Canis Major

the Greater Dog

Urania's Mirror 1825

 

 

If you are in DC the first week of May, you can go to the west side of the Capitol Building at sunset and looked toward the White House to see the sun. The image above shows the sun setting May the first, 20 degrees north of due west in DC. This event is the flip side of the story told by David Ovason about the sun setting over Penn Avenue in August, which you can see in the image below. Here you can see that the sun also sets there in May. Now, re-read his book where he talks about Pennsylvania Ave having been aligned to one sunset on one day.

 

 

If you are in DC the second week of November, you can stand on the west side of the CB to watch the sunset near the Jefferson Memorial to the left of the Wash Mmt. If you were there in February, the sun will be setting in the same place again after having made its southerly most pass in December. David Ovason never mentions that Maryland and Penn Aves are symmetrical to one another.

 

 

Penn Ave is NOT aligned to one sunset, but to two of them, just as Maryland Ave is!!

From page 339 Secret Architecture, "Both L'Enfant and Ellicott would have insisted that only one day (which is to say, one particular sunset) would mark precisely the orientation between the Capitol and the President's House." Parentheses are his.

I remind Serious Students that these dates, early Feb, May, Aug and November correspond to what are known as the 'cross-quarter' days - the days half-way between the solstices and the equinoxes. In the northern hemisphere the cold peaks statistically on about Feb 6th, while the heat of the summer peak about Aug 6th. The mid-points are in May and November.

Students of astrology should note that the solstice and equinoxes happen on the cusp (beginning) of the cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. The cross-quarter days occur at 15 degrees of the fixed signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, 45+ days after the equinoxes and the solstices. If you know your zodiac symbolism you will recognize these four as relating to the four creatures which were depicted in Ezekiel and Revelation as - a bull, a lion, a man and an eagle. Here is a standard Royal Arch image used by Masons that bears the same creatures.

If you were to watch the sunset for a year from the west side of the Capitol, you would see the sun set in front of you in March and September, it would set on Penn Ave in May, it would set 31 degrees north of due west in late June, and on PA again in August - as Ovason points out.

Next you would see the sun set over Maryland Ave in November, it will set 31 degrees south of due west in Dec and over MA again in Feb. Instead of being oriented to one sunset on one day, the city appears to have been oriented to four sunsets on four days, as seen by Penn and Maryland Aves. The city is not aligned to the solstices but to the cross-quarter days; the fixed zodiac signs, not the cardinal ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of you may have seen David Icke's demonstration where he uses the image above from Charles Westrbrook's book to prove the DC streets were aligned to the solstices. Please note, first of all, that those three sets of lines are not all parallel, yet they are all labeled as a solstice alignment. (I have added the numbers on the right.)

If you study the solar arc, you will find that while the sun moves to 23.5 degrees north and south of the equator at the solstices, as seen from the equator, that arc widens as you move north or south on the globe. At the latitude of DC, the total solar arc is 62 degrees, 31 north and south. That is, the sun is located 31 degrees north of due east on June 21 in DC.

Since the sun moves 71% of the arc between the equinox and solstice in half that time (45 days), The cross quarter day sunrises and sets happen at 31 x .71, or 22 degrees from due east-west in DC. That matches the alignment of Penn and Maryland Aves.

 

 

 

Take a look at the DVD named "Riddles in Stone" at about 17:00, where they are discussing the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. When you look at the earth's orbit around the sun, you will see that on July 4th, the earth is at its far point from the sun, and it is in such a position that the sun aligns with Sirius. That means that the sun is in front of Sirius, so that you can't see it.

In the DVD, it points to the cornerstone ceremony for the Washington Monument, noting that the sun aligned with Sirius then. They fail to point out that the ceremony took place on July 4th, and that the sun aligns with Sirius then every year. Next they present an image of DC looking east -

 

 

They proclaim that on the day of the cornerstone ceremony for the monument, you would have been able to see Sirius rising in the east, and hovering over the Capitol Building as seen above. You now know that you can not see Sirius July 4th, since the sun lies directly in front of it then!! What you would have seen would have been the sun only. Sirius does not emerge from behind the sun until August, the time that David Ovason writes so much about.

Note also that in the DVD it is suggested that the pyramid was 'aligned' to Sirius; that is was built so that the light of Sirius would travel down one of the air shafts and fall on an initiate located in the Queen's Chamber. Have a look at a drawing of the Queen's Chamber and the shafts, and you can see that it is impossible for that to happen, as the southern shaft has a bend in it.

http://dcsymbols.com/index.htm

 

In early astrology and poetry there is no end to the evil influences that were attributed to Sirius. Homer wrote, in Lord Derby's translation,

The brightest he, but sign to mortal man

Of evil augury.

