A Mystical Journey Beneath Sirius on the Red Earth
1st January 2025, Leaving the Red Centre
As I depart Yulara, the sacred heart of Australia, my mind lingers on the profound experiences of the past days. The camping grounds at Uluru, nestled between endless desert and infinite sky, feel like a liminal space—where the veil between worlds thins, and the land itself becomes a participant in the journey. This is my third pilgrimage here, and this time, I was joined by four friends from the witchcraft community: Frances Billinghurst, a celebrated South Australian Witch; Kylie Allerton, a respected Sydney coven leader and teacher; and Stephen and Lisa, dear companions from my local Witch Circle.
Together, we embarked on a shared vision—a pilgrimage of soul and spirit, culminating in the NOX rite, a night-soul journey resonating with the practices of modern Pagan Witchcraft.
Uluru as the Sacred Axis Mundi
Uluru is not simply a landmark—it is an ancient being, a cosmic sentinel that has witnessed millennia of life and ritual. The Anangu people, its traditional custodians, hold Uluru within the living context of Tjukurpa—the Dreaming. Walking the red earth surrounding this primordial monolith, I felt its age and power, a force that draws you in, humbling and exhilarating in equal measure.
Beneath the searing sun, our small band followed the paths to the waterholes and the Rainbow Serpent’s tracks, weaving our way around the rock’s sun-scorched face. Uluru dwarfs you; it makes you a pilgrim—a stranger humbled in a landscape that speaks in primordial whispers. This is a place where time feels irrelevant, where tens of thousands of years of presence by the Anangu imbue the land with meaning that we, as visitors, can only hope to glimpse.
Ritual Beneath the Stars
By the time the sun set, the immensity of the celestial dome revealed itself. The desert’s night sky is unparalleled—a vast ocean of stars, with Sirius, the Dog Star, reigning supreme. On the night of our second NOX rite, Tuesday, 31st December, the skies above aligned powerfully. The Sun and Moon were in Capricorn, and Sirius reached the mid-heaven—a celestial guide presiding over our ritual.
For the ancient Egyptians, Sirius was Sopdet (Sothis, ancient Greek), a harbinger of renewal and resurrection, and closely associated with Anubis, the psychopomp who guides souls through the Duat. Sirius’s presence in the ritual became a beacon, mirroring its role as the brightest star in the night sky and a gateway between the terrestrial and the divine.
The NOX Rite: A Dance of Land and Sky
In the desert, the NOX ritual transformed into its most essential form—a ceremony of vision questing and soul-making. The soft, powdery red sands embraced our circle, grounding us as we reached out to the cosmos. My tools were simple: a pantacle for centring, a drum to set the rhythm, and the stars to inspire.
The rhythm of the drum echoed my heartbeat, each pulse drawing me deeper into a trance. The sands seemed to cradle my body, connecting me to the earth, while my spirit soared among the stars. As I danced and chanted, I became aware of a profound interplay between the land beneath my feet and the celestial patterns above.
Sirius’s archetypal energy infused the ritual, a guiding light for the NOX rite’s psychopompic journey. The constellation of Canis Major, a loyal companion to Orion, seemed to reflect Anubis’s presence, guiding our souls through a nocturnal landscape rich with archetypes and numinous power.
The Dreaming Unfolds
As the drumbeat slowed, the boundaries between the physical and psychic dissolved. I saw stars—not constellations in their familiar forms, but abstract, archetypal patterns, radiant and clear. They whispered of timelessness, of a reality beyond the confines of linear existence.
The land itself seemed to join the dreaming. Shapes emerged in the sand and sky, flowing and shifting like sacred glyphs inscribed on the fabric of the cosmos. I felt my life’s rhythms align with these sacred patterns—an unspoken reminder of the eternal dance between life and death, between the physical and the spiritual.
Even as my breathing slowed and my dancing ceased, the drum beat continued within me, echoing the pulse of the earth and the stars. I sat in stillness, immersed in a silence that felt alive, a pause between one breath and the next.
The Pilgrim’s Reflection
As the ritual concluded, I felt all I had to do was step aside and let the first light of the new day touch the horizon. We are both immense and infinitesimal, moving between what was, what is and what is to come. The journey had brought clarity—not as answers but as a sense of connection and peace. The challenges of the past year seemed less like obstacles and more like steps in a greater process of transformation.
The NOX rite beneath Sirius and Uluru became a bridge—a communion between the earthly and the celestial, the inner and the outer, the past and the future. It was a moment of soul-making, where meaning arose not from logic but from the interplay of presence, symbols, and sacred rhythms.
A New Year, A New Breath
Now, as I leave the red centre, I carry with me the echo of the drum, the weight of the sand, and the light of Sirius. The land has left its mark, not as a possession but as a deep resonance within my psyche.
The stars remain a reminder of our connection to the cosmos. As we move forward into 2025, I am filled with a quiet certainty that the journey continues—a pilgrimage of soul and spirit, guided by the rhythms of the earth and the eternal light of the heavens.
With every turn of the wheel, we are both the pilgrim and the path.
Two excerpts from the forthcoming book "NOX, a night soul journey guidebook".
Pilgrimage to Uluru:
Anubis, the Black Dog's Vision:
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