Category: card meanings

What’s the story?

What is the Lion’s Gate Portal?

The Lion’s Gate Portal is an astronomical event that happens every year when Sirius, Earth, and the Orion constellation are all in alignment with each other. This happens every year between July 28 and August 12, and reaches its peak of closest alignment on August 8 (8/8) when in the northern hemisphere we see the brilliant star Sirius on the eastern horizon before dawn. Sirius has been out of sight since early in the spring.

But now it is rising again.

The Lion’s Gate Portal is seen by many as a particularly auspicious portal in time, but auspicious for what? Action, that’s the theory. Any action tending towards conquest, achievement or the creation of something new- and lasting.

But how and why?

Sirius, the brightest star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, is the stellar cornerstone.

Sirius

Here, the photographer has captured Sirius hanging low; a brilliant blue white star, apparently following along behind the constellation of Orion, the Hunter.

The name Sirius comes from the Greek and means “scorching” or “glowing.” Its other names, Canis Major, or the Dog Star, derive from the ancient Greek myth that says that once upon a time Sirius was one of the two hunting dogs of Orion. (The other is the Little or Lesser Dog, Canis Minor.)

See Orion running out of the right hand side of the picture? See the Belt of Orion, and the sword hanging down (or the hunting knife) and three stars that make up the belt; Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka? See Betelgeuse, the bright red giant star of his right shoulder? Some sources call it the left shoulder- it depends how you picture The Hunter. Do you see him with his back to you, or do you see him swaggering past, moving left -right with his face in partial profile?

Now see the brilliant white orb of Sirius, running along behind the Hunter?

As a girl I would go outside to the coal bunker (yes, coal) on a clear winter’s night, and fill up the coal scuttle for the fire, and look up and wonder where Orion was running to, with Sirius bounding along behind him.

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky- within the Milky Way- and about 8.6 light years away from earth and is actually a double star, Sirius Alpha and Sirius Beta. Sirius Alpha is much brighter than the dwarf Sirius Beta, and has twice the mass of our own Sun.

We don’t know if there are planets in the Sirius star system, and it’s possible, there may actually be three, not two stars in the system but we don’t know for sure.

To the people of ancient Egypt, the return of Sirius was a welcome sign that the Nile flood was on its way, ending the long season of drought, when desperate desert lions would come looking for water in plain sight of the city walls.

This was an anxious time of year. No Nile flood in the seasonal time frame of Leo meant famine. The dawn re-appearance of Sirius was a welcome sign that the worst of the drought was now in sight, and the farmers all along the Nile- and everyone else -waited expectantly, almost holding their breath.

The auspicious star of Sirius was associated with the goddess Sopdet, the fertility goddess of the Nile, correlating with deities of other societies and other times; Isis/Ishtar and Demeter, as represented in the tarot deck by the Empress card.

The Zodiac/Celestial Zoo

“As above so below,” the saying goes. But – and perhaps this is being pedantic- “as below, so above,” was how these ancient stories first began.

Astrology, astronomy, cosmology; it all started right where we stood. Some might say, what’s the fuss, any of this astrology stuff. It’s all just random patterns in the sky. But that’s exactly the point. We are a hunting animal. We are a pattern seeking animal. We look for patterns in everything, and we ascribe meaning to those patterns. In time, the pattern and the meaning become conjoined. Hardwired. They are now archetypes, and are part of our ancient collective algorithm, so to speak, lending themselves to anticipation, planning- and potentially, prediction.

People looked up, saw patterns, saw life on earth mirrored in the stars, gave them names. “Ooh, look up at that, will ya? Do you see it too? I can see a crouching ram!”

(If you say so) The brightest star shown here at the bottom is Hamal, the head of the Ram.

More HERE

Shepherds in the Near and Middle East, looked up at the starry skies, watching their precious flocks by night and pictured the star Hamal as the head of the Ram, critically noting that it was always’seen’ overhead at lambing time. They saw that those patterns repeated over and over. And so in time we got Aries -and by a similar approach- all the rest of the zodiac pantheon based on the 12 constellations visible within a narrow arc of sky, the imaginary pathway known as the ecliptic.

