Fomalhaut is the star where the celestial oceans pour into the open mouth of the fish. The choice we have at this lunation, both collectively and individually, is to intentionally bathe in the waters that bring vital energy, which also means the need for clearing out the waters that are no longer life-giving.

Use the illumination of this full moon to reflect on all areas of your life - where have the waters turned stale and what people/situations are no longer enhancing or expanding your vitality? These need to be compassionately, but firmly, released. With the Moon on Antares (Gateway to the Underworld), this will include ancestral clearing and healing, so if there are traditions that are no longer supporting your growth, it might be time to let those go, no matter how many generations you’ve had them in your family. We cannot bring about a rebirth if we’re still clinging to the past.

It’s also not lost on me that we’re discussing compasses and orientation at the full moon of the Archer, for it is said that his arrow never misses its mark. Ruled by Jupiter, Sagittarius’ arrow is always aimed for the highest possible truth. And with a full moon, the sun is always directly facing the moon, so this particular arrow is aimed at the Bull’s Eye (Aldebaran). Let go of everything that no longer aligns with your truth (authenticity and integrity both), and let your arrow fly free.

P/S :: i was reading an article tonight about neuroplasticity and was reminded of the brain’s ability to re-wire or re-generate neural connections, which was perfect for this blue moon. When you stop holding on to all the “i-can’t-do-that”(s), you might be really surprised at all the possibilities that arise, showing you what you-CAN-do instead. It’s not magic, it will take work, for after the optimistic expansion of Sagittarius comes the pragmatic Capricorn who says, “So, you’re sure you want to do this? Great, here are all the things you need to do to achieve mastery.” One thing about Jupiter and Saturn, neither wants you to play small, and in their own ways, they will push you towards stepping into and owning your fullest potential.

This series with the Royal Stars will eventually land at the original purpose of this system - a celestial compass rose, marking the 4 directions of the sky and allowing the seeker to orient without directing one’s way. It shows you where you are in relation to the world around you, but you make your own choices and decide what you want to align to. The sky full of stars is the fabric woven by the great cosmic loom; we get to choose how we want to work with the threads now made visible by astronomy and mythology, cosmology and epistemology.

i am not religious, but i was fortunate to have learnt about Buddhism growing up. Two things always stuck with me. From the 4 Noble Truths, we can be more fully engaged with life without unnecessary attachments, which cause the illusion of suffering. From the Noble Eightfold Path, Wisdom is characterised by Right View and Right Intention, which requires us to understand the nature of reality while continually choosing the way of kindness and compassion.

As we bring this post to a close and get ready for the Blue Moon, i’ll leave you with this contemplation. When Tishtrya (Aldebaran), the Commander-in-Chief of the stars, battled Apaosha, the drought demon, he initially lost due to the lack of power from human prayer. This tells us that we live in a reciprocal reality, where our intentions, offerings, words, and deeds matter. We live in unprecedented times, and many things are not right. Where we choose to put our attention and energy will make a difference, even if we seem tiny in the grand scheme of things.

This channelled artwork is inspired by Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, a devotional chanting practice perceived by the Buddhist priest Nichiren (1222-1282).

Loosely translated to “Devotion to the Mystic Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra”, the belief is that this is the law of the truth of the universe, and by reciting the title and parts of the Lotus Sutra, we awaken by resonance our internal enlightened nature, giving us the key to unlocking our own Buddha nature.

This is my own version of Nichiren’s Gohonzon, the calligraphic mandala, and was made as a meditative dedication to The Great Mystery that is our cosmos. Happy Vesak Day to all who celebrate. May the Peace and Compassion that formed the core of Buddha’s teachings permeate all aspects of our lives. Blessings.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

I’ve arranged these in chronological order, just so we get a sense of where we are in history while this journey takes us quite literally across the globe. Remember that the “official term” of the 4 royal stars did not exist until the time of the Zoroastrians, so in all of these cultures we are about to discuss, the stars will have their own names, language, and cultural significations. It’s wondrous to think that across time and space, the ancients have looked up at the night sky and found guidance, wisdom, and solace - these same 4 stars remained steadfast and clearly visible from every inhabited continent, hence they were always understood as being important markers.

May the explorations of these myths allow us to glimpse for a moment what they saw from where they were, so we too may walk with them, try to understand why they aligned their lives and architecture to the stars, and learn how to orient ourselves while navigating this journey with the guidance of the stars. If you haven’t read Part I, you can find it here.

Aboriginal Australian Sky Knowledge

Aboriginal Australian astronomical knowledge is among the oldest in the world; remarkably, it’s been continuous for over 40,000 years. We see it integrated in all aspects of life - the luminaries, planets, stars, Milky Way, and the dark clouds within it can all be found in the songs, stories, art, and ceremonies in the Indigenous way of life. Central to all of this is the Creation Myth of The Dreaming - a living blueprint that connects humans, the land, and the spirit world together. Through the behaviour of celestial beings, Sky Knowledge serves to impart time keeping (calendar), law, navigation, weather forecasting, and moral teaching.

Looking up, they saw the Milky Way as their great cosmic river. The Yolngu people of Arnhem Land describe it as ‘a great river in the sky- its stars the campfires of ancestral fishermen casting nets of light. It was ‘a sacred pathway that connects the past, present, and future, representing the connection between all living things.’

While most astronomical traditions around the world looked to the stars and tried to connect these points of light, Aboriginal astronomy had the distinctive tradition of Dark Constellation Astronomy, which involved seeing significant patterns in the dust lanes between the stars, which required intimate knowledge of the Night Sky and long-term observation of the subtle differences in the density of the stars. We see this later with the Incas - Both cultures developed independently but had similar practices because of their geographical locations in the Southern Hemisphere, where the core of the Milky Way galaxy rises highest in the sky and casts the most defined dark shadows of cosmic dust, allowing those watching the night skies to view the core and dust lanes of the Milky Way most vividly.

The most famous of the Aboriginal dark constellations is Gugurmin, the Emu in the Sky. It is shaped by interstellar dust clouds in the Milky Way, with its head formed by the Coalsack Nebula (dark patch next to the Southern Cross) and body stretched through the dust lanes towards Scorpio. Its rising and setting through the year sees the Emu changing shapes, which signals seasonal events most accurately, especially the collecting of emu eggs. In the centre of its body sits the bright red star of Antares, the Heart of the Scorpion. It’s little wonder Antares is the most documented of the 4 royal stars in the Aboriginal tradition.

In Wardaman astrological tradition (Northern Territory), one of the most detailed systems describes Antares as Merrerrebena, wife of the Sky Boss Nandi, whose role is to mandate ceremonial law. Here, each star in the body of the constellation of Scorpio represents a different person involved in the Initiation ceremony, which marks the boundary between the light and dark halves of the year, a gateway through which all significant transitions pass. This parallels Antares’ role as a portal to the Underworld in the other traditions, for we see her here as governing the Laws of Transformation. The Boorong People of North-West Victoria see Antares as Djuit, son of Marpeankurrk, with the stars on either side of him being his wives, and the Scorpio constellation structured as a family, representing social rules.

Research from the Australian Indigenous Astronomy site shows that Antares would have been the primary seasonal indicator in Arnhem Land for the Aborigines over 7000 years ago, until the precession of the equinox caused Arcturus to replace it in that role - indicating evidence of Antares’ role as a practical agricultural and ecological calendar star for at least 7000 years.

Across from Antares sits another orange-red star, Aldebaran. Oral traditions describe the variable nature of these bright red stars, including also Betelgeuse, documenting the brightness changes across time, showing us that the Aborigines were meticulous observers of the Night Sky. A Kokatha oral tradition from the Great Victoria Desert describes Nyeeruna (Orion), a vain hunter in love with the Yugarilya (Pleiades), protected by their Eldest sister Kambugudha (Hyades star cluster), of whom Aldebaran is the brightest star. A story that tells of protection, family duty, social relations, and the consequences of arrogance. How this lines up with the Greek myths that both the Pleiades and Hyades were daughters of Atlas, or how the Persians saw Aldebaran as the “Follower” that protected the Pleiades, is possibly the perfect geometry of cosmic orchestration.

Uluru, the Great Red Rock, a sandstone formation in central Australia, has been a cultural and spiritual nexus for the Anangu for over 10,000 years. It is known for its rock face changing colours at both sunrise and sunset, as well as its connection with the stars and being an integral part of the Dreamtime stories. Incredibly, this naturally occurring formation aligns with the setting sun at the solstices and equinoxes, hence it has always been an integral part of developing calendars, informing rituals and ceremonies, and forecasting seasonal change.

Uluru at dawn, 8th August 2023 - this was taken on my iphone so the resolution is not great, but this moment was so special to me, and yes, you may not see it so well, but Aldebaran and Regulus are both here.

Egyptian Astronomy

Stone circles at Nabta Playa in Upper Egypt from 5000 BCE showed us that the practice of astronomy in Egypt dates back to prehistoric times, and was central to the religious life of ancient Egypt before the ages of the pharaohs. The 3 great pyramids of Giza are aligned to the cardinal points with remarkable accuracy, achieved without modern instruments, only by astronomical observations; Egyptian temples all through the Nile Valley are aligned to 3 types of astronomical calculations - the cardinal directions, solar (calendrical) events, and/or the heliacal risings of specific stars. Geographically situated at approximately 22° and 31° North latitude, Egypt enjoys clear visibility of all 4 Royal Stars.

In Egyptian cosmology, the Milky Way was seen as a cosmic river, and the Nile served as its expression within the physical landscape. The heliacal rising of Sirius, the brightest star in their night sky, coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile, which also marked the Egyptian New Year - this also formed the foundation of the Egyptian long-count calendar. Around the time of the heliacal risings, where the agricultural year began, the Sun is positioned near Regulus in Leo, thereby granting it a special status for participating in one of the most sacred astronomical events of the Egyptian calendar - we see this reflected in the archeological wonder, the Sphinx. The largest monolithic statue in our history and a masterpiece showcasing the mastery of ancient Egyptian engineering, the Sphinx is orientated to face East, said to observe the heliacal risings of a specific star. Studies show that both Regulus and Algieba, bright stars of the constellation of Leo, were known to Chaldean astronomers as coinciding with the sun’s position at the summer solstice. Given Regulus’ association with divine kingship + the solar lion-goddess Sekhmet, Regulus seems to be the most astronomically consistent candidate for whom the Sphinx watches.

The bull is among the sacred animals of ancient Egypt, symbolising divine creative power, as the Apis bull serves as the earthly vessel of the spirit of Osiris. The sacred bull cult at Memphis, where mummified bulls were entombed in the great Serapeum, was an expression of a stellar-agriculture practice where Taurus or Aldebaran presided over the season of the year’s renewal and the bull’s labour. One of the pharaoh’s epithets was the royal title “mighty bull”, which connected him to Aldebaran in the same way the Zoroastrian tradition connected Regulus to the mythical king Feridun.

