Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
Although I didn’t participate in the comments on Nov. 17, when I handed The Star over to you, the readers, for discussion, I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. The level of insight — both from those with a theoretical and/or astrological knowledge of the card, and from those who took a purely intuitive approach — was engaging; and I want to thank each of you who helped hold the fort in my absence.
As I mentioned in my short preamble to that article, I love The Star. It holds personal significance for me, not least because it corresponds to the sign of Aquarius, which, as a Leo, I consider to be my astrological mirror.
From an artistic point of view, I am particularly drawn to the Crowley-Harris (or Thoth Tarot) version of The Star, on the left. That is not to say that I don’t like the Rider-Waite Smith interpretation — which is on the right — because I do, very much. It has a gentle, grounded poetry to it.
Be that as it may, as Eric mentions in his first comment on Nov. 17, these two versions of The Star use different symbols to transmit their ideas. It can be useful to immerse ourselves in the landscapes of each in order to experience the particular messages that they bring through, as well as to find those areas of commonality. Each has a story to tell, and each will have something to say to us about our own story if we open ourselves to its wisdom.
One final word before we begin: while source information about the Rider-Waite Smith version of The Star is scant, the Crowley-Harris version is based on a work of Crowley’s known as The Book of the Law. I am a Thoth enthusiast, but I am no Thoth scholar, and I am in little doubt that it would take years of dedicated study to understand the complexities of Crowley’s philosophy. So while I am mindful of the fact that there is a comprehensive theoretical basis to the seventeenth trump in the Crowley-Harris deck, I am equally mindful of remaining faithful to my approach in this series: namely, to focus on the intuitive nature of tarot reading.
The Star — Crowley-Harris
There is something about the Thoth’s vision of The Star that feels otherworldly. Perhaps it is the fact that it takes place outside a familiar, earthly landscape. Perhaps it is the mythical proportions of both the figure and the planet behind it. Perhaps it is the way that Lady Frieda Harris (the artist who brought Aleister Crowley’s ideas to painted life) seems to have created a synthesis between geometric angles and fluid movement. Or perhaps I’m just a sucker for all things purple. (I am.)
In his book Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, Lon Milo DuQuette makes this observation about The Star:
The celestial globe represents the entire heavens surrounding the Earth. Therefore, all other images on this card that are placed outside of the celestial sphere must represent spiritual environments that transcend even the concept of infinite space.
I, too, found myself using “transcend” in an earlier version of this article, and then rolled it back with the admonishment that it was effusive and shot-through with a distinct lack of objectivity. Then I reminded myself of the two attitudes that interfere with a tarot reading: doubt and awe. In this case it was doubt.
For this is not Earth on which this card is set — or not the Earth that we experience with our five senses. And this, for me, is the key. The Star is not a physical body in the sky that we can see through a telescope, but a state that we feel in our souls. What it promises to us is not provable or replicable. It transcends our concrete thinking. It makes its own science.
A female figure hovers above a large lake, mountains running in the distance. The sky is dominated by a large planet (not the Earth either, given its colour and the formations on its surface), which in turn is surrounded by small coronas and streams of star-dust — most notably trailing from the apexes of the seven-pointed star in the upper-left-hand corner. There are three seven-pointed stars, the other two lying over the surface of the planet and falling out of the upper goblet that the figure holds — 777 being a number that has close associations with Crowley.
There is a significant amount of movement to the image: liquid flows downwards out of both (gold and silver) goblets; two of the three stars rotate anti-clockwise, the other clockwise; roses and butterflies rise up into the night sky from the bottom right of the picture; the figure’s hair falls along the contours of her body; and crystalline shapes rise like angular bubbles from beneath her feet. Perpetual motion. The universe feeding itself. An inexhaustible supply of nourishment, with all held in balance.
This is redemption.
The Star represents an idea that lies outside of our full understanding, but a part of which we carry in our souls. It is that state that we arrive at when the fighting stops, the over-thinking, and the analysis, and when the redemptive power of consciousness steps in and reminds us that there is wonder around us if we care to see it.
The Star — Rider-Waite Smith
This version of The Star, unsurprisingly, feels much more grounded. Its Earth-bound setting is something with which we are familiar. It brings a cosmic idea down to Earth, and in doing that, renders it more accessible.
A woman kneels on the ground, with her right foot resting on (rather than in) the pool in front of her. In each hand, she holds an earthenware pitcher, both (as in the first version) with liquid pouring out of them — in this case water. As one commenter observed, the water coming from the pitcher held in her left hand streams into five separate channels, one of which returns to the pool. These channels are visually linked to the branches of the tree on the hill behind her, as if they form its roots.
