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Sunday, May 3, 2009

THE STAR - Astrological Associations

I continue my astrological exploration of the Major Arcana with Trump 17, The Star. The use of astrological associations with Tarot is completely up to the reader. This is merely intended to be interesting and fun.

Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley
Crowley attributes The Star card to the zodiac sign Aquarius, the water-bearer, a fixed Air sign known for being innovative, idealistic, humanitarian, and intellectual. Crowley writes: "The picture represents Nuith, our Lady of the Stars. For the full meaning of this sentence it is necessary to understand the first chapter of the Book of the Law. In their book about the Thoth deck, Keywords for the Crowley Tarot, Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler describe Aquarius energy applied to The Star as "farsightedness, vision, higher viewpoint."


One World Tarot by Crystal Love

In this deck, Crystal Love associates The Star (Trump 17) with the mutable Air sign Gemini. She writes that the Star of David shown on the card "represents knowledge, wisdom and the Law of Moses. . . the complementary opposites of spirit and matter" and that Gemini -- sign of the Twins -- "is always in 'two minds.'"

A.E. Thierens, PhD. (Astrology & the Tarot)
Thierens associates Trump 17, The Star, with the planet Venus, commonly known as the planet of love, affection, art, beauty, esthetics, and pleasure. Thierens writes: "The figure expresses eternal youth and beauty. No astrologer will hesitate to recognise Venus." Venus rules the zodiac signs Taurus and Libra, which Thierens describes as signs of "riches, art, beauty, and of the organised body."

The Celestial Tarot by Brian Clark
Clark titles The Star card "Aquarius and the Manna of Heaven." He writes: "In contemporary astrology Aquarius has come to represent change, revolution, and rebellion." However, to the ancients, Aquarius was the power of flowing or overflowing water, often connected to the rains. Clark's Star card "represents both strands of Aquarius. It heralds a revolutionary new way of life after a period of turmoil or suppression, and also represents a wellspring of hope and renewal."



The Mandala Astrological Tarot by A.T. Mann

Mann associates Trump 17, Stars, with the sign Aquarius. He writes: "Aquarius bears two streams of water, representing ideas which contain the seed of opposition within themselves, ruled by Uranus as the progressive spiritual inspiration from above and Saturn as the necessary grounding of idealism." Characteristics Mann associates with Aquarius include "waiting, fasting, observation and planning, abstraction, conscience, humanitarian, detached, coldness, utopian, altruism, scientific."

The Whispering Tarot by Liz Hazel
For The Star, Liz Hazel lists the Golden Dawn attribution of Aquarius. Her DMs include "hope for the future, visions and visualizations, eclectic tastes, ethics, morality, ideas that set new trends."

Once again, most of our consultants choose Aquarius (ruled by Saturn in traditional astrology and by Uranus or Uranus and Saturn in modern astrology) as the astrological attribution for The Star. Of the other options described above -- Gemini and Venus -- I fine Venus to be more compelling than Gemini.

I welcome your comments!

Zanna

8 comments:

  1. The majority of attributions of the Tarot are based on the teachings of the Golden Dawn book T.

    Simply put, the GD attributed the Tarot sequentially to the Hebrew alphabet. Card 1 (0) = Alef, Card 2 (1) = Beth, and so forth.

    Then they used the correspondences of the letters to the Elements, Signs, and Planets. Partially based on their own system and partially on the ideas found in Sefer Yetzirah. Therefore, since Alef is Air and Fool corresponds to Alef sequentially then the Fool is Air.

    There is another list not widely known that focuses on the qualities of the cards themselves and deeper symbolism as key to the attribution.

    Here it goes:

    Fool Air
    Magician Gemini
    High Priestess Virgo
    Empress Taurus
    Emperor Aries
    Hierophant Sagittarius
    Lovers Venus
    Chariot Mars
    Strength Leo
    Hermit Cancer
    Wheel of Fortune Jupiter
    Justice Libra
    Hanged Man Pisces
    Death Saturn
    Temperance Water
    Devil Capricorn
    Tower Fire
    Star Aquarius
    Moon Moon
    Sun Sun
    Judgment Scorpio
    World Mercury


    It may require good understanding of both Tarot and Astrology to make sense of this arrangement. I hope you find it useful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello golden-dawn-hermetic! Thank you for posting this information. One of the reasons I do this weekly exploration is to let people see that some Tarot decks do not use the Golden Dawn (Book T) attributions. Too often, Tarot students assume that this is the only system.

    As a professional astrologer, I find other systems quite interesting, and I like to use the attributions provided by the deck's creator if they are different from OGD.

    Do you happen to have a name for the system you mentioned at the end of your post? Can you tell us the source?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't know its name. It was passed to me by a fantastic scholar and author of multiple esoteric work. He often write about ancient mysteries and often his work is considered of historic importance. I am hesitant to post his name openly as I am not sure how he feels about this going public as it is part of one of his current research projects.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi again, golden-dawn-hermetic. No problem, I was just curious. I can see the logic in many of the associations immediately.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I checked with the scholar. He says it will be a while before he gets back to this list. He is currently working on the Sabian Tarot. He was happy to hear that you immediately spotted the logic in many of the associations. He asked me for the link to your blog and I passed it to him.

    On another note, would you be averse to writing a blog on this list and its logic? I don't personally feel qualified and I think it would be great to see a deeper analysis done to this material.

    ReplyDelete
  6. golden-dawn-hermetic,

    I fear any analysis I would do of this list would not be scholarly enough to do justice to its creator. Also, I am not a member of the Golden Dawn, nor have I studied it in great depth.

    I can only address why or how the various associations presented in this list make sense to me, based on my understanding of astrology and tarot, which, while fairly extensive, is probably not at the level you or your scholar would want to see.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Zanna,

    The interest in your blog is purely my own. I am curious about your own views as to why or how this list make sense to you personally.

    While a major scholarly blog would be awesome on principle, I am more interested in what you have to say than a thesis :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. In that case, I would be happy to share some of my thoughts.

    What name shall we give this series of blog entries? "The Other List" doesn't quite do it. LOL

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving a comment. I love hearing from my readers!
~ Zanna