Pope's very liberal version of the same lines, —

Terrific glory ! for his burning breath

Taints the red air with fevers, plagues and death, —

seems to have been taken from the Shepheard's Kalendar for July:

The rampant Lyon hunts he fast with dogge of noysome breath

Whose baleful barking brings in hast pyne, plagues and dreerye death.

Spenser, however, was equally a borrower, for we find in the Aeneid:

{Page 126} The dogstar, that burning constellation, when he brings drought and diseases on sickly mortals, rises and saddens the sky with inauspicious light;

and in the 4th Georgic:

Jam rapidus torrens sitientes Sirius Indos Ardebat coelo,

rendered by Owen Meredith in his Paraphrase on Vergil's Bees of Aristaeus:

Swift Sirius, scorching thirsty Ind,

Was hot in heaven.

Hesiod advised his country neighbors,

"When Sirius parches head and knees, and the body is dried up by reason of heat, then sit in the shade and drink,"

— advice universally followed, even till now, although with but little thought of Sirius. Hippocrates made much, in his Epidemics and Aphorisms, of this star's power over the weather, and the consequent physical effect upon mankind, some of his theories being current in Italy even during the last century; while the result of all physic depended upon the sign of the zodiac in which the sun chanced to be. Manilius wrote of Sirius:

From his nature flow

The most afflicting powers that rule below.

But these expressions as to the hateful character of the Dog-star may have been induced in part from the evil reputation of the dog in the East.

Its heliacal rising, 400 years before our era, corresponded with the sun's entrance into the constellation Leo, that marked the hottest time of the year, and this observation, originally from Egypt, taken on trust by the Romans, who were not proficient observers, and without consideration as to its correctness for their age and country, gave rise to their dies caniculariae, the dog days, and the association of the celestial Dog and Lion with the heat of midsummer. The time and duration of these days, although not generally agreed upon in ancient times, any more than in modern, were commonly considered as beginning on the 3d of July and ending on the 11th of August, for such were the time and period of the unhealthy season of Italy, and all attributed to Sirius. The Greeks, however, generally assigned fifty days to the influence of the Dog-star. Yet even then some took a more correct view of the matter, for Geminos wrote:

It is generally believed that Sirius produces the heat of the dog days; but this is an error, for the star merely marks a season of the year when the sun's heat is the greatest.

But he was an astronomer. {Page 127} The idea prevailed, however, even with the sensible Dante in his "great scourge of days canicular" while Milton, in Lycidas, designated it as "the swart star." And the notion holds good with many even to the present time. This character doubtless is indicated on the Farnese globe, where the Dog's head is surrounded with sun-rays.

But Pliny took a kinder view of this star, as in the "xii. chapyture of the xi. booke of his naturall hystorie," on the origin of honey:

This coometh from the ayer at the rysynge of certeyne starres, and especially at the rysynge of Sirius, and not before the rysynge of Vergiliae (which are the seven starres cauled Pleiades) in the sprynge of the day;

although he seems to be in doubt whether "this bee the swette of heaven, or as it were a certeyne spettyl of the starres." This idea is first .seen in Aristotle's History of Animals. So, too, in late astrology wealth and renown were the happy lot of all born under this and its companion Dog. Our modern Willis wrote in his Scholar of Thebet ben Khorat:

Mild Sirius tinct with dewy violet,

Set like a flower upon the breast of Eve.

When in opposition Sirius was supposed to produce the cold of winter.

It has been in all history the brightest star in the heavens, thought worthy by Pliny of a place by itself among the constellations, and even seen in broad sunshine with the naked eye by Bond at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by others at midday with very slight optical aid; but its color is believed by many to have changed from red to its present white. This question recently has been discussed, by See in the affirmative and Schiaparelli in the negative, at a length not allowing repetition here, the weight of argument, however, seeming to be against the admission of any change of color in historic times.

Aratos' term poikilos, applied to the Dog (constellaton), is equally appropriate to Sirius now in the sense of many-colored or changeful, and is an admirable characterization, as one realizes when watching this magnificent object coming up from the horizon on a winter evening. Tennyson, who is always correct as well as poetical in his astronomical allusions, says in The Princess:

The fiery Sirius alters hue

And bickers into red and emerald;

this, of course, being largely due to its marked scintillation; and Arago gave Barakish as an Arabic designation for Sirius, meaning Of a Thousand {Page 128} Colors; and said that as many as thirty changes of hue in a second had been observed in it. [Montigny's scintillometer has marked as many as seventy-eight changes in a second in various white stars standing 30° above the horizon, though a somewhat less number in those of other colors.]

Sirius, notwithstanding its brilliancy, is by no means the nearest star to our system, although it is among the nearest; only two or three others having, so far as is yet known, a smaller distance. Investigations up to the present time show a parallax of 0".39, indicating a distance of 8.3 light years, nearly twice that of alpha Centauri.

