Photo by Hubble European Space Agency Credit: Akira Fujii, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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A few days before the end of 2021, my friend, the Mongolian American Shaman Jade Grigori, reminded me of an alignment that occurs every New Year’s Eve when the bright star Sirius sits atop “the Axis Mundi, the Sacred Tree of Life.” What this means is that Sirius, the brightest star in our sky, lines up at the midheaven point–at midnight–only on New Year’s Eve. This is a powerful synchronicity with both cosmological and personal significance. It is a moment when, as Jade shares as a Caretaker of the Ways, each of us has the opportunity to receive a boon or transmission which will “set the theme, the tone, for the full rest of the year for the individual.”
In years past, I’ve missed this moment. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t open. I forgot or got distracted or fell asleep. And indeed, Jade says, “it is well understood that the greater the capacity we have to receive, the more dynamic (sic) the Gift will affect the receiver.” He suggests methods for fostering that receptivity and offers shamanic ritual for retrieving those gifts on behalf of individuals.
Although I didn’t do any of his suggested methods, in a stroke of synchroncity, I sat down that evening for the imaginal conversation with my guide, Aran, that produced the blog post A New Year’s Vision. That act both ratified my belief in the imaginal work I’ve found my way into, and led to intimations of a calling that I shaped into words and added to my homepage as a statement of intent. This process must have opened me, because Sirius blew my mind this year!
I’ve been trying to figure out how – to – describe – it! Michael was there. He saw it! He was distracted watching Miley Cyrus (she was awesome!), but he did see it.
I went out a few minutes before midnight just to make sure I could find Sirius in the sky. Clouds and mist had blotted out most of the stars, including Orion which I usually use to find Sirius (Sirius is Orion the Hunter’s Big Dog). But there was this brilliant white star shining out at me from due South, almost defying me to doubt who it was!
The location was a little adjustment (duh) because a midheaven alignment (highest point of the ecliptic) isn’t necessarily a zenith alignment (straight overhead). I used my Sky Guide app to be sure, but with Orion still hidden, I hesitated since the app doesn’t line up perfectly between the sky and my screen. Then the Star, which had faded a bit behind clouds, shone out again with a vividness, as if to say, “Hey! I’m here!” I stopped doubting because what else could it be? Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and that one was so bright it couldn’t be anything else.
At the stroke of midnight as Miley Cyrus’ New Year’s Eve party counted down to the moment, I looked up at Sirius and greeted it with gladness and anticipation. My heart was full–full with the imaginal vision I’d recorded earlier that evening, and warmed by the working mission statement I’d posted with a surge of heart’s certainty on my homepage:
This is a work in progress, with the lofty goal of improving the maps both large and small which we use for healing, growth, and fulfillment, while weaving in the Imaginal and Psyche’s rich potentials for accessing Truth.
Immediately, I had an impression. Was it a message from Sirius? It felt steady and stayed in my mind: a promise of greater warmth and heart connections this year. It was such a lovely image. My heart filled with gratitude, and I ran out onto our deck, the far end of which looks out due South, to gaze at the Star from that vantage point. I closed my eyes and breathed deep and heard more: a promise that I would learn much more about these mysteries–of the imaginal, of the enchanted world, of the psyche and of humanity’s pathways to growth, wholeness, fulfillment, and joy. And wonder! And awe! Aran too would be known more fully to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I whispered, with joy.
Stepping back into the house where Michael was watching Miley’s New Year’s Eve party, I paused to watch her sing “Jolene.” Decked out in silver fringe, she owned everything about her performance and her image. Miley was imitating no one, including her mentor Dolly Parton whose song she was singing. Yet she clearly stood on the shoulders of so many great women performers who have come before her–a country and rock goddess in her own right!
“Sirius is amazing tonight!” I said to Michael. “You have to come out and see it.” And I bounded out the door and found my view of that part of the sky again. It was dark but Orion’s belt shimmered through the clouds above and to the right, ratifying that indeed, I had been looking at Sirius. With that thought, Sirius blazed forth through the clouds.
