By Sarah Taylor
An all-female cast heads up this week’s tarot reading — although the figure in The Star at centre, corresponding as it does to the sign of Aquarius, lies outside of the more solid gender delineations of the next two cards in the major arcana: The Moon (female) and The Sun (masculine).
As part of the tarot’s major arcana, The Moon and The Star represent transpersonal experience. In other words, when we contact with a major arcana card, we are contacting the collective. We feel ourselves part of a larger pattern that forms an interconnected cosmic web; we understand that we are not just a product of our personal history but also of our collective history — our ancestry, what has been woven into our genetic structure, the identities and characteristics that are simultaneously ours and not-just-ours.
Here, the two transpersonal cards, representing heavenly bodies, both feminine (one edging on androgyny), seem to be in communion with each other — a meeting of, if not minds, then of consciousness.
According to the writing on The Moon, it is associated with the “Threshold of the new field of awareness,” “End of Karma,” “Illusions,” and the “Examination of the subconscious”. The card is dominated by a moon that doesn’t immediately correspond with my idea of what our Moon looks like, and the upper body of a woman in contemplation. As in the Rider-Waite Smith version of The Moon, it is tempting to see her as looking sad. She may be sad; she may not. Any emotion comes secondary to the process of seeing inward that defines her.