Antares is associated with the scorpion goddess Selkit, whose temples were aligned to sunrise at the Autumn equinox at around 3700 BCE. Selkit appears on astronomical ceilings in the New Kingdom tombs, and in the funerary traditions, Selkit watched over the dead during their journey through the underworld, a guardian like the Zoroastrian Satevis, both parallel in the understanding of Antares as the Western gateway.

The Egyptians associated the southern region of the sky with the divine sources of the Nile’s waters, which had a heavenly source beyond the horizon. Fomalhaut, the brightest star in this region known as the “celestial sea,” is the last to rise in the south at the turning point of the Winter Solstice, and was associated with this mystical origin. Again, this is consistent with the star’s associations across the other traditions - the guardian of the South and watcher of the spiritual depth from which visible life emerges.

The Sphinx facing East towards Regulus, taken Oct 2023.

Mesoamerican Star Myths

The Popul Vuh is the K’iche’ Maya epic creation myth, which simultaneously sites the origins of the luminaries, is an agricultural allegory that explains the maize cycle, and is also a philosophical meditation on death, sacrifice, and transformation - it is not only narrative, it is also an astronomical document that records the sky. According to Art historian Julia Guernsey, the creation event is dated at 13 August 3114 BCE, the base date of the Maya Long-Count calendar - on this night the gods established 3 hearthstones as thrones - the stars Rigel, Saiph + Alnitak in Orion. The Milky Way was seen as the Great World Tree wakah chan, the Axis Mundi of the created cosmos, marked by Orion on one end, Scorpio (Antares) on the other.

In the myth, Hero Twins Hunahpú and Xbalanqué descend into the underworld Xibalba, and return transformed as sun and moon. Their journey reflects the same cycle - Aldebaran’s vernal east (life, birth, emergence) and Antares’ autumnal west (death, descent, transformation). In Maya cosmology, the Bacabs are 4 divine beings who stand at the 4 corners of the world - in Yucatec Maya, they are Muluc (east/red), Kan (south/yellow), Ix (north/white), and Cauac (west/black), each assigned a cardinal direction, colour, and year-bearer. The Bacabs perform the same roles as the Zaratas, maintaining the structural order of the cosmos at the 4 directions to ensure that the primordial collapse will not occur. The Maya also had the Chances, 4 directional rain gods who controlled rain from 4 corners of the world, to whom rain-petition rituals were directed to during periods of drought - a parallel to the Tishtrya (Aldebaran) battle against Apaosha, the drought-demon.

Across the Mesoamerican tradition of the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, Aztec, the step pyramid has been used as a representation of the cosmology - 4 sides facing the 4 cardinal directions (same as the Great Pyramids of Giza), the steps mapping the different levels of heaven, and the summit representing the axis mundi where human meets the divine. The Great Pyramid of La Venta, one of the earliest Mesoamerican pyramids constructed by the Olmec, has a ceremonial complex with its centreline oriented to Polaris (true north). The Temple of Kukulcán at Chichén Itzá is oriented so that at the equinoxes, sunlight forms the illusion of a serpent descending the pyramid’s northern staircase - a direct solar-marker effect at the equinox turning points that Aldebaran (vernal) and Antares (autumnal) mark in the sky. The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan is aligned with the setting Pleiades at midnight — the Pleiades lying within Taurus, the constellation of Aldebaran.

In the Aztec creation, there are 4 previous world-ages that preceded the era we are in now, each associated with a cardinal direction, element, and catastrophic end. The creator god Ōmeteōtl generated 4 Tezcatlipocas, 1 presiding over each cardinal direction: Quetzalcoatl (west), Huitzilopochtli (south), Xipe Totec (east), and Tezcatlipoca (north). The Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol), the most concentrated cosmological diagram in the pre-Columbian Americas, encodes this entire cosmological system: the 4 previous world-ages in the 4 quadrants, the present era at the centre, and the whole organised by the four-directional framework.

An inheritance from the Toltec, ‘the originators of all culture’ in Aztec tradition, who in turn inherited it from Teotihuacan and the older Mesoamerican tradition reaching back to the Olmec. A Maya inscription dated 6 August, 792 CE explicitly names the red star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus alongside the Pleiades, Orion, and the planet Mars in a cosmologically charged ritual context. Aldebaran’s role in this context connects to its host constellation, Taurus, and the Pleiades (the tzab, or rattlesnake’s rattle in Maya cosmology), which served as one of the most important seasonal markers in the entire Maya astronomical system.

Scorpio, the constellation of Antares, is documented as the Maya constellation of death, rebirth, and the underworld gateway in multiple sources. As in the earlier section, we know that the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in Australia also identify Scorpius as both a crocodile and a scorpion; in Wardaman astronomical tradition, Antares is Merrerrebena — the wife of the Sky Boss, who mandates ceremonial law.

Channelled Portal to the Maya Step Pyramids & Homage to the Aztec Earth Goddess Coatlicue

Across the Silk Road

The Silk Road ran through the heart of Sogdiana (and connected the Persian world (a network of oasis cities including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) to the Indian world in which 3 of the 4 received their own names, mythologies, and cosmological roles. The Sogdian merchants, missionaries, and caravan masters who operated this network were also transmitters of knowledge and cultural exchange, including astronomical traditions like the Royal Star cosmology between civilisations. They were an Iranian people with a multilingual merchant community that extended the full length from Byzantium in the west to the Tang Dynasty (China) in the east.

Caravan masters on the Silk Road, guiding trains of hundreds of camels across the Karakum Desert, the Taklamakan, and the high passes of the Pamirs, had to be trained in celestial navigation, often at maritime navigation schools in India. Because the desert offered little shade and extreme daytime heat, caravans regularly travelled at night. The stars they used to navigate were necessary and practical instruments of survival, which makes the Sogdian Silk Road the land-based counterpart to the Polynesian Pacific wayfinder. Their Zoroastrian religion inbuilt in them an inherited reverence for the Royal Stars as cosmic guardians, so they were not only navigating using the stars but were travelling under the protection of the Watchers.

Map of Silk Road and Trade Routes between East and West

The Vedic Tradition

The Vedic nakshatra system is one of the oldest and most well-documented frameworks in the world. The Vedanga Jyotisha is the foundational Vedic text on astronomical timekeeping (approximately 1350–1400 BCE), while underlying star-knowledge likely dates back to approximately to as far back as 1800 BCE for the composition of the original nakshatra observations. The system predates the influence of Hellenistic astronomy on the Indian tradition, which means that the Vedic naming of the royal stars is an independent development, not a borrowing.

The nakshatra system divides the ecliptic into 27 or 28 lunar mansions, each corresponding to approximately 1 day of the Moon’s sidereal journey through the sky. Each nakshatra is characterised by a principal star, presiding deity, ruling planet, symbolic form, a set of associated qualities, and mythological narratives. A lunar system, though contrasting with the Persian Royal Star framework (which anchors the four quarters of the solar year), the nakshatra system travels with the moon, poetically weaving the entire sky into a continuous narrative of stellar beings and divine relationships.

Aldebaran is the principal star of the 4th nakshatra, Rohini, meaning “the red one”, derived from the Sanskrit root “Rohan” which means “to rise or bring into existence” referring to the orange-red colour of Aldebaran. Across all traditions, astronomers had watched for its distinct colour to locate the Pleiades. In this lunar system, Rohini is the most auspicious nakshatra for the Moon, associated with fertility, abundance, beauty, and manifestation. It is said in the myth of Rohini and Chandra that the moon was so captivated by the red star that he could not bear to leave her, which led to the cosmic creator “cursing” the moon with his eternal cycle of waxing and waning.

In the Mahabharata and Puranic traditions, Rohini is the birth nakshatra of Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, which elevates the status of Aldebaran, as the birth star of Krishna, giving it a royal position within the Jyotisha, which parallels the Zoroastrian Yazata tradition where Aldebaran is the commander-in-chief of all stars.

Regulus is the principal star of the 10th nakshatra, Magha, meaning “huge, grand or magnificent”, derived from the Sanskrit cluster of cognate words meaning magnificent, magnanimous, and magic, all indicating royal power and extraordinary capabilities. The symbol of Magha is the royal throne, the seat of a king or leader, and its presiding deities are the Pitris, ancestor spirits, and those who have passed, representing the accumulated wisdom passed down through the generations. The theological logic of Magha is inherited authority, where legitimate power flows not from conquest or assertion but from the lineage of those who came before. As the brightest star in the zodiac of Leo, the sign of the Sun, and associated with royalty, the presence of Regulus makes Magha one of the most symbolic nakshatras of the system.

Antares is the principal star of the 18th nakshatra, Jyeshtha, meaning “the eldest, most senior or most excellent”. It represents a position of privilege or respect, including both the authority over others and the burden of such responsibility. One of the primary symbols of Jyeshtha is the royal umbrella (canopy carried over sovereigns), signifying protection extended from above over those below. Its Shakti (spiritual power) is Arohana Shakti, the power to rise and triumph over adversity. The presiding deity is Indra, King of the Devas, supreme ruler of heaven, wielder of thunderbolt (Vajra), commander of the celestial armies, and cosmic dragon-slayer. In the Rig Veda, Indra was glorified as the mighty warrior who slew Vritra, the serpent of drought, thereby releasing the waters and restoring life in the cosmos.

This seems contrary to the Zoroastrian tradition where the same role of rain-bringer is fulfilled by Yazata Trishtrya (Aldebaran), but actually it isn’t. Aldebaran and Antares sit 180° apart on the ecliptic, one in the east and one in the west, which means when one rises, the other sets, so based on different latitudes, we need to read this sequentially, not simultaneously.

In the Zoroastrian tradition (Persia/Iran located at 30–40°N), Tishtrya, the eastern Royal Star, rises in the east in spring, opening the agricultural year. In the Vedic tradition (Indian subcontinent, located at 10–30°N), Antares, the bright red supergiant at the heart of Scorpio, anchors the Jyeshtha nakshatra, which governs May-June, the season of peak summer heat (Grishma) before monsoon season. This means that within the same season, we see the summer rains fall, fulfilling the mission of the stars based on the understanding of both traditions - while both are different, both hold true.

• Late May :: Aldebaran rises heliacally in Persia -Tishtrya appears, promises the rain, and opens the gate of the agricultural year.

• May-June :: Antares culminates at midnight in India - Jyeshtha presides over the peak of summer heat, the maximum drought pressure

• June-July :: the monsoon breaks in India - Indra releases the waters

• Late summer :: rains arrive in Persia, after Tishtrya’s battle with the drought demon

Here we begin to see that this East-West axis of Aldebaran-Antares is prominent in many traditions, even if they were interpreted differently - this is because for many of the countries that live within the ecliptic belt, the visibility of these 2 stars is higher than the other 2 royal stars, and so more importance is attached to these sightings.