Some are of the opinion that the apparent magnitude of Sirius is partly due to the whiteness of its tint and its greater intrinsic brilliancy; and that the red stars, Aldebaran, Betelgeuze, and others, would appear much brighter than now if of the same color as Sirius; rays of red light affecting the retina of the eye more slowly than those of other colors. The modern scale of magnitudes that makes this star  — 1.43, — about 9½ times as bright as the standard 1st-magnitude star Altair (alpha Aquilae), — would make the sun  — 25.4, or 7000 million times as bright as Sirius; but, taking distance into account, we find that Sirius is really forty times brighter than the sun.

Its spectrum, as type of the Sirian in distinction from the Solar, gives name to one of the four general divisions of stellar spectra instituted by Secchi from his observations in 1863-67; these two divisions including nearly (eleven twelfths) of the observed stars. Of these about one half are Sirian of a brilliantly white colour, sometimes inclining towards a steely blue. The sign manual of hydrogen is stamped upon them with extraordinary intensity by broad, dark shaded lines which form a regular series.

It is found by Vogel to be approaching our system at the rate of nearly ten miles a second, and, since Rome was built, has changed its position by somewhat more than the angular diameter of the moon. It culminates on the 11th of February.

The celebrated Kant thought that Sirius was the central sun of the Milky Way; and, eighteen centuries before him, the poet Manilius said that it was "a distant sun to illuminate remote bodies," showing that even at that early day some had knowledge of the true character and office of the stars.

Certain peculiarities in the motion of Sirius led Bessel in 1844, after ten years of observation, to the belief that it had an obscure companion with which it was in revolution; and computations by Peters and Auwers led Safford to locating the position of the satellite, where it was found as {Page 129} predicted on the 31st of January, 1862, by the late Alvan Clark, at Cambridgeport, Mass., while testing the I8½-inch glass now at the Dearborn Observatory. It proved to be a yellowish star, estimated as of the 8½ magnitude, but difficult to be seen because of the brilliancy of Sirius, and then 10" away; this diminishing to 5" in 1889; and last seen and measured by Burnham at the Lick Observatory before its final disappearance in April, 1890. Its reappearance was observed from the same place in the autumn of 1896 at a distance of 3".7, with a position angle of 195°. It has a period of 51½ years, and an orbit whose diameter is between those of Uranus and Neptune; its mass being one third that of Sirius and equal to that of our sun, although its light is but one 10, 000 nth its principal. So that it may be supposed to be approaching non-luminous solidity, — one of Bessel's "dark stars."

It is remarkable that Voltaire in his Micromegas of 1752, an imitation of Gulliver's Travels, followed Dean Swift's so-called prophetic discovery of the two moons of Mars by a similar discovery of an immense satellite of Sirius, the home of his hero. Swift, however, owed his inspiration to Kepler, who more than a century previously wrote to Galileo:

I am so far from disbelieving ill the existence of the four circumjovial planets, that I long for a telescope to anticipate you, if possible, in discovering two round Mars (as the proportion seems to me to require), six or eight round Saturn, and perhaps one each round Mercury and Venus.

Other stars are shown by the largest glasses in the immediate vicinity of Sirius, two additional having very recently been discovered by Barnard at the Yerkes Observatory.

[Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889].

The astrological influences of the constellation Canis Major

Legend: This constellation is said to represent the dog set by Jupiter to guard Europa whom he had stolen and conveyed to Crete. According to other accounts, however, it was either Laelaps, the hound of Actaeon; that of Diana's nymph Procris; that given by Aurora to Cephalus; or finally one of the dogs of Orion. [Robson*, p.34.]

Influences: Ptolemy states that the stars of this constellation, with the exception of Sirius, are like Venus. It is said to give good qualities, charity and a faithful heart, but violent and dangerous passions. There is some danger from, or fear of, darkness and the night, and liability to dog bites, though the latter characteristic is probably associated more particularly with Sirius. Canis Major is connected by the Kabalists with the Hebrew letter Tzaddi and the 18^th Tarot Trump, "The Moon". [Robson*, p.34.]

