The Star Sirius

The star of Isis, called Sothis, or Sirius, is the brightest star in our night sky. Modern astronomy has determined that it is only 8 1/2 light-years distant, and traveling directly towards Earth at many thousands of miles per hour. The Ancient Egyptians believed that Sirius had a tremendous effect upon life on our planet.

The system of Sirius contains two known stars, the first binary star system discovered. The larger and brighter of the two, Sirius A, is three times the mass of our sun, and over ten times as bright. Shining with a brilliant blue-white radiance, Sirius A easily overshadows her darker companion star. Sirius B is a "white dwarf" star, invisible to the naked eye and packing the equivalent mass of our sun into an incredibly dense globe only 4 times the diameter of our Earth.

The Sirius system is directly "upstream" of our solar system within the galactic arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. Because of this, we now know that the polarized energies of Sirius do indeed wash over us. Modern science is yet to discover if this vast current of highly charged particles affects solar activity or life on Earth .

By coming directly towards us, Sirius creates an axis of rotation with Earth relative to the stellar background. Because of this, of all the stars in the sky, only the annual heliacal rising of Sirius exactly matches the length of our solar year, 365.25 days.

The Ancient Egyptians were somehow aware of this unique relationship between our system and Sirius and marked the heliacal rising of Sirius as the first day of their calendar year.

Even today, unbeknownst to most of the people of the world, our News Years Eve celebration is a continuation of a most ancient ritual honoring the return of Sirius to the midheaven position at midnight. Occurring down through the ages around January 1st, this midnight alignment marks the moment when the energies of Sirius, directly overhead, most closely touch our lives in her most singular purity. For countless thousands of years and all around the world, without knowing the hidden reason, we have marked this midnight moment by jumping for joy as the rush of this vital connection surges through us.

Sirius B traces an elliptical orbit around Sirius A, and their common center of gravity, directly face onto the Earth like the dial of a clock. Taking 50 years to complete their orbit, the period of closest connection, called the periastron, is a time when the radiated energies of these two great stars is especially intense.

Sirius B spins on it's axis at an incredible 23 times a minute ( 23 rpm!!), generating an enormous magnetic field. As it approaches periastron, it begins to pull huge amounts of gas and material away from its less dense companion.

The gravitational attraction of these stars for each other and the energies they release at this time of closest communion is difficult, if not impossible for the human mind to comprehend.

Vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays and beyond, are thrown into space. The extra gas and material Sirius A provides for her companion re-ignite fusion reactions within Sirius B, and once again, her eternal lover, now blazing brightly, is reborn.

As Sirius B moves past periastron, the light generated by their shared energies begins to diminish until eventually, it resumes its role as her "Dark Companion".

As Robert Temple has shown in his book "The Sirius Mystery", the Ancient Egyptians were aware of Sirius B and the orbital dynamics of the Sirian system in predynastic times, before 3200 BC. Modern astronomy did not discover these facts until over five thousand years later, in 1862.

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copyright Jay Morningstar 1997