While Fomalhaut does not correspond to any of the nakshatras, the nearest is the 24th Nakshatra, Shatabhisha, meaning “a hundred physicians or healers”, presided over by Varuna, the Vedic god of the cosmic waters, celestial law, the night sky, and the binding and releasing of karmic debt. The parallels with the Persian/Zoroastrian system are oddly exact - Varuna rules the night, the deep and the unseen; he is the guardian of cosmic order (Rta), who observes all things from his position at the edge of the celestial waters, binding those who transgress and releasing those who are forgiven. This corresponds with Fomalhaut being the “cosmic prison” + a place of divine vision.

It makes sense, though, that Fomalhaut does not find its way into the nakshatra system, because this lunar system follows the moon through the ecliptic, and Fomalhaut sits much lower below the ecliptic in the star-poor region of the celestial seas. The Universe is poetic, though, and finds its own way to express itself through all of these different astronomical traditions all over the globe.

Polynesian Wayfinding Traditions

The Polynesian traditions - Māori (Aotearoa New Zealand), Hawaiian, Samoan, Tongan, and the wider Pacific- did not organise their sky knowledge around a 4-directional framework in the same explicit way as the Persian, Babylonian, Maya, or Aboriginal Australian traditions we’ve explored. For these seafarers, the stars in the skies are real-time coordinates on a map, read from the deck of a canoe crossing the largest ocean on earth, met at eye level on the horizon from the open waters. Understanding this explains the viewing perspective of these sky-watchers, who have demonstrably mythologised and utilised these stars, proving since 1976 (modern revival of the Hōkūleʻa voyaging programme) that this ancient stellar navigation has always been sufficient to guide a canoe across the Pacific Ocean without the aid of instruments.

Polynesian star knowledge is distinct for its application used for navigating the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water on Earth, stretching across approximately a third of the Earth. Ancient seafarers departed South East Asia around 1000 BCE and made their way across Micronesia, Melanesia, and eastwards towards the Cook Islands, Society Islands, Tuamotus, and Marquesas. The settlement of the Hawaiian Islands and Aotearoa (New Zealand) represents the furthest extent of pre-instrument human navigation in history, which really speaks to the precision and mastery of stellar observation, ocean reading, and wayfinding skills.

The early Polynesian voyagers mapped significant stars (their rising and setting points on the horizon) to create a framework that allowed them to orient themselves at sea in real time by dividing the ocean horizon into 4 great sectors. The star compass, developed by master navigator Nainoa Thompson, draws on the knowledge of Mau Piailug of Satawal, Micronesia. Here, the horizon is divided into 32 houses (hale), each 11.25° arc, grouped into four quarters (hui). This 4-part structure of the horizon is the Polynesian equivalent of the 4-directional sky framework of the Persian Royal Stars.

Aldebaran is both named and employed (in navigational methods) in both Māori and Hawaiian traditions as a bright eye providing orientation. In Māori astronomical practice, its name is Taumatakuku, and it serves as the primary reference point for locating the Matariki (Pleiades). In Hawaiian navigational astronomy, its name is Kapuahi (firebrand or sacred fire), and it occupies a specifically documented position in the Ke Ka o Makaliʻi starline, 1 of the 4 great Hawaiian navigational starlines. This sequence holds Orion (Ka Hei-Hei) at its base, Kapuahi (Aldebaran) directly above it, and Makaliʻi (the Pleiades) above Aldebaran.

Antares is the most documented royal star in the Polynesian tradition, and it even made a feature in Disney’s Moana. Remember when Grandma was telling Moana of the prophecy, she showed her Maui’s fishhook in the night sky?

(i’m not sure if it’s okay to screencap this, but if this isn’t permissible, please reach out, and i’ll take this down)

In Māori tradition, Antares is named Rehua, and its status is extraordinary. Rehua in Māori mythology is the Paramount Chief of the Heavens, residing in the highest of the celestial realms (Rangi-tuarea) and presiding over all stars. As such, Rehua is untouched by death and possesses the power to cure blindness, revive the dead, and heal any disease.

In Hawaiian and wider Polynesian tradition, Scorpio as a whole is identified as Manaiakalani, the magical Fishhook of the demigod Maui. In Polynesian myth, Maui pulled the Hawaiian Islands from the ocean floor, using this magical fishhook, said to be fashioned by the gods. He also uses it to catch the sun and slow its course down so as to create longer days in summer. Antares, one of the more distinct stars in the night sky, is the bait at the curved end of the hook. This myth contains within it practical navigational knowledge for seafarers crossing between Hawaii and Tahiti, serving as a reliable directional marker.

The Māori tradition identifies the tail section of Scorpio as Te Waka a Tamarereti (the great sky-canoe of Tamarereti). In Māori legend, Tamarereti was a great navigator who sailed across the night sky, scattering pebbles that became the stars and creating the Milky Way. The tail of Scorpius, the stars that sweep below the vibrant red heart of Rehua, is his canoe. Here, Antares is at the prow of the celestial vessel, which brings to mind the great Egyptian solar barque used by the sun god Ra every night as he entered the Underworld, Jason’s legendary Argo, or the boat of the ferryman bringing souls to the underworld.

In the Hawaiian navigation system, Fomalhaut appears within the Ka Lupe o Kawelo starline, 1 of the 4 great starlines of the Hōkūleʻa navigational tradition. The northern portion is formed by Cassiopeia and the Great Square of Pegasus, and the southern portion of this starline is composed of Fomalhaut - Alnair - Dipha - Ankaa - Achernar (Fomalhaut serving as the southern anchor).

Of the 4 royal stars, Regulus is the least documented in surviving Polynesian astronomical records. While it was visible to navigators at Polynesian latitudes and falls within the portion of sky on the Hawaii-Tahiti route, it does not occupy a strategic position in the practical navigation system. The Polynesian star compass prioritises stars near the horizon for the seafarers, and Regulus, though visible and recognised, was not as prominently seen as the Southern stars and therefore less employed for navigation.

The cosmology of this tradition can be understood through the Māori creation myth. Ranginui (sky father) and Papatuānuku (earth mother) were the primordial parents who loved each other so much they were locked in a tight embrace with all of their children trapped between them. They were eventually pushed apart and separated by their children, which birthed the natural gods into the world and allowed light to stream in. The stars are part of the celestial order of Sky Father, though it is also believed that humans were also birthed by the God-Children, and when we die, our spirits journey to the night sky to become stars. One version of the stories describes the astronomical bodies as Te Whānau o Mārama (the family of light) - a reminder that to navigate via the stars is to travel guided by one’s ancestors.

Maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar, integrates the rising and setting of specific stars with the lunar cycle to produce a comprehensive ecological calendar for planting, fishing, harvesting, and ceremony. The appearance of Taumata-kuku (Aldebaran) alongside Matariki signals the New Year turning. The appearance of Rehua (Antares) in the early morning spring sky signals the restoration of energy and the beginning of the growing season. There is beautiful coherence with the Persian system, where Aldebaran brings new life through the rains, while Antares is tasked with the distribution of this vital life force energy.

Map of the Polynesian Settlements

A Personal Note

It is not lost on me that as we began tracing the origins of the lineage of the 4 Royal Stars, we learnt that the Babylonians organised the fixed stars into 3 “roads” corresponding to the celestial equator, and the regions north and south of it, known as the Three Paths of the Gods. The first post was focused on The Path of Anu (The Central Belt), while this second post continues from there and leads us down The Path of Ea (The Southern Sky).

And yes, the third post will take us up towards The Path of Enlil (The Northern Sky).

i’m not sure if you can tell, but i really love the ancient worlds where myth and cosmology guided the way of life - much of which is gone now, and together with it, our connection to deeper meaning and soul memory seems to have vanished too. So, despite being in a modern, technologically-advanced world, much of the collective is lost at present and has no way of orienting itself.

This series began as research into the 4 royal stars, but it turned into an archeoastronomy exploration, and quite organically then developed into a celestial compass rose, one that does not “give direction”, but is intended to help the seeker find their own way - skywards, homebound.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

Chart of the Moment :: 24th May 2026

In December of 2022 i saw the night sky for the first time and i was so deeply moved by the experience - standing under the stars, i felt like they were long lost friends that have been waiting for me to “return” and that was the moment i stopped feeling alone in the world. In June 2023, i was in Australia when i first “heard” the invitation to work with the stars. i didn’t have an answer, i didn’t know what i was committing to, and i wasn’t sure this was what i’d dedicate my life to. When i arrived at the Sun Temple at Uluru during the 8-8 Lion’s Gate Portal that year, the decision was made for me i think. It’s been less than 3 earthly years, but it felt like lifetimes i’ve lived over and over again. I suppose this is what Remembrance feels like.

This year, because of the Uranus conjunction to Pleiades, i started my healing work early and i’m happy to report a real breakthrough. Inner work i’ve been doing with healing the Sterope wound for over 5 years came to a point of breakthrough where i had a major release. It was like putting down tonnes of baggage i’ve been carrying all my life and not only do i notice a healthy detachment I’ve never had before, it also began to repair the matriarchal relationships in my life in strange ways. i’m still working on fears around my skin colour (Kelaino) and feeling safe around being more visible (Elektra), but i’m trusting the process while learning to enjoy the journey, each step revealed one at a time. To everyone who has supported my work these last 3 years, THANK YOU. i couldn’t get this far without all of you!

So today, as the portal is about to close for the year, i thought i’d share another piece of research about the Pleiades that has popped up lately, and it’s mythology made into a song, tenderly sung by ancestors who watch over us from the skies above (yes, i’m thinking of Moana!). It is a no-frills sort of simplicity that makes my heart full (and my eyes stream uncontrollable tears for reasons i cannot explain).

This post takes us back over 5000 years to the Pacific Ocean, and yes, my mind goes straight to Lemuria too! Polynesian culture spans the “Polynesian Triangle,” a vast region contained within the Pacific Ocean that stretches from Hawaii to the north, New Zealand (Aotearoa) to the southwest, and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) to the southeast. It is important to note that the Polynesian voyagers were people who sailed the largest and deepest ocean of our world (63 million square miles, containing more than half of the free water on earth) with no maps or mechanical compass. They sailed in their canoes using knowledge of open-ocean navigation passed down by oral traditions known as Wayfinding (Celestial Navigation). Another post for another day, but let’s just say the Night Sky has always served as a map and the Stars are our guides, and that’s going to be one of the key themes of my work.

Now back to the Pleaides. This star cluster is one of the most important fixed star groupings in the entire sky across the different Polynesian people, serving as a calendar, compass, deity, family, and even a cosmological wound. It is visible from every latitude in the Polynesian Triangle, brilliantly distinctive to the naked eye, which grants it a special (and indispensable) position in the history of human navigation. While the different cultures had their own names, they have a near-identical root word that roughly translates to “eyes” (mata), which provides etymological proof of shared ancestry and migration. These Island people needed the stars to guide them through the seasons (vertical relationship of rainfall, which affects planting and harvesting) and also for direction (horizontal relationship by latitude, position, and ocean crossings).

