BOOKS? The Sirius Mystery

A books thread seems like a good idea. Presently I'm reading The Sirius Mystery by Robert Temple. It's a secular look at the mythological tie-ins some cultures have with Sirius. It seems the Dogon of West Africa have known for centuries that a dwarf star orbits Sirius, even though the body is invisible to the naked eye. They even know the duration of the orbit in earth years. Similar hints abound in Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Persian traditions. Temple is rather unclear on at least one point. Early on, he says Egypt got the tradition from West Africa. Later he implies the Greeks got the tradition from Egypt then carried it to West Africa sometime before the Homeric Age.

In any case, the book is fascinating given how Alastair Crowley suggests the source for his Liber Legis lay with Sirius. Later Kenneth Grant took the ball and ran with it (rather too far and too repetitiously) in his Typhonian Trilogies, So the book is worth a gander.

Login or Signup to reply to this post.