The word “zodiac” comes from the Greek meaning “circle of animals.” The only non-living symbol in the astrological Zodiac is the scales of Libra, but even these are formed from the same stars that make up the claws of Scorpio, the celestial scorpion next door.

The Lion

My darling mother, a Capricorn sun sign native, first decan, and with a massive dose of Sagittarian vision and curiosity; beautiful, brave, self-reliant, wise, witty, and above all, a most determined person, was saying to me, not long before she died in February this year, that there was this theme tune on the box that made the hairs on her neck stand up every time she heard it.

She had been watching that drama series, Versailles, on the box. The theme tune was Outro by M83, as also used in the movie, Cloud Atlas, based on the novel by David Mitchell.

“I’m the king of my own land
Facing tempests of dust, I’ll fight until the end
Creatures of my dreams, raise up and dance with me
Now and forever
I’m your king!”

-(Outro- M83)

Listen here– as being used as the score for a film, “Melancholia” by Lars von Trier. (Don’t be thrown by the really long pause in the introduction.)

She greatly admired, and had a great sympathy with lionesses, for their courage, but also for their incredible devotion, duty and unselfishness, she said.

Number 8

The Lions’ Gate portal is a cosmic, and perhaps karmic expression of the power of the number 8.

The number eight is like a lemniscate- a symbol of infinity, only now it’s standing upright. Note the lemniscate above the head of the figure with the lion in the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

The Strength card in the Tarot is major arcana number 8. The Strength card is about moral fortitude and stamina as much as it is about physical strength and courage.

Strength is self- mastery. Self-control. Taming the inner lion. Leo rules the heart, and the passions of the heart.

The word ‘Karma’ means ‘action’. This is read by some as a celestial signal for Action. Plan, execute, and materially manifest. The glory and the grandeur of the Lion contain on occasion something lonely and forlorn.

There is subtlety in that steady, even number 8.

For folk not familiar with a tarot deck, in a 78 card deck of cards deck we have five cards that bear the number 8. Besides the Strength card, major arcana 8, we also have 4 minor arcana cards bearing the number 8

(22 Major arcana cards=greater secrets or mysteries. 56 Minor arcana cards =lesser secrets or mysteries, but these are no less important in any reading)

We have:

8 of Cups (Pisces)- acceptance of disappointment in developments, walking away

8 of Swords-Gemini- mental impasse, drama, entrapment, indecision, refusal to face a problem

8 Pentacles -Virgo- steady developments, prudence, craft, accounting, harvest

8 Wands -Sagittarius- speed of developments, generation of news and activities

These apparently immovable number eights all belong to the MUTABLE signs of the zodiac- the signs where one season gradually merges into another.

8 of Cups= Pisces, winter becomes spring, 8 Swords= Gemini, and spring becomes summer, 8 Pentacles, Virgo, summer becomes autumn/fall, and 8 Wands= Sagittarius, when autumn now segues into winter.

The eights are mutable, twining, stable because symmetrical and yet subtle, complex, shifting.

There are no easy answers in life. The miracle is that we are here at all. But we do know from all the entire known history of the human species that the experience of happiness is found through a sense of connection with others. Who wants a paradise all to themselves and all alone, except in small doses? The misanthropes can object all they like.

We were never meant to be a solitary animal, any more than the lion, who suffers trauma as a young adult male; when he leaves the pride aged two or three.He must leave or else he will be driven out, to go and fight for, and create his own pride; exiled from his home turf and everyone he has always known.

The lionesses do the dangerous work of hunting. But the lion controls the territory and all its resources on behalf of the pride.

We want- we need- to share our joys and sorrows alike. Part of the tapestry of all Humanity. But we come in alone. We leave alone. And sooner or later, if we are ever to become The Lion, then at some point, we will have to face- and outface- and defy- “tempests of dust.”

The zodiac sign of Leo rules the human heart. Leo can be loud. The dreams are big and bold. But Leo understands what it is to be lonely- or simply alone.

But like the lion in exile, who must fight tooth and claw for his own patch of turf, for his place in the world, for his chance of founding a pride of his own, and for his very survival, we will and must sometimes stand alone, in rising to meet a challenge.

Kings of our own lands.