The astrological influences of the constellation Canis Major given by Manilius:

"It is Orion who leads the constellations as they speed over the full circuit of the heavens. At his heels follows the Dog outstretched in full career: no star comes on mankind more violently or causes more trouble when it departs. Now it rises shivering with cold, now it leaves a radiant world open to the heat of the Sun [translator's note: In ancient times the Dogstar's evening rising occurred in early January, its evening setting in early May (for an explanation of these terms see the Loeb Aratus, Introduction E, or Dicks 12]: thus it moves the world to either extreme and brings opposite effects. Those who from Mount Taurus' lofty peak observe it ascending when it returns at its first rising learn of the various outcomes of harvests and seasons, what state of health lies in store, and what measure of harmony. It stirs up war and restores peace, and returning in different guise affects the world with the glance it gives it and governs with its mien. Sure proof that the star has this power are its colour and the quivering of the fire that sparkles in its face. Hardly is it inferior to the Sun, save that its abode is far away and the beams it launches from its sea-blue face are cold. In splendour it surpasses all other constellations, and no brighter star is bathed in ocean or returns to heaven from the waves. [Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD, book 1, p.34-37]

"The brilliant constellation of the Dog: it barks forth flame, raves with its fire, and doubles the burning heat of the Sun. When it put its torch to the earth and discharges its rays, the earth foresees its conflagration and tastes its ultimate fate [translator's note: the ecpyrosis of the Stoics, who held that the Universe would ultimately be engulfed in conflagration and all things would return to the condition of primeval fire]. Neptune lies motionless in the midst of his waters and the green blood is drained from leaves and grass. All living things seek alien climes and the world looks for another world to repair to; beset by temperatures too great to bear, nature is afflicted with a sickness of its own making, alive, but on a funeral-pyre: such is the heat diffused among the constellations, and everything is brought to a halt by a single star. When the Dogstar rises over the rim of the sea, which at its birth not even the flood of Ocean can quench, it will fashion unbridled spirits and impetuous hearts; it will bestow on its sons billows of anger, and draw upon them the hatred and fear of the whole populace.

"Words run ahead of the speakers: the mind is too fast for the mouth [translator's note: the impetuosity of the speaker causes him to utter words before he has time to adapt them to grammar or logic]. Their hearts start throbbing at the slightest cause, and when speech comes their tongues rave and bark, and constant gnashing imparts the sound of teeth to their utterance. Their failings are intensified by wine, for Bacchus [meaning alcohol] gives them strength and fans their savage wrath to flame.

"No fear have they of woods or mountains, or monstrous lions, the tusks of the foaming boar, or the weapons which nature has given wild beasts; they vent their burning fury upon all legitimate prey.

"Lest you wonder at these tendencies under such a constellation, you see how even the constellation itself hunts among the stars, for in its course it seeks to catch the Hare (Lepus) in front." [Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD, book 5, p.316-319].

The astrological influences of the star Sirius

According to Ptolemy it is of the nature of Jupiter and Mars and, to Alvidas, of the Moon, Jupiter and Mars. It gives honor, renown, wealth, ardor, faithfulness, devotion, passion and resentment, and makes its natives custodians, curators and guardians. It also gives danger of dog bites, and two examples of this effect will be found under Procyon. [Robson*, p.208.]

Well connected, it promises fame, honors and riches. On the Ascendant and with Mars combined, Sirius can be quite dangerous, pushing ahead with too much ambition is then seen, resulting in dangers by injuries or attempts on the native's life. According to tradition, Sirius will give a famous death with honors beyond the grave, if positioned in the 8th house. In good aspect with Mars and Jupiter and close to the MC, promise is given of gaining extensive wealth, a lucky hand in commercial enterprise or matters of government. This star so placed is most excellent for military, lawyers and civil servants. Sirius in conjunction with the Sun and well placed in the chart will be found to be the case with numerous important and famous personalities. Possibly, the rise in station is made possible by protection from people of influence. [Fixed Stars and Their Interpretation, Elsbeth Ebertin, 1928, p.38.]

Regarded as a harbinger of fame. [Larousse Encyclopedia of Astrology].

If culminating: High office under Government giving great profit and reputation. [Robson*, p.208.]

With Sun: Success in business, occupation connected with metals or other martial affairs, domestic harmony. If rising or culminating, kingly preferment. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Moon: Success in business, influential friends of opposite sex, favorable for the father, good health, beneficial changes in home or business. If a malefic be with Scheat, death by fiery cutting weapons or from beasts. If Saturn be with the Moon, death by wild beasts or soldiers. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Mercury: Great business success, help through influential people, worries unnecessarily, associated with the Church, physical defect through accident. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Venus: Ease, comfort and luxury, extravagant, gain by inheritance. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Mars: Courageous, generous, military preferment, work in connection with metals. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Jupiter: Business success, journeys, help from relatives, ecclesiastical preferment. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Saturn: Steady, reserved, diplomatic, just, persevering, high position through friends, favorable for home, gifts and legacies, domestic harmony. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Uranus: Gain and prominence in Uranian matters, help from influential friends, gain through harmonious marriage, especially if male, sudden death. [Robson*, p.209.]

With Neptune: Intuitional, occult interests, religious, good organizing ability, success in mercantile pursuits, banks or corporations, many influential friends, favorable for gain and domestic matters, natural death. [Robson*, p.209.]