Polynesian astronomy was shaped by an added pressure unlike that of the desert or continental traditions of the Persians, Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian, Aboriginal Australia, Indian, or Chinese practitioners who read the skies from a fixed earthly position (vertical readings). The Polynesian voyager needed the sky to provide coordinates while they were in the open ocean with no landmarks. The technique at the heart of this was zenith-star navigation - Every star rises to a different maximum altitude depending on the observer’s latitude, so if a navigator knew which star passed directly overhead at the latitude of their destination, they could sail until that star reached the zenith and know they had arrived, then simply follow the coast.

The Pleiades functioned as a zenith marker for specific Pacific latitudes, so navigators could ‘lock on’ to the cluster and hold their course fearlessly across thousands of miles of endless ocean. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades — its first appearance at dawn above the eastern horizon after a period of invisibility — also varied by latitude. This meant that the Polynesian world experienced this same astronomical event at different moments across the year, bringing a new year at 2 different times depending on which side of the equator one is - in New Zealand (roughly 40°S latitude), the heliacal rising falls in June; in Hawaiʻi (roughly 20°N latitude), it falls in October or November.

New Zealand (Aotearoa) / Māori :: Matariki — The Eyes of the God

The most cosmologically elaborate of Polynesian cultures, the Māori relationship with the Pleiades reflects possibly one of the most sophisticated star myths in the world. It is characterised by two qualities: a 9-star count expressing a complete environmental philosophy, and an origin story of raw emotions rooted in the great separation myth at the heart of all Māori cosmology.

Seen as 9 stars by many Māori iwi (tribes), the Pleaides is known as Te Iwa o Matariki. It is interesting to rethink the Seven Sisters as being a family of 9, given that in the galactic myths we also include their parents (Atlas + Pleione) in the star cluster, also the 9 is a “complete” number, which corresponds to the Egyptian origin myth of the Ennead. The Māori myth, which represents their way of life, understandably differs greatly from the Greek version.

Matariki (the mother star, identified with Alcyone) :: brings well-being and health for the people. Her brightness was read as an omen of collective fortune for the coming year.

Pōhutukawa :: the star of the ancestors and those who have passed. It is believed that when a person dies, their spirit travels to Te Rerenga Wairua at the tip of the North Island, descends the roots of an ancient pōhutukawa tree into the underworld, then ascends to the heavens to become a star in this cluster.

Tupuānuku :: earth-grown food, representing the fertility of what grows in the soil.

Tupuārangi :: food from the forest and the sky, including birds and foods gathered from the surface of the earth.

Waitī :: freshwater environments and allcreatures that live within them.

Waitā :: salt water and the ocean’s bounty.

Waipuna-ā-rangi :: rain; the waters thatfall from the sky.

Ururangi :: winds and the reading ofseasonal weather patterns.

Hiwa-i-te-rangi :: to wish upon a star, this is the star of aspiration and future goals. Unlike the others, she governs the realm of human hope and intention (not a physical domain).

While the 7-star model focuses primarily on food and weather forecasting, the 9-star model adds Pōhutukawa (looking backward in time towards the dead) and Hiwa-i-te-rangi (looking forward to the future), connecting past-present-future in an endless loop of connection. In the stories, the star Matariki (mom) was taken as wife by Rehua (Antares), who in Māori cosmology is considered the paramount chief of the heavens. This mythological marriage represents an astronomical reality: Antares and the Pleiades sit nearly opposite each other across the night sky, almost as if Antares (dad) watches nightly over his family as the Pleiades rise.

The origin story of Matariki is rooted in the great separation of the primal parents — Ranginui (Sky Father) and Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) — the central creation myth of Māori cosmology. It is said that in the beginning, Ranginui and Papatūānukulay locked in eternal embrace, their bodies so tightly pressed together that their children — the gods of the natural world — were crushed in perpetual darkness. Eventually, the children forced their parents apart. Tāne Mahuta (god of the forests) succeeded in pushing Ranginui up into the heavens, and light (Te Ao Mārama) flooded into the world for the first time.

Not all the children was in consensus though. Tāwhirimātea, god of wind and storms, was devastated. He could not bear to hear his parents’ cries of sorrow, nor witness their separation, so in grief and rage, he waged war against his siblings. As a final act of mourning and defiance, he tore out his own eyes, crushed them in his hands, and flung the glowing fragments into the sky, pressing them against his father Ranginui’s chest. These became the star cluster Matariki — whose full name is Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea: ‘The Eyes of the God Tāwhirimātea.’ The name commonly translated as ‘little eyes’ is now understood as a colonial mistranslation.

With this cosmological context, Matariki as a new year celebration gains emotional depth. The stars rising at midwinter are not only a seasonal signal — they are the embodied grief of a god, returned to visibility. The weeping that precedes Matariki celebration (for Pōhutukawa, star of the dead) does not function as a cultural ritual but a continuous remembrance of the original mythical mourning that created the stars.

The story continues with the god Tāne clothing his mother Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) in trees and plants, then he turned her face downward so she would not have to witness her husband’s sadness. He clothed his father Ranginui (Sky Father) in the stars — which are described as the sweat of Tāne’s brow. Because Ranginui and Papatūānuku still grieve each other, his tears fall as rain upon her; her sighs of longing rise as mist from Tāne’s forests. The natural world continues as an expression of their separation and love.

In another whakapapa (genealogy) telling of the myth, the Matariki cluster is a mother star surrounded by her eight daughters, who travel across the sky each year to visit their grandmother Papatūānuku below. Here, the stars represent the perpetual movement of family between the separated parents — children serving as the connection between sky and earth. All these stories are a symbol of the value and imporance of family in Māori culture.

The heliacal rising of Matariki in mid-winter (late June - early July in the southern hemisphere) marks the Māori New Year — celebrations marked by weeping for those who have died since the last rising (Pōhutukawa), celebrating the gifts and abundance of the present (the domain stars), and sending wishes and intentions to Hiwa-i-te-rangi for the year ahead. The brightness and clarity of individual stars within the cluster were read by tohunga kōkōrangi (astronomical experts) as forecasts for the weather and harvest.

Beyond latitude-finding, the entire arc of the Taurus region - containing both the Pleiades and the Hyades, flanked by Aldebaran formed a critical navigational zone. In the Māori map, Matariki (the Pleiades) is the prow of Te Waka o Rangi, the great sky canoe,with the belt of Orion (Tautoru) as the stern, and Sirius (Takurua) as the canoe’s destination. In Greek mythology, the Pleiades and the Hyades are half-sisters (all daughters of Atlas but with different mothers). In the Polynesian celestial canoe tradition, they are not relatives but structural companions: the prow and the sail of the same vessel, where family is the ship.

Hawaiʻi :: Makaliʻi - The Food Net in the Stars

The story begins with an aliʻi (chief) of Kona on the island of Hawaiʻi who was overcome by greed and hoarded all the people’s food into one enormous carrying net. He brings it to the highest stratum of heaven, where he hangs it above the earth while people below starve. A small mouse took on the task of making the arduous journey to the heavens, gnaws through the net until the food cascades back down to earth. The Pleaides cluster was given the name of Nā Huihui o Makaliʻi - ‘the cluster of Makaliʻi,’ or Huihui-koko-a-Makaliʻi-kau-i-luna, ‘Makaliʻi’s rainbow-coloured nets hung above.’

This origin myth tells a story about abundance and redistribution. During the Makahiki festival, a net filled with kalo (taro), mai’a (banana), niu (coconut), ‘uala (sweet potato), and ulu(breadfruit) would be held by four men at each corner. The Kahuna waited till all was silence — then together they shook the net to scatter food into the waiting hands of the community, re-enacting the mythological restoration of abundance from the heavens.

The rising of Makaliʻi at sunset — when the cluster appears in the east as the sun sets in the west — announces the beginning of the Makahiki, the Hawaiian new year, usually in October or November, 6 months opposite Matariki in New Zealand. Makahiki is a 4 month season dedicated to Lono, God of fertility, agriculture, rain, and peace, where warfare was formally prohibited. The entire archipelago shifted into a mode of harvest, thanksgiving, sports and games, ritual feasting, and the collection of offerings. A figure representing Lono would travel clockwise around each island collecting hoʻokupu (tribute), which was not viewed as taxation but as a sacred acknowledgment of the land’s abundance and the people’s relationship to it.

The Pleiades in Hawaii thus carry a dual identity: they are the net of a selfish chief (a myth of what happens when abundance is hoarded), and simultaneously the signal of Lono’s return (a myth of the fortune of the people when abundance is shared).

The Hawaiian star compass also carries multiple names for this cluster and its neighbouring stars, reflecting the depth of its cultural importance. Aldebaran — the bright star following the Pleiades, the ‘follower’ in Western astronomical tradition, and one of the four Persian Royal Stars — is sometimes identified as Makaliʻi himself (the navigator), with the Pleiades cluster being his wives. In this framing, the Hyades (the V-shaped cluster surrounding Aldebaran) become the sail of the canoe, and the Pleiades the bow — the same celestial canoe that appears in Māori tradition.

Tahiti / French Polynesia :: Matariʻi i Niʻa - The Pleiades Above

Matariʻi i niʻa means ‘the Pleiades above, marking the moment when the cluster reappears at dusk on the horizon after its period of invisibility. The Tahitian tradition interprets this by dividing the year into two explicitly Pleiades-defined halves.

Tau ʻauhune :: Around 20th November each year, the Pleiades become visible again, aligned with the horizon at dusk which marks the opening of the season of abundance. At this time, rain returns, fish breed in the lagoon, fruits and tubers ripen, and the land becomes generous again after the lean months.

Tau oʻe :: Around 20th May, the Pleiades disappear below the horizon, and the land accordingly “withholds”, so this indicates the beginning of the season of shortage.

The Pleiades are likened to the changing drum beat of an annual rhythm — a binary switch between abundance and scarcity. For island communities entirely dependent on local ecology with no supply chains or trade routes to fall back on, this celestial timing was not metaphorical but deeply entwined with survival. It is little wonder that the festivities marking the cluster’s return involve extraordinary ceremony - dances, incantations, offerings to the gods.

In Tahitian cosmology, Matariʻi i niʻa was considered the beginning of the year, similar to Hawaii and Aotearoa. Interestingly this is also viewed in the same way by the Mesoamericans, like the Maya who watched Pleiades for the lighting of New Fire every 52 years. Across the different cultures across the worlds, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades is somehow associated with the annual renewal of time itself.

Tonga :: Mataliki and the Tribute to Hikuleʻo

In Tonga, the rising of Mataliki (Pleiades) in conjunction with the sun at Tele-ki-Tokelau (the Tropic of Cancer) marked the beginning of the Kātoanga ʻInasi - the great Tribute Festival offered to Hikuleʻo, the highest-ranking deity in the primordial Tongan pantheon.

