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
Last week, there were some great comments about The Devil — thank you for helping me to keep the discussion going while I’m away from my usual working environment.
This week I thought I’d bring a little light into the picture, so today it is the turn of The Star.
I love The Star. To me, it has an ethereal quality to it that transcends the image and works its magic on the psyche. The seventeenth card in the major arcana, it is also associated with the sign Aquarius — an association that you can see for yourself in the images, particularly in the Rider-Waite Smith version. Again, I’m going to keep my own initial comments to a bare minimum because, like last week, the adventure today lies in the discovery of the card for yourself.
So take a look at both versions — the Crowley-Harris Thoth card on the left, and the Rider-Waite Smith card on the right (click on the image of the cards to get a larger version); intuit your way into what the card is saying to you (hint: The Star speaks in a different voice from many of the other cards); and feel free to share what you find with us in the comments section below.
Here are the same questions to help you get started:
- What do you see when you look at the card? What stands out for you?
- How does it make you feel?
- Does that feeling change when you step back and observe it from a distance?
- If you do look the meaning up elsewhere, what are your reactions to what you read? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Why?
- Finally, does The Star have any personal meaning for you right now, either in your own life or in the events in the wider world?
I’ll be joining the discussion tomorrow when I’m back in the land of internet connectivity.
Sarah
Geez! Such a serene card seems to have quite a fierce effect on some!! Relates a little perhaps to my interpretation of this card. What she gives out she gets back. Her nurturing is what supports life, supports her.
Sarah, I’m flattered by your invitation to share the interpretation of my personal reading with you! When life spares me the time I shall. To clarify why it ‘spooked’ me so, was merely a case of serendipitous ignorance! The cards I drew just happened to be a strong collection of the cards I had seen discussed, in an almost perfect synchronous layout. It wasn’t till later when I logged into the ‘Tarot’ files, I realised that I had missed several additions. I’m now up to speed!
I find the geometry of the RWS card interesting. The three stars on the left seem to form the beginning of a diagonal line which pulls through the woman’s body, connecting her left leg to the earth. The three stars on the right seem to form the start of a diagonal in the other direction, which connects her right arm to the water. It would appear that these two diagonals intersect at her heart. Her head appears to be perfectly placed in the circle of stars, while the star you would expect to see at the bottom of the circle is placed to the left. It feels more distant than the others with its placement over the faraway hill. The water pouring from her right hand hits the pool in a visually familiar way with the rippling circles mirroring the cirular shape of the stars above. Yet the water pouring from her left hand doesn’t hit the ground in the way you would expect it to look, but seems shaped more like a tree and its roots, as water appears to flow both uphill and downhill.
Eric, what in the hell are you ranting about? We are talking about our interpretations of Waite’s cards. Waites’ opinions of the iconography of the Rider-Waite-Smith cards are significant. He. Designed. The. Cards.
Speaking as a writer who writes about esoteric stuff for the public, and one who’s read a bunch of it as well, it’s worth mentioning that we are in the realm of symbols and not “scientific facts” with this stuff.
Waite’s view is his opinion. He inherits a 400 year old card and he decides exactly what star it is? I’m happy to have his view on the matter, but that’s how I take it, until the card or the symbol speaks directly to me. I’m not saying it’s not Sirius; the card could be a direct reference to the Nile and we have other evidence of that in the sign Aquarius (the Nile Normalica depicted in some illustrations of that sign, for example, as opposed to an urn of water in others). So we would need to collect that evidence to have a little more vivid of an idea.
Crowley calls his deck The Tarot of the Egyptians, though I don’t recall what he says in his commentary on The Star.
The esoteric literature of that day, including much of the astrology writing, is peppered or outright strewn with misinformation, info taken from bad translations, people who made shit up, biases created by missing information and things that weren’t discovered yet or that hadn’t been looked up for a while. Both Blavatsky and Bailey weave what, to those with classical knowledge, are wild yarns with no basis in reality — but to some the information is very useful.
But it’s a mistake to confuse it with certainty in the sense of we’re certain insects have six legs and a thorax.
Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, so it may be a representative of all stars. In other commentary, Waite does make reference that Sirius “was consecrated to Isis and symbolized the opening of the year.” He repeatedly refers to it as “the dog-star.” Oddly enough, Waite makes an isolated reference to The Sun card as also being “the dog-star.”
okay so back to an earlier point I was making — if this is Sirius we have a star illustrated in a card associated with Aquarius that is in mid-Cancer.
The connection is that Aquarius in some mythologies illustrates the rising of the Nile (an event associated with July 23 or approximately when the Sun is at least near the Dog Star) despite the constellation itself being on the other side of the sky.
Can anyone reckon that?
Charles, well, that qualifies as interesting.
Then we have a slight issue of author intentionality not necessarily holding up, if so many people think that this is the Seven Sisters.
I suggest we also map out the nature of Sirius, which is discussed extensively by AAB in Esoteric Astrology.
oh yes! I too wonder about the 5 streams of water – and one of them going back to the source.
I just enlarged the .jpg and realized there’s a bird perched on the treetop.
I have to say too that this Thoth card doesn’t speak to me at all (but in general they don’t). So another example of how different decks/cards can speak or no.
As always, such interesting and informative conversation around the symbolism in the cards and the intent behind the art. Thanks everyone!
Rechecking the obvious sources, Waite explicitly says the star is Sirius. The seven stars correspond to the seven known planets other than Earth. (Pluto had not been discovered yet).
