Lion’s Gate Portal: A Modern Witch’s Guide to Authentic Power

When you live a witchy life, there is always something to celebrate. Some astrological event, the numerology of a date, a seasonal festival, or a holiday the whole world is already marking. It can honestly feel like there is always something going on. And every year around this time, one of the things people cannot stop talking about is the Lion’s Gate Portal.

I am Sara Walka, and I have been reading tarot for twenty-four years and running The Sisters Enchanted since 2016. Here is something you should know about me before we go any further: I am a pragmatic sort of witch. I am practical, I like data, and I also love that which cannot be seen. I have thought about Lion’s Gate a lot over the years, energetically, historically, and as just a cool synergy of events. So I want to hand you everything I know, poke a few holes where the holes deserve poking, and let you decide your own relationship with it.

What is the Lion’s Gate Portal, exactly?

The Lion’s Gate Portal is when the Sun, the star Sirius, the constellation Orion, and the Earth line up, and it happens once a year. The alignment builds through late July and reaches its full height around August 8, the date we write as 8/8, while the Sun is in Leo.

It is also said that around August 8, Sirius rises so that this alignment can be witnessed directly over the Great Pyramid of Giza. I am no expert here and I have never stood there to see it myself, so I will just tell you what is said: when people could see Sirius rise over the Great Pyramid, it was read as a sign that the Nile would be flooding soon. That part tracks for me. We know ancient folks used the sky as a set of seasonal markers, a way of knowing what usually happens in a given stretch of the year.

Is the Lion’s Gate Portal actually real?

It depends on what you mean by real. The alignment is real. A lot of the tidy story we have built on top of it has been put together over the years, and I would rather be honest with you about where it gets shaky than sell you a clean myth.

For starters, whether ancient people could have known that Sirius was in alignment with the Sun and Orion is a real question. And the calendar date 8/8 would not have existed for ancient peoples the way it does for us. Add in leap years and every shift in how we keep time, and you can poke some genuine holes. So here is how I hold it. I do not get wrapped up in whether I am getting every detail exactly correct. I look at the invitation that is being offered energetically, the same way I would with a tarot card. You might never have thought about your life a certain way if you had not pulled that card that day. And you and I might never have stopped to think about discipline, abundance, creation energy, and standing in our own lion-like authority if nobody had said the words Lion’s Gate. That, to me, is the whole point.

What does the Lion’s Gate energy actually invite you to do?

It invites you to be visible in your own life. To take up space, let yourself be witnessed, and create from a place of feeling safe and at home in who you are.

Look at what is in the sky. Orion the hunter carries strength and resilience, and in some cultures he carries rebirth too. Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky and a fixed star. If you place Sirius in a zodiac sign, it sits in Cancer, which is that nurturing, mothering, be-at-home-in-yourself-and-your-body energy. The Sun is in Leo, which is the hear-me-roar, watch-me-take-up-space, center-stage-of-my-own-life energy. And then there is the number 8. Turn an 8 on its side and you get the infinity symbol, and on 8/8 you have it doubled. Put all of that together and it keeps pointing the same direction: infinite visibility, infinite chances to be reborn, infinite chances to take the stage and be abundant.

Here is the piece I love most. When you are at home in yourself, that steady Sirius-in-Cancer safety, you can afford to be bright and visible, that Leo Sun. And when you feel safe showing up exactly as you are, in whatever body, whatever voice, and whatever energy you have got that day, that is when you actually create. That is when the channels for conscious creation open up.

Why is it so hard to let yourself be seen?

Because being fully yourself means risking what people will think of you, and that fear is exactly the thing Lion’s Gate asks you to look at.

Some years, Lion’s Gate lands close to a full moon, and when it does, that full moon turns up the volume on the shadows we would rather not look at. It helps to remember that Leo, the see-me-and-witness-me energy, sits directly opposite Aquarius. Aquarius is quirky, innovative, big-idea, look-out-for-the-underdog energy. It is also the energy of the inner voice that says, I am too quirky, I am too idealistic, this is too weird, what will people think of me, how will they judge me. That voice is so often the thing that keeps us small and hesitant to be our fullest selves.

So a big part of this portal is simply noticing where you feel resistance. Where do you hold back your opinion, shrink your presence, or quietly make yourself smaller so nobody gets a reason to judge you? That noticing is the real work, and it is worth doing gently.

How do you actually work with the Lion’s Gate Portal?

You work with it by noticing where you resist being seen, doing a little honest shadow work there, and then choosing courage anyway, all while staying rooted in yourself. Here is the shape it takes for me.

Root in the past and cast to the future. I like to honor everything and everyone that came before me. Look at the Great Pyramid, the printing press, life-saving medicine, transplants. Every one of those took somebody with the courage to try something that did not exist yet. When I root into “my ancestors innovated, so I get to innovate too,” I feel steadier about claiming my own birthright. And you have one. You were born with a blueprint for ideas, hello, your birth chart, and you were born to be seen, witnessed, whole, and human. You do not have to make yourself less human or less you in order to fit in.

Then build practices that ground you. We are living in a world that is moving faster than ever, with new technology and AI and artificial images everywhere you look. That is exactly why grounding practices matter so much right now. Use everything available to you, your energy tools and your actual technology both, to keep coming home to your Leo power and your at-home-in-yourself Sirius energy. I am not going to hand you a rigid ritual with a specific list of crystals and candles, because your practice should feel like you.

What does courage have to do with luck?

Almost everything. Sirius is a star of luck and courage, and in my experience courage comes first. You have to be brave enough to put yourself in the position where luck can actually find you.

Let me tell you about the time this saved my whole business. I started The Sisters Enchanted in 2016 while I was still running another business, with a toddler at my feet and another baby on the way in 2017. I closed that first business and went all in on Sisters Enchanted halfway through 2017. For the next couple of years I was really figuring it out. It was growing, cash was coming in, and with growth came a whole lot of lessons. Then at the very start of 2020, right before COVID, I was staring at my bank accounts thinking, man, what am I going to do, I am between a rock and a hard place.

I had this little tarot class, the Tarot Throwdown. It is retired now, but we still teach tarot inside Holistic Witchery. At the time it was only twenty-seven dollars. My business friends kept asking me what my plan was, and honestly I said I do not know, but I think I am going to promote this class. So I spent money I did not have to promote it. I robbed Peter to pay Paul and took the bet with no idea what was coming. None of us did. Then COVID hit, and that class sold like hotcakes. We registered so many people. The timing was pure, pure luck, and I will never pretend otherwise.

But here is the part that matters. I had the courage to not give up before I knew the luck was around the corner. I had the courage to say, I am going to find the money and take a bet on this, even though I had none. I got lucky, yes. And I had the courage to put myself in the lucky position in the first place.

The question I would hand you for Lion’s Gate

So this is what I would leave you sitting with. How do you find the trust, the confidence, and the courage to be who you actually are, so you can consciously create whatever is next for you, without shrinking because the artificial version of everything out there looks so much shinier than you feel right now?

We do this work all year long at The Sisters Enchanted. Lion’s Gate is simply one of those moments that gives us all a reason to stop and do it on purpose, together, while the rest of the world is paying attention too. If the lessons here reach you a week early or a month late, do not worry about it. Divine timing. Apply them to your life exactly where you are right now, and stay magic, Enchanted Sister.

Lion’s Gate Portal FAQ