The Pleiades rising is a time to pay tribute Hikuleʻo, who is described as the elder sibling of Tangaloa and Māui. He is a representation of the duality of all things, being simultaneously female and male, representing life and death, and is also seen as a guardian of both water and fire. The Kātoanga ʻInasi is a formal ceremony of reciprocity between people and cosmos, a reminder of humans being in right relationship with the Divine.

Samoa :: Mataalii - Eyes of the Chiefs

In Samoan tradition, there was a story about 7 chiefs who, upon dying, would ascend to heaven. From where we are on earth, only 1 eye of every chief was visible - together they formed the 7 stars of the Pleiades, hence this cluster is called Mataalii — ‘eyes of the chiefs’. Similar to the Māori tradition of Pōhutukawa, where the dead ascend to become stars in the Matariki cluster and continue to gaze upon the living, the Samoan tradition sees the stars as incomplete presences: real but withheld (limited) - the ancestors continue to watch over us, but we can only see them in glimpses. It makes me wonder if this is part prophecy that foretells of human behaviour, and also a reminder that we need to look up towards the Ancestors for guidance more often than we do.

A Note on Sources and Methodology

Like most indigenous lineages, the Polynesian astronomical tradition exists primarily in oral form — transmitted through whakapapa, song, ritual, and the knowledge of specialists (tohunga kōkōrangi in the Māoritradition). It’s what makes this so fascinating to learn about, yet also means that there is much here that cannot be “verified”.

The Māori, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Tongan, and Samoan traditions mentioned here represent the primary Polynesian cultures where substantial Pleiades-related mythology is found in my research. Other Polynesian cultures — including Cook Islanders, Tuvaluans, Niueans, and Tokelauans — share the same linguistic root for the cluster (forms of Matariki/Mataliki) and likely hold parallel traditions, but sources are scarce or inaccessible.

i sincerely apologise if there were mistakes made here, and if anyone had more to share about these traditions, i would love it if you would add your notes to the comments. As with all of my work, i do not claim to be a historian or analyst, but a child of the stars in love with the stories of the ancients. i do hope all of this work interests you as much as they do me, and will inspire you to begin your own research into the areas that resonate most with you. Blessed Pleaides Portal.

Meditation :: Channelled Artwork for the Pleaides

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

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i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

At around 3000 BCE, they formed the Fixed Cross in the sky, visible from every continent on earth before there were maps, representing the 4 cardinal directions, serving as the markers for both the structure of the year and the architecture of the heavens. Before cartography, there was the night sky, a faithful guide that helped travellers and adventurers through the oceans and deserts. These 4 stars were also reliably associated with the seasonal turning points, knowledge of which was crucial for the survival of agricultural civilisations across history.

Through this writing project, we explore these 4 fixed stars through different lenses - Astronomy for the physical foundation; Astrology for the mathematical framework to input and organise data; Mythology to understand what the ancients experienced, observed and understood from centuries of stargazing; and the Magical Traditions that provide practical applications so we may learn to work with these stellar forces.

Please note that i’m merely sharing research + synthesising this with the intention of understanding the stars and deepening relations with the night sky. I do not claim to an “specialist” in any of the religious or cultural traditions shared.

It is worth remembering that our current naming tradition is a modern scholarly identification coined by French astronomer Jean Sylvain Baillyin his Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne (1775). The early ancient civilisations had different terminology for the stars in their own language, but the same 4 stars in the 4 quarters of the sky inspired their own star lore, passed down by people from all over the world looking up and, quite wondrously, reaching very similar conclusions.

Astrologically, the fixed stars of the firmament seem “fixed” because they move so slowly, appearing to remain in the same place throughout one’s life. Due to the Earth’s axial precession, they move forward at the rate of approximately 1° every 72 years.

Due to each star’s position relative to the ecliptic (Sun’s path across the sky), its ecliptic latitude indicates how close the star is to the zodiac belt, and therefore if the Moon or planets can ever physically pass directly in front of it (known as an occultation).

Of the 4 royal stars, Regulus is almost directly upon the ecliptic line, so it acts as a literal gateway upon the zodiacal highway where planets passing through 0° Virgo will conjunct and pass right next to or directly over the Northern Watcher. Planets revolve along a belt of about 8° on either side of the ecliptic, with Aldebaran and Antares both about 5° south of the ecliptic; both these stars are close enough to be occasionally occulted by the moon and/or planets. Fomalhaut is an “out of bounds” star, given that it is 23° south of the ecliptic plane, making it impossible for any planet to physically pass close to it. Its position (say 4° Pisces now) is a perpendicular projection used by astrologers, dropping a straight line down from the ecliptic to its actual deep-space coordinate.

Understanding that the physical distance from the ecliptic (latitude) also indicates how a star’s stellar rays stream through the Sun’s solar rays to reach us here on Earth, the manifestation of these energies is then read differently in a chart. As Regulus is directly on the ecliptic, its frequencies are more immediate and obvious in the material world, bringing high visibility to that area of the chart. Its astrological activations are sharp and direct, bringing a conscious drive for leadership fearlessly and quickly to the surface. Fomalhaut, being an “out of bounds” star, operates more so in the background, bypassing the conscious ego and alchemising in one’s inner states, inspiring profound artistic genius, deeply intuitive and mystical experiences. This visionary quality often comes with a sense of “otherness”, detached from “normal” societal metrics, and eventually leads down an unconventional, solitary path.

Origins :: Babylonian and Early Persian eras

The concept of the 4 Royal Stars originated in ancient Babylonian and Assyrian astronomy, predating the Persian Empire. In 747 BCE, King Nabonassar of Babylon implemented a calendar system based on tracking the Moon relative to these 4 royal stars.

The fixed stars were organised into 3 “roads” corresponding to the celestial equator, and the regions north and south of it, known as the Three Paths of the Gods. The 4 bright stars of the fixed cross were the most reliable and prominent landmarks in the seasonal sky and hence were used as anchors within this system.

The Watchers of the Sky

The Persian tradition formalised this 4-star framework, believing that the sky was divided into 4 districts, each under the purview of one of the 4 stars, which were considered to possess both benevolent and destructive powers. Persian practitioners used them as the basis for the calendar, tracking celestial cycles + for astrological predictions.

Zoroastrian Cosmology :: The Yazata Star-Generals

At around 3000 BCE, the 4 royal stars physically aligned with the equinoxes and solstices due to the placement of the Earth’s axis at that time, and the Babylonian and Assyrian astronomers formalised them as a calendar-keeping mechanism used during the 700s BCE. At about 550 BCE, during the Achaemenid Empire, when the Persian Empire rose, it adopted Babylonian astronomical data and infused it with Zoroastrian theology. In Zoroastrian Cosmology, the Universe was seen as a battlefield between Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord who represented the principle of truth, order, and righteousness (Asha), and Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit, principle of lies, chaos, and corruption (Druj).

According to the Bundahishn, the Zoroastrian cosmological encyclopedia (written and compiled only around 8th - 9th Century CE), this battle takes place here in our physical world, so it can play out, culminate, and come to a conclusion. Within this dualistic framework of the ancient world, the fixed stars, whose movements were predictable and hence reliable, were aligned with Ahura Mazda. The 4 Royal Star spirits were classified as divine beings called Yazatas, from the Avestan word meaning “worthy of worship or veneration”. The Avesta is Zoroastrianism’s oldest sacred literature, which includes the Yashts (hymns to individual Yazatas).

The Planets, whose movements were more erratic by ancient standards (hence “Wandering Stars”) were identified with Angra Mianyu. Zoroastrian sky-watchers understood that when a planet passed near a Royal Star, it was a demonic attack on a star-general of Ahura Mazda, hence the night sky became a living battlefield of this celestial war. This meant that the practitioner who prayed and made offerings was directly contributing to the outcome of the battle, highlighting a theology of human responsibility and co-creation of cosmic order. This can be seen as an origin point, which develops and takes form in the ways of the Desert Fathers, who positioned the monk’s prayer as a form of “cosmic warfare”, also in the ceremonial magician’s invocation of stellar forces, and in the astrologer’s attentive tracking of the stars for predictions.

One of the most prominent stories of the Yazata involves the battle of Tishtrya (Aldebaran) who was the Commander-In-Chief of the entire star army of Ahura Mazda. His central myth (Yasht 8.21-29) revolves around his battle against Apaosha, the drought-demon. Weakened by the lack of human prayer, Tishtrya was initially overcome until Ahura Mazda himself made an offering, infusing him with the power needed to defeat Apaosha and release the life-sustaining rain. This myth demonstrates the Divine’s dependence on human devotion, highlighting that the relationship between gods and humans is bidirectional - we influence and impact each other, and the “fight” against evil is won together.

Judaism :: Babylonian Captivity and Angelology

The Babylonian Captivity (586-538 BCE) was when Persian star-theology entered Jewish religious traditions. When the Jewish elite were deported to Babylon, they lived in a world immersed in Zoroastrian cosmology, and when they returned, they brought back the angel names.

“To my right, Michael and to my left, Gabriel, in front of me, Uriel and behind me, Raphael, and over my head, the Shekhinah.” - Kriat Shema, the Jewish bedtime prayer

In the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch, 4th - 1st Century BCE), Chapter 20 lists the 4 archangels and assigns each a specific cosmic profile, exactly mirroring the Zoroastrian Yazata tradition, and calling its angel section “the Book of the Watchers”.

“The Holy One created Four Cardinal Directions in the world... as He created the Four Cardinal Directions, so also did He set about His throne Four Angels — Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael.” - Rabbinic Text

Tetramorph :: Ezekiel’s vision, Revelation, Four Evangelists

The tetramorph (from Greek: tetra = four, morphe = form) refers to the union of 4 specific animal symbols - lion, ox, man, eagle. In approximately 593BCE, the prophet Ezekiel was writing among the Jewish exiles in Babylon, immersed in Babylonian cosmology + imagery, including the guardian lamassu (winged bull-men) at palace gates + astronomical tablets of priests where the fixed cross of the Royal Stars was embedded visually in every facet. He recorded his vision of 4 living creatures, believed to have originated from the Babylonian symbols of the 4 fixed signs of the zodiac - Leo, Taurus, Aquarius, Scorpio.

We see this repeatedly used throughout Christian art (especially in the architecture of the Medieval European + Gothic cathedrals), iconography (including the Wheel of Fortune card + World card in the Tarot) + theology. John of Patmos repeats them in the Book of Revelations (4:6-8), placing them around the heavenly throne - though he places them in a different order from Ezekiel, the functions performed by these 4 creatures are the same as the Persian Yazatas - maintaining the cosmic order of creation + directing all things towards the Divine centre.

