The Star

The image

Smith's Star shows a naked young woman kneeling at the edge of a pool, her left knee on the bank and her right foot resting on the water. She holds two jugs: from one she pours water into the pool, from the other onto the land, where it runs away in five small streams. Above her shines a large yellow eight-pointed star, surrounded by seven smaller white eight-pointed stars. Behind her, a bird — usually identified as an ibis — perches in a tree on a low hill, under an open blue sky.

History

The fifteenth-century Italian Star card showed a woman holding up a star, or astronomers or magi studying the heavens, in the celestial series of Star, Moon and Sun near the top of the trumps. The Tarot de Marseille's L'Étoile already resembles Smith's design: a naked woman pouring from two jugs beneath a large star and several smaller ones, with a bird on a tree. Court de Gébelin read it as the Dog Star, Sirius, heralding the Nile flood.

The Golden Dawn attributed the card to Aquarius and the letter Tzaddi. Aleister Crowley later gave the Star Heh and the Emperor Tzaddi, following a line of The Book of the Law, a change not adopted in Waite's deck. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) describes the woman as pouring the waters of life, and the divinatory meanings he lists include hope and bright prospects.

Symbolism

The great star is often read as the light of the higher self or of the divine, and the seven smaller stars as the seven traditional planets or the chakras of later writers. Water poured into the pool replenishes the unconscious; water poured onto the land nourishes the everyday world, and the five streams are taken for the five senses. Her nakedness signifies openness and truth without disguise. The ibis is the bird of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom whom nineteenth-century occultists associated with the tarot.

Aquarius, the water-bearer, is the sign of ideals, humanity and the future. Tzaddi, read in the Golden Dawn scheme as "fish-hook", suggests drawing up what lies in the depths. On the Tree of Life the card's path connects Netzach and Yesod. Seventeen reduces to eight, the number of Strength in Waite's order, and readers sometimes link the two as cards of gentle power.

In a reading

The Star is among the most consoling cards in the deck. Following the Tower it marks recovery; with the Six of Swords, moving on to calmer waters; with the Page of Cups, renewed imagination. Readers usually treat it as encouragement, while noting that its fulfilment is gradual and depends on keeping faith.