After the crisis of the tower struck by lightening, the star is a card of respite and restoration. The tower has loosened the hold of the fool’s ego.
The veil of consciousness has finally been torn down, irrevocably.
Behind it, the fool finds the star, an archetype of transformation, offering direct experience of the unconscious self. The tower has cleared the way for a fresh start.
We are midway in the final line where the subconscious has been emerging. The devil and the tower represented darkness. The fool is being shown the light of the star. His subconcious self come to the surface.
The star is the card of alignment and healing. It represents integration. The binary opposition made whole. Neither one thing or another, the star is a culmination of all that has gone before.
There are similarities with the angel of temperance who, after crisis of death, controlled the flow of water between two cups. The star follows the crisis of the tower and the water she pours is free from containment. More about water later…
The star combines female archetypes of the high priestess and the empress. It releases the life force and will of the chariot, which was missing, so the chariot was unable to move, and the highest level of strength; the lion has been transformed into light and joy.
Seven smaller stars surround the primary one. Some call the central one the northern star, polaris, while accompanying it might be the pleiades or seven chakras.
The light from our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, takes over 4,000 light years to reach us, but stars give light in the darkness. The three magi followed a star to Bethleham and stars have long been used as navigational tools, showing the way to go.
The stars are an integral part of human life
Most of the elements that make up the human body were formed in the stars.
We are all stardust.
The stars in card 17 have eight points like an octogram.
The eight pointed star was worn in the charioteer‘s hair and in a lantern carried by the hermit. This is their home.
The number eight on its side forms the infinity symbol or lemniscate, as seen on the magician and strength cards, where it represents infinity.
In the background of the Waite/Coleman Smith card is a tree. It could be the archetypal tree of life. In his Key to the Tarot, Waite calls the star the sephirah Binah on the Kabbalistic tree of life, a symbol of intuition and understanding.
The tree supports an ibis or, as some say, a phoenix reborn. In ancient Egypt the ibis represented Thoth, depicted with an ibis head, and known as the god of knowledge. The ibis has long been considered a sacred bird and a symbol of communication, expertise and trust.
Cultural constructions control how we see the world and a naked woman often leads to judgement. Here she represents the feminine side of the gender continuum. She exists beyond the boundaries and controlling power of the ego. Neither vulnerable nor sexual, she is authentic and without shame.
Water is a key feature of this card. A building block for life, the element of water is associated with emotions.
The woman is pouring water. This is the pool behind the veil of the temple in the high priestess. It represents the source of universal energy. The divine spark hidden within life, the full nature of which is unknown and mysterious.
The fool is seeing the source of this secret water for the first time.
Her left hand pours the contents of a jug onto dry land making five rivulets.
These might represent the elements as in earth, air, fire, water and ether, or the five human senses of touch, sight, taste, smell, and sound.
In brain lateralisation theory, the left side is associated with logic and structure, language and math. The water represents the life force flowing beneath these attributes.
Her right hand pours the jug into the pool. The right brain is associated with emotion, intuition, dreams and imagination. She is refilling the subconscious self and ensuring a continuous connection with spirit or the divine.
The card represents mergence. The linking of the immaterial unconscious and subconcious with the world of conscious material awareness.
What is seen and unseen have come together.
What lessons does the star have for the fool?
Everything learned on the journey needs to be integrated. The tarot can give him tools for insight but he returns, his ego will still be there, with its preference for instant gratification, an easier time, one without meditation or mindfulness.
Expert with excuses, the ego rarely matures. It always remembers and represents the small child inside.
The experience of the star is only a glimpse of what lies beyond life.
The remainder of his years still needs to be dealt with.
The water flows onto the earth and back into the pool, and during this union between outer and inner selves, energy is released. The fool realises he truely is more than he thought. He glows. The star card feels ecstatic.
An incredible lightness of being.
The sense of walking on air.
A light burning inside.
In this moment anything feels achievable.
The fool realises how much time and effort can be invested in lifestyles he believed mattered but are ultimately not important.
He remembers the sense of serenity and surrender around the hanged man.
Here in the star, the hanging man’s peace is manifest.
The star is the card of reassurance.
It confirms everything is as it should be. The fool is exactly where he needs to be. He always has been. Everything in his life has worked together to bring him to this point.
Without this inner awarenss of divine connection to the cosmos, he clung to a sense of there always being more to achieve, especially in terms of material possessions and status.
Now, he has let go.
Surrendered his will.
New knowledge tells him he can trust all will continue to unfold as it needs to. The ever turning wheel of fortune has to go down in order to rise, but whatever happens next, the fool knows it will only be temporary.
He is calm, peaceful. He doesn’t yet know how this learning will transfer to the material world, but has faith it will.
The next card the fool meets is the moon. The star offers no path back to consciousness. The fool needs the moon to help him translate this new energy into forms he can take with him once his journey is complete.
Join us as we walk through the tarot and encounter the strange and mysterious forces of the moon.
images my own, or copyright free from wikipedia commons and https://pixabay.com/