In Against Heresies (c.130-202 CE), Irenaeus of Lyon argued that the 4 Gospels were cosmologically necessary, as there were 4 corners of the earth, 4 principle winds, 4 living creatures. Victorinus assigned man with Matthew, lion with Mark, ox with Luke + eagle with John - this was adopted by Jerome, Gregory the Great + Book of Kells. Saint Jerome, in his Preface to Commentary on Matthew, was one of the earliest sources equating the 4 Evangelists to the 4 creatures of Babylonian zodiacal tradition.

Decks featured: Solar Kingdom Tarot, Rider Waite Tarot, Modern Witch Tarot, Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, Thoth Tarot, Sun + Moon Tarot.

The Desert Fathers :: Nepsis, Hesychasm, Watchfulness

In the 4th and 5th century Christian monastic tradition of Egypt, Palestine and Syria, the Desert Fathers inherited the accumulated tradition of the 4 cosmic guardians through a few sources - the cosmological theology of Origen and Clement of Alexandria (who established early Christian philosophy by using Middle Platonism and Stoicism to interpret scripture); the book of Enoch, and by living in lands saturated with Persian cosmology.

Nepsis (νῆψις), meaning “watchfulness”, is their most characteristic spiritual practice, encoding directly the etymology of the Royal Star tradition. The Philokalia is the complete anthology of the writings of the Desert Fathers and Hesychastic tradition, and it bears the title of “the Neptic Saints” - the Watchful Ones. As the 4 royal stars each kept unwavering watch over their segment of the sky, the Desert Fathers, too, practiced keeping perpetual watch over the landscape of the soul, protecting it from demonic forces. In this sense, the Hesychast monk was likened to a microcosmic Royal Star, fixed at their post with the practice of inner silence and continual prayer.

The monks also adhered to the 4 directions during prayers. The universal early Christian practice of ad orientem prayers of facing East was described as among the “oldest unwritten laws of the Church”, aligned to Aldebaran being the guardian of new life. Ancient baptismal rites also demonstrated the integration of the 4 directions - catechumens faced West to renounce Satan, then turned East to proclaim their faith — turning from Antares’s quarter of darkness and transformation, towards Aldebaran’s quarter of light, new growth and renewal.

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345-399 AD) was a highly educated and intellectually rigorous of the Desert Fathers, heir to Origen, who played a foundational role in the development of early monasticism. He pioneered a cosmology of spiritual warfare by the psychological mapping of the eight logismoi (generic or evil thoughts), which was later adapted in Western Christianity as the Seven Deadly Sins. Learning to observe and recognise the difference between angelic, human, and demonic thoughts as a diagnostic tool, a practitioner could employ suitable spiritual “countermeasures”, ultimately to achieve apatheia (impassibility and undisturbed clarity) where one was no longer dominated or obsessed with compulsive passions. We see the Zoroastrian framework here, with the monks practicing nepsis to watch for the demonic thought-forces, similar to the Yazatas watching for the planetary demons crossing into their quarters of the sky.

Kabbalah :: The Four Worlds, the Angelic Hierarchy

Here in medieval Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah provides a vertical cross to complement the horizontal cross of the Royal Star traditions - 4 levels of reality descending from infinite divinity to the material world. The reading of Ezekiel’s vision puts this within the four world architecture - entering through meditative techniques and glimpsing up the Yetzirah (formation) to Beriah (the Throne and angelic realms) to Atziluth (Divine form). The four-faced Chayot ha-Kodesh (holy living creatures) are found at the top of the angelic hierarchy, just beneath the Divine Throne, referencing the Royal Stars as primordial forms of divine consciousness at the threshold between the finite and infinite.

Islamic Traditions :: The Persian Heritage

Islam arose in the 7th century in a world thoroughly shaped by Persian and Zoroastrian cultures, inheriting the entirety of the traditions, and went on to express it through its own theological framework. Similar to the Yazatas and Amesha Spentas (7 Holy Immortals) are angelic agents enacting the will of the Divine, and not objects of worship, although certainly worthy of it. The angelic hierarchy bears striking resemblance to the Zoroastrian traditions:

• Jibril (Gabriel/Fomalhaut) :: messenger of divine revelation, the voice from the spiritual realms, the gift of vision manifest into word

• Mikail (Michael/Aldebaran) :: oversees rain, growth and the natural forces, a continuation of the lineage of Tishtrya’s role as rain-bringer and fertility deity

• Azrail (Uriel/Antares) :: the angel of death and transformation aligned to Antares as the Western gateway which facilitates transitions

• Israfil holds the trumpet of cosmic judgement, tasked with announcements at the threshold of time. In the description from the Tafsir and Hadith, we understand that he encompasses the entirety of thefixed star cross in his physical appearance. “Israfil has four wings — one in the East, one in the West, one covering his legs, and one shielding his head and face in fear of God... He awaits the command of God.”

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Magical Applications :: Picatrix, Behenian Stars, Talismans

The Picatrix, originally titled Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (’TheGoal of the Wise’) in Arabic, is a 400-page medieval grimoire of astrology and magic, described by scholar David Pingree as ‘the most thorough exposition of celestial magic in Arabic.’ Translated into Spanish then Latin,it synthesises material from over 224 older sources taken from Hermeticism, Sabianism, astrology, alchemy, and magic. Read by Marsilio Ficino, consulted by Agrippa, it constitutes the single most comprehensive medieval account of how stellar power (from the planets and fixed stars) can be directed and channelled into physical objects through precise astrological calculations.

The Picatrix employs a Neoplatonic cosmology where all things in the physical world are connected to higher celestial and divine realities through sympathy and influence. I suppose today we could call this quantum entanglement? As such, the stars are not seen as merely physical bodies but active spiritual forces whose stellar qualities flow downward through the chain of being. By aligning material objects with specific celestial configurations at precisely the right astrological moment, the practitioner creates a conduit for stellar power to flow and manifest into physical form. Timing is key.

“Unless talismans are created at an astrologically auspicious time as well as being ritually consecrated, they are nothing more than jewellery with astrological designs, lacking any magical or spiritual charge.”

- Christopher Warnock

Out of the hundreds of Fixed Stars, the 15 Behenian stars are considered especially useful for magical application in the time of medieval Europe and Arabic astrology. From the Arabic bahman (root), each star is associated with a planet, a gemstone, and a plant in ritual to channel the star’s influence into a talisman.

3 of the 4 Royal Stars — Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares — are included in the list, but Fomalhaut is not, a detail noted by modern scholars as potentially significant in assessing the relative antiquity of its inclusion in the Royal Star group. The primary references used below are pseudo-Hermetic De Quindecim Stellis (On the Fifteen Stars) and Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533), Book II, Chapter 47.

The Seal of Solomon & Ceremonial Magic

The legendary signet of Sulaymān in medieval mystical traditions developed in parallel with Jewish and Islamic mysticism and Western occultism. A visual encoding of the 4 elements, the Seal of Solomon is usually depicted as a hexagram or pentagram. The earliest references of its practical functions were documented by the 1st-century historian Josephus describing its use in exorcism. The Testament of Solomon extended this into a full manual for the control of supernatural beings — a structural parallel to the Picatrix’s organisation of celestial forces by name and planetary rulership, applied now to demonic beings rather than angelic ones.

The most direct expression of this tradition in modern ceremonial magic is LBRP (Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram), a foundational practice of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) and still practiced today. The ritual invokes the 4 archangels at the 4 cardinal points, “Before me, Raphael(East/Air). Behind me, Gabriel (West/Water). On my right hand, Michael(South/Fire). On my left hand, Uriel (North/Earth). For about me flames the pentagram, and within me shines the six-rayed star.” According to some Wiccan traditions, the 4 Royal Stars are known as the 4 Towers, said to hold the 4 corners of the universe together. This invocation of the 4 guardians is a folk inheritance of the Persian Watcher tradition, possibly streamed through the Golden Dawn and broader Western esoteric lineages.

We’ve looked at the progression of how the 4 Watchers came to be through a rather Western lens. In Part II of this overview, we will go even further back in history to explore the 4 Royal Stars through the lens of some of the most ancient astronomers, of Maya, Egypt, Aboriginal Australia, and Polynesian lineages. We began with a methodical tracking of this through the books, but the next segment will focus more on the most fascinating oral traditions passed down through myth and song, showing us why and how they truly are a celestial compass rose.

A personal note

As a Projector (Human Design System), we’ve always been told to “wait for the invitation”, which sounds awful, because it seems like we’re supposed to just passively sit somewhere, hoping for someone to (finally!) turn up with some kind of invitation. They don’t always have to be though - this one began with someone i respect dearly saying, “Can we chat about the 4 Royal Stars?” + i took that as an invitation to research + share, which took me on a journey way larger than i could have imagined.

In my own natal chart, i have all 4 of the royal stars in there, also with the Northern + Southern crosses. Years ago, a client once asked me what it meant + i answered frankly that i didn’t know except what the astrological books cited, but i did wonder if it meant that life would be “turbulent”, which was why these 4 stars were needed to navigate the choppy waters. That said, the general consensus was that these stars were “auspicious” omens, stars of great people, so it couldn’t be all that bad, right?

As i find myself going more deeply into working with the stars in my own way, away from traditional astrology, i find that the fixed stars are both observables that can be learnt from, yet also apply to our lives in the most personal of ways. As explained in the “holographic” portion of this article, there is both an x + y axis to consider, because we are anything but flat 2D people on a linear plane. Last Christmas, i found myself deeply inspired at Epiphany, but i didn’t have space + time to unpack this until i was finally quiet in February.

My love for the night sky goes beyond wanting to understand more of it, which we’re doing through the myths. This forms a grounded foundation from which we can decipher + identify clearly + with certainty which stars we’re working with, so eventually, we can each learn to speak to the stars, to tune into their stellar frequencies, and work with them consciously. The night sky is a celestial map, one we can converse with, charting our paths “homewards” while keeping us aligned to cosmic harmony.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

Currently with Uranus at 0° 46′ Gemini, these Pleiades rays are activated by the conjunction with Uranus, offering an opportunity for higher mind revelations before the Pleiades Gateway where we then get to work with these energies CONSCIOUSLY - the “descent” of energy of the 7 rays of the Pleiades is met at the crown chakra by the rising Kundalini up the spine of the conscious practitioner, opening a channel for light integration.

As we have been exploring the Pleaides through mythology from all through time and space, so i thought we’d examine the Seven Sisters from a different perspective in this post.

In the Hebrew Torah, the Pleiades are named Kimah — “a cluster” — and in both the Torah + Bible, the term Pleiades appears three times, always alongside Orion.

Job 9:9 — “Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.” Job, in his suffering, acknowledges the God who made these constellations as the same God who creates his life.

Job 38:31 — God speaks directly to Job: “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt?” This is one of the most striking astronomical passages in scripture, and implies that only God is able to.

Amos 5:8 — “He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land — the LORD is his name.”

