Light and sky
The peak of heat arrives about a month after the solstice, because the ground and the seas keep storing energy as long as the Sun gives them more than they give back: this is the seasonal lag.
During these weeks, the days already lose several minutes of light each day, and the first shooting stars of the Perseids cross the night sky. The ancients associated this period with the rising of Sirius, the brightest of the stars, just before dawn: from its Latin name Canicula, “the little dog,” comes the French word canicule, a heat wave. In the days of ancient Egypt, this rising announced the flooding of the Nile. Precession has since shifted the calendar of the stars, and the heliacal rising of Sirius has slipped by several weeks. As for the constellation Leo, the Sun crosses it only at the end of summer.
- Element
- Fire
- Modality
- Fixed
- Ruler
- Sun
- Point of the year
- None (not a cardinal sign)
- Current season
- Libra