Above the figure are eight stars: one larger and yellow, the others smaller and white. I have always taken these to be the Sun and the Pleiades respectively — all of them being stars. The Sun, in this instance, is stylised to set it apart from The Sun in the twenty-second trump and to render it lower-key. It is an important element in the picture, but the focus must necessarily rest on the figure, for she is the brightest star in the picture, her hair a visual link to the celestial body above her. She, like the Thoth figure, is a metaphor for redemption.
In fact, the word “redeem” feels apt here when I look at the water flowing out of both pitchers. She isn’t lifting water out of the pool with one pitcher in order to pour it back into the ground with the other. There is no borrowing from one source to give to another. The redemption is unconditional and not predicated on any previous action. The landscape around her is fertile; the sky blue; the mountains are no worrisome obstacle, but rise distant in the background. As I mentioned, the imagery is accessible, and brings the idea across in a way that is familiar and comfortable.
Only the ibis — symbol of the Ancient Egyptian god Thoth, and a connection to the Crowley-Harris version — and the constellation hint at the more esoteric elements of The Star.
Finally, as we head toward Dec. 25 when those who observe Christmas celebrate the birth of Jesus, I am reminded of the star in the night sky that led the three kings toward a stable in Bethlehem. Another word for ‘king’ in this instance is ‘Magus’, which is, in turn, another name for The Magician — the second trump in the major arcana. The star, as it turns out, has not been able to be identified. Some believe it to have been Haley’s Comet, others think it was a planet. Others, still, hold it to be something else entirely. Something that transcends our understanding, perhaps?
Or maybe the star symbolized a man who was to demonstrate to us that no matter who we are, where we come from, or what we do, that we are all unconditionally worthy of redemption.
Yes, Charles, a good point. A qualification and explanation: What I should have said is that the information on the RWS deck is scant in comparison to that of the Crowley-Harris/Thoth deck. Crowley was a prodigious writer, and there is a lot of material out there to work with – even though I have found the little that I have read heavy-going and at times impenetrable.
Also, I am relatively new to the RWS deck, having worked with the Mayan Xultun deck almost exclusively, and predominantly from a Jungian/transpersonal perspective. It is only recently that I have come to take an interest in the RWS tarot and to love it. I have this series to thank for that.
As you suggest, the geometry in the Thoth version of The Star is key for me. I didn’t know about Harris’s training. That makes complete sense.
I perceive the Star card as symbolizing the ability to ‘pour oneself out’ forever because of being able to embody the energy of the Stars as Hope or Faith or whatever, in an earthly fashion. PCS has drawn a naked woman; she is ’embodied’ and naked implies she is able to be just herself or as is; no more and no less. The ability to pour oneself out fertilizes all; both water and soil. It is depicted as emotional/feeling energy because water is being poured from both pitchers.
The contrast in the Thoth card is that the female figure is not embodied; it is etherial; which implies to me a concept rather than the living of it on earth.
[Few decks seem able to depict women as they actually are in all their variety, much less present depictions of the mature, wise, down-to-earth and powerful (? wot’s that?) woman. It’s one of the reasons I prefer the RW pack]
The energy I’m talking about would be when someone is doing Reiki properly, they are simply being a conduit for ‘universal’ energy. It just flows through them to wherever it is required, and is healing as such. It’s the intent without requiring ‘return’.
I don’t understand how you can say the information on the RWS is “scant.” I thought it was common knowledge that the RWS cards were first published in 1911 in the book “Pictorial Key to the Tarot” by AE Waite. It is in the Public Domain so you can read the full text online. Crowley’s Book of Thoth was basically modeled after this book.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/index.htm
In Section 2, Class I, The Trumps Major, Waite describes the large star as Sirius or The Star of the Magi, Sirius is the brightest known star, and The Star of the Magi out-shined all other stars, according to legend. Waite described the seven stars as “seven minor luminaries.” The major luminaries are the Sun and Moon, the seven minor luminaries are the other planets (as known in 1911, Pluto had not yet been discovered).
Your observations on the differences in perspective between these two cards is astute, I hadn’t thought about it. Harris was trained in “esoteric projective geometry” by Theosophists, and Crowley explicitly mentions projective mathematics in the Book of Thoth essay on The Star. A celestial sphere is basically a projection of the universe onto the Earth. In the Thoth card, we see the sphere from the outside, as an abstraction. But in the RWS deck, we see the perspective from a viewpoint on the earth. The Thoth card shows the stars looking down at us; the RWS card shows us looking up at the stars. I think the “looking up” perspective is more expressive of the conventional reading of this card: Hope.