The Star

Symbols

• The Great StarThe eight-pointed golden star at the center — it points, it does not soothe.+

  Waite calls the great star l'étoile flamboyante, the Blazing Star of Masonic symbolism. It belongs to no hour of day or night, only to direction itself.

• The Seven Lesser StarsSeven stars in attendance — the seven classical planets, watching from above.+

  Waite is careful that the seven are 'also of eight rays', so each small star repeats the great one's shape exactly. The count is older than Waite: the Marseille Étoile already sets seven lesser stars around a large one.

• The Two VesselsTwo wells — conscious and unconscious; one poured into the self, one into the world.+

  The right hand pours into the pool — returning to the formless source; the left hand pours upon the earth — becoming a usable shape. Only both motions together complete the cycle.

• The Five StreamsThe water poured on land divides into five — the five senses reopened to the world.+

  Waite never mentions the streams; they are the drawing's own detail. Poured onto the ground, the water does not sink in but splits into five runs — the one place in the card where her pouring leaves a mark that can be counted.

• The Bird in the TreeThe bird in the tree — often read as Thoth the Egyptian scribe, recording this moment in the book.+

  Waite says only that 'a bird alights' on 'a shrub or tree'. Naming it an ibis — the bird of the Egyptian scribe-god Thoth — is a later reading. In the drawing it sits apart on the rising ground, the only other creature in view.

• Her NakednessThe guard she still kept up at the Tower is laid down — she no longer needs cover.+

  Waite stresses that she is 'entirely naked' and says that to 'the majority of prepared minds' she will appear as 'the type of Truth unveiled'. His deeper reading makes her the Great Mother in Binah, 'supernal Understanding', giving below as much as each can receive.

• One Foot upon the WaterKneeling, she is between the manifest and the unmanifest — on the shore, and within the mirror.+

  Waite puts her right foot 'upon the water', not in it, so the surface takes her foot like ground. In the Golden Dawn system the card belongs to Aquarius, the Water-Bearer; here the one who carries water rests on it.

• The PoolThe still water at her side — one jug empties into it, and her right foot rests on its surface.+

  Waite's phrase is 'irrigating sea and land', so in his words this small pool stands for the sea. It lies in the foreground, at the opposite edge of the picture from the great star, and the woman kneels in the space between them.

Story

Space comes first here: a wide sky over open country, rising ground behind her, a mountain far off on the horizon. The stars hang high; everything else sits low, at the water's edge, where a woman kneels with both arms at work. The eye drops from the star to her hands and follows the water out of them — into the pool and across the ground. No one else is there, and nothing is about to happen; the pouring shows neither a start nor an end. One gesture, never broken, in clear and even light: that is the whole event.

Correspondences

Shadow

Related Cards

The Tower

The Moon

Nine of Cups

Combinations with this card