In the Quran, Surah An-Najm opens with “By the star when it goes down to set” — on occasions, najm specifically refers to Thurayya, the Arabic name for the Pleiades. Ibn Abbas, Mujahid, and Sufyan Thauri all held that najm in this surah implies the Pleiades — the Seven Sisters.

In “The Secrets of the Self” Asrar-i-Khudi, a Persian poem written by Sufi Muhammad Iqbal, the Pleiades is mentioned over + over again. Curious, i reached out to James at who generously left me this wonderful explanation:

The Pleiades (al-Thurayya) appear throughout Islamic tradition at multiple levels. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the Pleiades were one of the most important star groups for navigation, agriculture, and the timing of seasonal migrations. The Arabs had an extraordinarily detailed stellar vocabulary, and al-Thurayya held a special place — its rising and setting marked key transitions in the year. So there’s already a deep cultural layer before we even reach the Quran.In the Quran, the star Sirius (al-Shi’ra) is mentioned explicitly, and Surah 53 itself is called al-Najm, “The Star.”

The Pleiades enter the commentarial tradition around these verses and around references to the celestial realm more broadly. Some mufassirun connect al-Thurayya to the “lowest heaven” in the cosmological schema of seven heavens.

For the Sufis, stars function as markers of degree. The imagery of light descending through celestial levels — from the divine throne through the heavens to the human heart — runs through figures like Najm al-Din al-Kubra, who mapped an entire interior cosmology of colored lights and celestial encounters onto the stages of spiritual ascent. In that framework, specific stars and constellations aren’t just decorative metaphors — they correspond to actual stations of experience encountered during practice.

The other dimension worth noting: the Pleiades are a cluster, not a single star. Seven visible stars, often associated with the seven heavens, the seven levels of the nafs, or the seven latā’if in certain Sufi systems (Simnani’s for instance). That correspondence between a celestial grouping and an interior multiplicity-within-unity is exactly the kind of symbolic structure the tradition works with. So the specificity isn’t accidental — it carries cosmological, practical, and interior meanings simultaneously, which is how traditional symbolism tends to operate.

In the Picatrix — the 10th–11th century Arabic grimoire of astrological magic, later translated into Latin as the foremost handbook of astro-magic in the Western occult tradition — the Pleiades is named directly as the Third Mansion of the Moon, called Al-Thurayya.

The Picatrix states: “The third Mansion is the Pleiades. It is for the acquisition of all good things.” When the Moon passes into this Mansion, the practitioner is instructed to fashion the figure of a seated woman with her right hand raised over her head, wrap the image in cloth, cense it with musk, camphor, mastic and aromatic oils — invoking the spirit Annuncia for whatever good thing is desired.

In De Quindecim Stellis, The Comprehensive Translations of Hermes on the Fifteen Fixed Stars, which likely originated alongside the Hermetica in the late classical period, we find a focus on the 15 major stars with a wealth of information regarding their magical properties, rulerships of gems and herbs, images and sigils, as well as practical guidance on the creation of talismans.

Together with the above sigil, this description is listed with the Pleaides.

‘Now the manner of making these kinds of Rings, is this, viz. when any Star ascends fortunately, with the fortunate aspect, or conjunction of the Moon, we must take a stone, and Hearb that is under that Star, and make a Ring of the Metall that is suitable] to this Star, and in it fasten the stone, putting the Hearb , or root under it; not omitting the inscriptions of images, names, and Characters, as also the proper suffumigations…”
- Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy Book I, chapter 47.

In his magical writings, Agrippa cites astrology as an important link between the higher and lower worlds, stating that everything in the material world is ruled by a particular corresponding celestial influence.

“Under the constellation of Pleiades,they made the image of a little Virgin, or the Figure of a Lamp; its reported to increase the light of the eyes, to assemble Spirits,to raise Winds, to reveal secret and hidden things...”
- Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Bk II, ch 47.

The Pleiades is one of the oldest stellar influences in our history - We have traditionally always looked up to them for guidance. In Hindu astrology, it is one of the 27 lunar mansions (nakshatras) signifying courage, purification + energy. In Maori tradition, the first appearance of this cluster (they’ve named Matariki) marks the start of the New Year.

The Maya watched for the culmination of the Pleiades, before lighting the new fire and starting a new cycle (sheaf) as the Pleiades were linked to the Tzab (rattle) of a celestial rattlesnake. They tracked the zenith passage to know when to burn the fields in preparation for a new season for planting maize (their main crop). We also see the Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza serving as a “precessional star clock” to track the Sun-Pleiades conjunction - essentially the alignment of the stargate.

In the Aboriginal myths of the Kungkarangkalpa (The Seven Sisters), it speaks of the journey of a group of ancestral women. The Seven Sisters songline maps their flight from a lustful hunter (Orion), encoding kinship rules + moral codes with the landscape, functioning as a living map that not only imparts moral values but also helps travellers find essential waterholes for survival. They too watched the heliacal rising of the Pleiades for a signal that winter had begun, which is also a time to begin controlled cultural burning (similar to the Maya) and gathering of specific bush foods.

While Sirius was the primary star watched for agricultural cycles, the ancient Egyptians saw the Pleiades as the Seven Hathors, a group of celestial goddesses often depicted as 7 cows. They were said to be keepers of destiny, appearing at a child’s birth to foretell their fates. As the Celestial Herd, they were seen as providing divine sustenance to both the living (influencing the flooding of the Nile) and the dead (providing nourishment in the form of bread + beer) as they travel through the Afterlife (via the Milky Way).

In scripture, the Pleiades mark the boundary of what human power can reach. In the Picatrix, they become a direct portal through which good things may be called in. In Agrippa’s writing, they are associated with good eyesight + revelation.

You can work with Hermes’ sigil for the Pleaides Gateway, or simply work with the Constellation itself, which, though not a sigil, anchors the specific intention of identifying and anchoring the frequencies of the Pleaidian star cluster.

However you relate to the Pleiades, the purpose of this work is always to encourage you to be guided by your own innate wisdom and foster a personal connection to the stars. The research and traditions serve as a container, but this is not a one-size-fits-all journey - we are allowed direct encounter and initiation, just like the ancients did - as we’ve seen from the myths, they all found their own way and ascribed meaning without “consulting” each other.

Since the beginning of time, our ancestors have always looked towards the sky like a Cosmic Mirror. The Aboriginals look up and see a Sky-Atlas, a map for navigating the desert. The Egyptians saw it as a connected path that linked the Nile to the Milky Way (the celestial river to the Afterlife). For the Maya, the Milky Way was the World Tree, a living organism connecting all realms (heaven, earth, underworld). The Elders called this Sky Knowledge; modern science terms it Cosmology. Either way, the Sky has always been a Compass for the Journey of the Soul.

If you feel called to work with the Pleiadian Frequencies in your own birth chart and Akasha, you can find details of my offering here. This offering is open from April 25th 2026 (Uranus enters Gemini) - 24th May 2026 (Sun conjuncts Pleaides), tapping into the stargate with Uranus all through till the end of the annual alignment of the Pleaides Gateway.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

What does it mean to be seeded by the Pleiadian Star Mothers?
In the most simplistic way of putting it, we (the entire collective) have inherited both the karmic gifts + wounds of this Divine Feminine energy. Following the mythology of the Seven Sisters, we may see it play out in our lives as below:

💜 Alcyone

• Gifts :: One of the sun-stargates connecting to the Akashic Records - the Temple of Alcyone grants visions from your inner soul spark

• Wounds :: A sense of disconnect from your own divinity

💙 Taygeta

• Gifts :: The Priestesses of Taygeta with the All-Seeing Eye have exceptional natural psychic abilities that allow them to serve as healers of souls

• Wounds :: Judgmental, feeling superior, self-importance, “blindness” from ego-blocks

🩵 Merope

• Gifts :: Embodying Free-Will in this lifetime experience to expand potentials to create new dreams

• Wounds :: Rebel without a cause, Lost without purpose, Self-abandonment

💚 Sterope

• Gifts :: The “perfect” wife + mother, undertaking voluntary sacrifice to bring peace + nurture of family

• Wounds :: The Mother Wound, lack of self-love/nurture, martyrdom, lack of self-acceptance

💛 Maya

• Gifts :: Keeper of Time, evolution of cosmos + our 12 strand DNA, healing the illusion of the dark

• Wounds :: Trapped in disillusionment, stuck/stagnation, displacement

🧡 Electra

• Gifts :: Innocence that naturally connects to the divine, keepers of Tantra + Kunalini Flow, Rebirth of the Soul in the Sacred Chalice of the body

• Wounds :: Lack of embodiment, victims of sexual abuse, shame, grief

❤️ Kelaino

• Gifts :: Shamans invoking the elements + spirits of nature to help ease pains of soul fragmentation + denial due to feelings of unworthiness

• Wounds :: Marginalised (especially racism), inferiority complex, lack of sense of belonging + acceptance, black sheep syndrome

We likely all resonate with a few of the above, though if you’ve been called to resolve any of these karmic threads, you will find 1 or 2 exceptionally prominent in your life. These karmic gifts + wounds are part of our galactic inheritance. Being able to identify these patterns + understanding how + why they are woven in your chart helps you work with them consciously, transmuting them through you into higher frequency expressions.

It is said in the Galactic Myths that the Pleiadians have been a guiding force over us since the beginning of Earth history, sending stellar rays of wisdom, love + healing through their light, guiding humanity through different geographical cultures + epochs of time by sharing their light (from their own ascension journeys).

If you look at your natal chart + have personal placements from 27° Taurus to 3° Gemini, you likely have these Pleiadian frequency strands playing out in this lifetime experience, especially through themes related to the Sacred Feminine energies.

This does not negate or undo your trauma + experiences, but seek to help bring higher perspective to address + understand the energetic frequencies for those who are ready to process + transmute the core wounds via honest reflection + release via deep transformative inner work.

This is not a journey for those seeking sensational starseed mythos or for those who define themselves by their trauma. There is no spiritual bypassing here.
It is not an easy path. It will not stoke your ego. It calls to those who are truly ready to contemplate their relationship to the universe + find the stars within themselves.

The Offering

Who this is for

There are seekers on the healing path who have spent years doing the inner work - learning the modalities, developing the gifts, going deep into shadow work, and yet something keeps them blocked or stuck.
A wound that doesn’t quite fully heal, a pattern that resists resolution. A sense that the work they are here to do is suppressed, being bound by something much more ancient - a calling to the Pleiades, a connection to the Pleidian Star Mothers.

It is worth mentioning that this offering is not gender specific, as both the divine masculine + feminine impulses are present in all of us.

Healers. Practitioners. Spiritual Creatives.

You are gifted. You have been trained. You’ve answered the calling to step into this work, but something holds you back from stepping fully into your light.
A loss of clarity. Foggy perception. A block.
The voice of the ego distorts the signals so you feel inconsistent; it creeps in, casting self-doubt on what you know to be true.
The priestesses of Taygeta were visionary healers, yet a sense of being “better” than those they served caused them to become “blinded” by their gifts until they drew compassion from deep within to pour into those who needed their help.