Now I’m curious about what the stars really signify as well (I also thought they indicated planets), and I also have a question: does anyone know if there is any significance to the 5 streams of water flowing from the pitcher on the right of the Rider-Waite Smith card? Does the number 5 have any particular symbolism here?
So we have a constellation shown with seven or eight stars, but it’s not the Pleiades? Just because Waite says it isn’t? I’m wondering where he said that, Charles, in which commentary, and in what context.
Occultists, particularly of that era, were fond of tossing in all kinds of odd bits and bobs to throw people off the scent or to make sure they were (that we are) paying attention. We would need to go back to the creators of an earlier deck for reference; Waite did not invent The Star. He merely reinterpreted it — and he did a good lot of that by the way.
Do we have any commentary by PCS on what she was illustrating?
Charles-
The meaning of my post was that there isn’t any word in Chinese astrology called “subaru.” There is a word in Chinese astrology which would nowadays be called “mao3” and which was definitely never called “subaru” until it got to Japan. I’m sure you know that, but your post might have misinformed those whose area of academic specialty doesn’t include the Asian languages. In other words, I was giving you just a little bit of a hard time.
Sam, that dictionary entry is useless without being placed in context with Chinese astrology, which is not the topic of this blog entry. Suffice to say, it is analogous to looking up the word “Volkswagen” and finding the one-word definition “car” rather than “automobile company.”
In any case, The Star card has nothing to do with the Pleiades. Waite himself said so.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=C&word=昴&search=Search&dialect=M&select=whole
Oh, I want to play along today, but I look at that card on the right and all I can think is, “It’s November! It’s too cold to be running around naked outside!”
wow! the erudition on this subject is indeed making me wet…
okay so tracking the correct part of what I’m saying — a constellation in sidereal Taurus and currently in tropical Gemini is displayed on a card associated with Aquarius.
You are misinformed, Eric. The term subaru is from Chinese astrology and is a constellation (“mansion”) roughly equivalent to Taurus. The name for the zone is subaru, any stars in subaru would be known as subaruboshi (boshi = star) and the Pleiades is in that zone. But the specific name for the Pleiades in Japanese is “rokurensei” which translates to (oddly enough) “group of six stars.” I am not sure how they counted only six stars. If you look at the stars in the Subaru auto logo, there are only six stars. I am sure the company had its own reasons for obfuscating the difference between a star cluster and a zodiac zone, but this is not the place for an extensive etymological analysis of paleoastronomy terminology (although I could, since it is one of my little academic specialties within my degree in Japanese language & literature).
Anyway.
The big difference for me between the two cards is odd vs even. The Thoth card is all spirally but oddly discordant because the star has 7 points, it is asymmetric. All the spirals are based on sevens. This is Crowley at work again, his sigil was a 7 pointed star. But the stars in the RWS deck are a lovely, symmetric 8 pointed star. And just as with Crowley’s radical reinterpretation of the star, so is the RWS, it avoids the typically Masonic five pointed star and goes for the symmetry of eight. And there are 8 stars. These are not the Pleiades, they are representative of the 8 planets (excluding the earth, sun, and moon, since they have their own cards).
The one thing I notice most in the RWS deck is the girl has her foot on the pool of water and it supports her just as if it was solid land. I interpret card as a symbol that our subconscious gives us support. She is mixing water with water, and water with earth. Water dissolves into like and unalike, just the same. The waters of life flow through our watery, formless subconscious, just as much as the dry land of our mundane world.
I think basically what we have here is an image of a unified consciousness; a holos or integrated cosmos. The card is associated with Aquarius. The constellation is the Pleaides which by the way is at in the first arc minute or so of Gemini (listed most traditional references as Alcyone). In Japanese this constellation is Subaru. The interpretation of Alcyone in ancient/traditional Western astrology differs greatly from the New Age mythology of friendly 5th dimension entities sending messages of love and light through people named Barbara. There is an image of cosmic nourishment here, the idea that we draw strength directly from the cosmos.
I always feel a sense of Peace and gratitude when I pull this card! It is a reminder that I am a channel for the goddess and it reminds me of Unconditional Love of Self.
Thank you!
we have the tree on the hilltop in the distance on the right again – although this time it is one tree with two branches – not two trees.
eric yes, the number of stars and number of points on the stars interested me. I’m off to look up Pleiades now (is that 7 sisters? no matter google here i come…)
The stars use reminds me of how we do birthday cakes – one big one for ten years a small one for the individual years! Either way; faith is what is to come.
I always liked the balanced position of the woman in the Rider-Waite card -with one leg the earth and one foot in the water, she is then able to offer a continuous flow of healing water. She seems comfortable in her own body and stance. I get this card a lot during challenging periods in life, and I would agree that it feels a lot like a reminder to have faith in the fact that my intuition that will guide me to the decisions that must be made in order to transform my situation….and the universe will offer up some protection during that process.
The Star to me comes up when I feel at ease with myself. No problems too great to bear, and the light at the end…
It feels alot like hope, though I think it falls more along the lines of faith.
without interpreting much — I notice two things — one is that the light is flowing through the figure, into the Earth; and the other is the reference to the Pleiades. That constellation has hundreds of stars — you can see seven most nights, and eight many nights if you have strong distance vision —
Also it would be great to consider the distinctions between the two major traditions in modern tarot, the decks of Crowley/Harris and Waite/Smith.