Wow, I thought, and I gazed around at the rest of our skyline, excited, scintillating, and brimming with Sirius’ messages for me. Every time I repeated one of its promises to myself, I looked toward that part of the sky, found it dark, but with the completion of the thought, that brilliant diamond would shine out of the darkness, shining like a beacon.
Michael finally stumbled out the door, a little dopey with sleep (he’d slept much of the evening and woke up only a little while before midnight). “What’s going on?” he asked.
“It’s Sirius,” I said, glancing side-eyed toward that part of the sky, now dark again. “Watch,” I said, and pointed my finger toward it. On cue, it blazed forth, a brilliant white light. “That’s Sirius,” I said. “It keeps doing that, every time I think or talk about it.” Michael grunted, as it faded primly to darkness again.
“You can receive a blessing from it tonight, transmissions about the coming year. I feel like it’s telling me that I’m going to have more warmth and heart connections this year.” I grinned as Sirius shone suddenly out of the darkness in confirmation. “See?” I said, pointing.
Michael is eminently practical, and normally unmoved by flights of fancy. But he nodded his head then, and seemed to register his surprise with a little body check. Then he shivered. “I’m cold,” he said, and moved back into the house, although I could feel an attitude of respect that might have been edging toward reverence from him.
I hugged myself and danced around the yard, giving thanks and praise, repeating Sirius’ messages for me this year. Sirius pulsed in sync with my thoughts and gestures, giving me one of the most vivid experiences of synchronicity I’ve had in years. Do you see? it seemed to be saying. This is the enchanted universe.
I’ll share more about Jade Wah’oo Grigori soon. In addition to being my friend and a very kind-hearted person, he is the most legit shaman I have ever known. Here is a video interview I did with him last year when I was still self-conscious on camera and in the role of the interviewer!
Jade’s Website https://jadegrigori.com/
Postscript
As I recorded the audio for this episode, I became aware of a similarity between the darkly clouded and shifting sky I saw that night around the star Sirius and the constellation of Orion–and the image in the mirror from the imaginal conversation earlier that evening that produced the A New Year’s Vision post. In that earlier conversation, I wrote about the mirror that: “It was dark but not black, a variable dark navy (?) color, with maybe a lighter area in the upper right corner.” Something about that feels so similar to the patterns of darkness caused by clouds and mist moving across the starlit sky but with no moon to light them up, and framing and then covering over Sirius. There were many times during the night when the Star was hidden but an area above and to the right was glowing and which I later confirmed for sure was Orion.
Then there was the action of the mirror, in which its darkness opened onto a brilliant light. Although Sirius’ light is definitely a celestial light as it was not in the imaginal vision, which was of a sunrise light, there is still a familiar pattern of revelation.
Finally, I notice a very specific word choice that I feel both unwilling to modify as well as noting that when I wrote it, I felt almost unable to resist the words I used to describe Sirius after I first pointed it out to Michael: “it faded primly to darkness again.” This was the very same gesture that Aran made after showing me the sunrise light in the mirror: “He smiled almost primly down into his hands, and then looked back at her more intently, waiting for her to begin.”
“This is part of the teaching, chela,” Aran said, his face and figure coming into focus, followed by the sitting room in Middle Earth where they met these days.
“Oh! Wonderful,” she said. “Of course.” She lowered her eyes and smiled in pleasure.
“You do know that these stories are not only for thee?” he said. “For we are seeding words and ideas to spark an awareness or memory, to haunt and to evoke a more primordial way of moving and being in rhythm with the forces of emerging reality. And it is time that you should know more about what you are here to do.”
He smiled like a cat. Sunlight slanted low and streamed in through the window to her left, bathing the room with a white and golden glow.
The Current Project
The post, “A New Beginning” from December 28, 2021, is a retrospective on the past year leading up to this new project. If you are a listener more than a reader, you can start there with Episode 1: A New Beginning on the new podcast, “Katy Morikawa” on Spotify or most podcast outlets. Read more about Katy in the About section, and more about Aran by clicking the “conversations with aran” tag at the bottom of every blog post.
The Waking Up blog, which represents my thinking during the period from December 2020 to April 2021, will probably remain somewhere on this site in archive form as the current project unfolds. For now it is accessible with the rest of the recent posts.
