Everywhere, before the burning heart of summer turns its tail, it's a twilight of lights and lanterns, sparkling flames reflecting on the water.
The graina of Saint Lawrence, the bonfires on the beach, the Perseids as heavenly tears. And Sirius, the great Sirius, the Dog Star, who returns visible in the night sky taking with him these infamous days.
The theme of these days is the relationship between Fire and Water: the celestial star fire and its terrestrial counterpart reflected in seawater, in the course of a river or in a lake mirror.
Element that summarizes these two inconcilable opposites only in the mechanics of an imperfect rational mind is a female figure: regal, immense, astral. Whether her name is Isis, or in Egypt (Aset), she is also the terrible and benign Diana of the Italian peoples.
Both are figures that call upon the ancestral power of Fire and therefore Light. "Luminous" is Isis just as "Lucifera" is Diana.
Both, connected to the moon cycle of the Eternal Return, know the flow and ebb--and therefore waves and tides. Candles, placed on boats, are entrusted to the rivers of the Nile likewise on Lake Aricia. Water. And in heaven, the original model of this divine representation of opposites - the Major Dog Star with its Sirius, Isis or Diana who are both canines, appeasr in the celestial waters of the night preparing to cross the Milky Way in its solar boat.
As in heaven, so on earth.
As Isis sets out in search of the severed and lost limbs of her beloved husband—Osyrid murdered by brother Seth from the fiery summer-like winds—certainly taking advantage of his unfailing canine sniff, so Diana throws lethal challenges to her beloved king King Virbius of the woods, eternally scolded by an opponent who sooner or later will finish it.
The renewal of Nature logged by the simple evolution of earthly time, but also the possibility of a spiritual Palingenese in the skies, in a timeless time: great is the symbolic heritage that our Ferragosto leaves us on the beach or in the mountains, great is the power freed from a -critical- phase of the year, and great is the valencia of Our Lady Maria Assunta, with the blue cloak like water and the red dress like fire, Empress of the Major Arcani, to whom we grant even today, if not torch processions and orgiastic encounters, the smile of rest and the joy of sharing outdoors in a freedom that only summer can grant.
Happy mid-August to everyone!
August 15, 2023