Shamans. Ancient Medicine Healers.

You’ve always had a calling from something far more ancient, inherited from mothers + grandmothers, imparted from the earth mother herself. You have always been able to speak with Mother Nature to bring healing that is sustainable + wholesome through her creatures.
This is the wound of Kelaino, who came from Orion + settled in the Pleiades. It carries the sense of feeling like one doesn’t belong, falling so far out of the mainstream, even within spiritual communities. The black sheep that is not worthy of recognition.

Souls healing from Shame, Disconnect, Abuse.

If you have experienced abuse, emotional, physical, sexual or psychological, then found that years of therapy or healing work have not quite fully brought you home to yourself, this might be the Electra wound.
This is the most common + traumatic wounding in our collective today, its healing linked to lineages like Mary Magdalene.
It shows up as the inability to feel safe in your body. The difficulty of opening up to receive love fully. The grief of the loss of your innocence. The shame of holding all of these in the body that had betrayed you.

Disruptors awakening at Uranus Opposition

If you are going through your Uranus Opposition, meaning Uranus at 0° Sagittarius, this is a time where you might feel a dismantling of identity + purpose, an impulse to break free of all that keeps you trapped in inauthenticity + step towards liberating your true self.
If this is you, + you have an inexplicable knowing that this is more than personal upheaval, your path might be linked to bringing revelation + revolution to support the rise of the divine feminine, linked to helping the collective heal from the Pleiadian wounds we all carry within us, consciously or unconsciously.

Sign Up Window

This offering is open from April 25th 2026 (Uranus enters Gemini) - 24th May 2026 (Sun conjuncts Pleaides), tapping into the stargate with Uranus all through till the end of the annual alignment of the Pleaides Gateway.

Sessions can + may take place beyond this portal, but sign-ups represent the consent + intention of working with this stargate, and will be limited to this window to harness the stellar rays streaming through to us at this time.

Before booking, please reach out via email or DMs with your birth data so we can confirm if you have the Pleiades in your birth chart. If eligible, you will receive the payment + scheduling links. This step exists to honour the integrity of the offering, ensuring this is genuinely relevant to you prior to any exchange taking place.

In the spiritual community, many people are talking about Remembrance, but what does it really mean?

I see it as these frequencies echoing in our conscious waking life + also in our unconscious bodies - energetic strands that show us how to heal the wounds of the emotional body, dissolve + transmute the karmic patterns that are deeply embedded in our collective consciousness. Lightworkers will understand that as we alchemically release these patterns in ourselves, we help the healing of the collective too.

As we move through the ascension journey + bring more light into these woundings, we also get to connect to the Divinity in the Cosmos + within ourselves, helping us tap into the highest vibrational light codes we can reach.

This offering is not for everyone + this path may not be resonant right now. But given that we were seeded by the Pleiadians + hence carry their frequencies within our DNA strands, these patterns will always be a part of our inheritance as a collective, exploring our galactic heritage. Whether or not you have it in your chart or feel the calling at this time, know that all of this written content here on Substack is always available here for all to access.

At the time of posting this, we’ve arrived in Taurus season, with ruler Venus in house, inching towards Uranus as they both come into alignment with the Pleiades Star Cluster when they cross over from Taurus to Gemini, activating the Pleiadian Stargate. Uranus (Higher Minds/Quantum Leaps) + Venus (Values/Divine Feminine) in Gemini (Communication) bring the potential for us to make greater connection to the Galactics, to Inner Earth, to the Nature Elementals, while also offering revolutionary leaps to healing the oppressed Sacred Feminine impulse + recalibrating the energies back to a state of (yin-yang) balance.

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and runic applications @musing_the_runes

My Oracle Decks are available here. Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, thank you for being here.

Light Codes from Pleiades, as channelled at the sacred site of Uluru, the Sacred Red Rock in Australia, during the 8-8 Lion’s Gate Portal.

This is the last presence of Ketu in Virgo, making this eclipse gateway a point of closure for this cycle with a strong theme of purification. There is a “monastic” atmosphere with this lunation, one accompanied by the parting of the veil that the liminal Pisces season brings. It encourages quietness + introspection, so we may be able to hear what has been previously drowned out by the noise of the world.

In the words of my friend + Vedic Astrologer :

Ketu represents release and completion. It carries a vibe of minimization: fewer words, fewer attachments, fewer material desires. Ketu’s energy is inward, contracting, like a turtle drawing into its shell. It seeks the truth within by cutting off external distractions.

If Rāhu is ambition, Ketu is renunciation…There’s often a sense of shrinking of the ego: one eats humble pie or steps out of a spotlight willingly. In positive form, it’s peaceful solitude and completion (finally finishing a thesis, or concluding a long spiritual quest). In negative form, it can be a feeling of aimlessness, disconnection, or nihilism (“nothing matters anyway”).

Physically, Ketu periods can bring surgical operations or decisive medical treatments – literal cutting – or at psychological level, surgical precision in decision making. It separates us from what we think we need, and oftentimes manifests as a dissolution of the material + the turning towards the spiritual, which is very much in line with the Pisces-Virgo dynamics.

Channelled art for Blood Moon, Lunar Eclipse. Composite photograph of Moon phases by aowbsx

As always, we’ll look to the frequencies of the fixed stars for harmonic nuance. Today, we focus on the South Node at 8°55’ Virgo + the fixed stars conjunct at a 3° orb.

🌟 Alula Borealis (7°01’ Virgo) + Alula Australis (7°42’ Virgo) are a pair of stars in the hind foot of the Great Bear. The ancient Arabs termed them “Leaps of the Gazelle”, the Gazelle being imagined as springing from the Pond (Coma Berenice), due to its fear of the Lion’s tail. These stars are linked to the idea of being able to sense danger, given a prophetic ability to aid survival.

🌟 At 7°50’ Virgo lies fixed star Thuban in the tail of the constellation Draco. In the galactic myths, this is a star associated with the Wise Warrior’s capacity for Mercy, and is also said to be a stellar space where the codes of redemption are anchored for the fallen dragon warriors who perished during the galactic wars.

In the Greek myths, this is the dragon who guards the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. Bernadette Brady states that this constellation actively guards + protects, which contrasts with Ursa Major’s passive guardianship.

🌟 At 9°18’ Virgo is Alioth, one of the 7 central stars of Ursa Major, or Big Dipper. It is the Epsilon star at the root of the tail of the Great Bear, symbolising one of the seven pillars of Christ Consciousness - it teaches the wisdom of the mystery of Forgiveness.

🌟 At 11°33’ Virgo stands Al-Suhail, a star in the billowing sails of Argo Constellation, The Great Ship. Hence, it is believed to bring “prosperity in trade + voyages, strength of mind + spirit.”

🌟 Finally, at 11°41’ Virgo, we arrive at Zosma, which in the galactic myths, is a 5th dimensional stellar space that is a point of initiation that requires one to travel through the trial of being a “loser” + bearing “defeat” - this is a test of humility, where we sacrifice our egos + renounce the honours + glory we’ve established - a time of character building. Deeply associated with Leadership, Zosma reminds us that this isn’t about amassing power, feeling superior or wanting to succeed at all cost. By “suffering” such ordeals, one learns to appreciate one’s leadership role + always remembers to honour + respect those who are “lesser”.

In the Greek myths, one of Hercules’ 12 labours that solidified his status as a Hero + secured his immortality was to defeat the Nemean Lion, the sacred beast of the Goddess Hera. He accomplished this by breaking the spine of the great lion. Zosma is the stellar frequency of remembering the great injury of the lion, a lesson that applies to all of us, for we all have a defenseless point where one’s power can be broken. No one is all mighty, and that is a sobering + humbling reminder.

Zosma along with Coxa at 13°47’ Virgo (conjunct the Full Moon), is said grant the ability of prophesy.

As we consider all of these qualities of Mercy, Forgiveness, Humility, Strength + Prophecy with the symbolism of Virgo, i cannot help but come back to the archetype of the Virgin, a symbol of self-sovereignty, representing an individual who belongs to themselves and does not need to be "taken" or completed by another.

Across Virgo is Pisces, which represents the return to Oneness + so the contemplation for this lunation is: what can we release (Ketu) that can restore us to an original state (Virgin) which is the pathway that returns us to Wholeness (Pisces)? By embodying humility + through mercy + forgiveness, our strength + sovereignty is restored - the purification of our physical dimension opens the pathway to the discovery + reclamation of our spiritual aspects.

It sounds easy enough, but Ketu lessons require intentional shedding, and given that we have all defined ourselves by our identities, traumas, job titles, styles etc, there is a lot to let go of, many of which we have gotten used to, some we really like + even depend on, and these are incredibly difficult to release. Conscious effort is needed to shift mindsets + energetic states, so start small + trust that the cosmic wave of our times will aid your endeavours.

Just to add a little note here, that at the time of the conjunction, Mercury, the ruler of the eclipse, and Sun are both trine to Jupiter, who is conjunct fixed stars Sirius + Canopus, anchoring the frequencies of illumination + cosmic harmony (order). This suggests that the eclipse will reveal to us the “dissonances” that need to be shed in order to restore us back to the state of our innate cosmic coherence. Afterall, Jupiter is synonomous with Zeus, which rules over Divine + Social Order.

In Medical Astrology, Virgo rules the digestive system, intestines + the ability to assimilate + process nutrition. As Virgo is Mercury-ruled, it also symbolizes the connection between mental + digestive health. Pisces represents the Unseen, the consciousness, the spiritual mind. Virgo analyses data, and Pisces receives intuitive insights, dreams + prophecy, so the Virgo-Pisces axis represents a functional connection between gut (digestive system) + brain (nervous system + consciousness).

• Consider doing a dietary cleanse this Lunation, like a juice or water fast, to purify the body + allow the emotional undercurrents to surface to be revealed instead of being buried by emotional overeating.

• Release narratives you’ve been using as a crutch + make space for new narratives to be birthed that are more aligned to the frequencies you wish to embody. This does not negate your experiences but it shifts your focus away from constantly identifying yourself with all the “bad” experiences that keep you trapped in a reality that is not fulfilling.

• Set healthier boundaries to safeguard your mental wellness, carve more space in your day to be “empty” giving yourself permission to do “nothing”. Take a long bath, do a releasing ceremony e.g. burning away a list of things you’d like to release, sit with a candle + meditate while it burns out fully.

Eclipse Blessings to all ✨🌟✨

You can find most of my work-in-progress artwork and astrological musings on my daily posts on Instagram @lemuriandreamweaver and personal contemplation and applications @numinous_reverie

Artprints are available on inPRNT, and if you would like to help support all of this work that is put out to the collective for free, you could consider a donation or order a commissioned artwork on Ko-Fi.

i so appreciate your presence, for taking this walk together. Thank you for being here.