10/5 The Star #17

#17 The Star final version, art by Rian Hughes

TEMPLE artefact #17

XVII. THE STAR

KEY WORDS – Inspiration, creativity, renewal, hope.

The figure on the Star card follows the traditional depiction of the star sign Aquarius as a kneeling female figure pouring from a water jug. This is a fairly simple image which represents the highest order of creativity – where the figure on the card is drawing inspiration from the highest most ‘spiritual’ or abstract plane and processing it through herself into the material world where it can become an idea, or work of art, or renew the world.

She is a pure channel for the descent of inspiration into materiality that transforms a stray idea into an award-winning book or theory, or invention.

The figure is framed by a large circle representing the star Sirius A, with a smaller one beside it to stand for Sirius B.

She is on the shore, kneeling on tough grass by a rock pool filled with what appears to be blood. In background, the dark sea of Binah can be seen.

Rising over the horizon we can see the upper hemisphere and part of the rings of the blue planet URANUS which is rising. The rings are tilted so as to create a 45° angle descending left to right behind the woman.

On the card the figure is seen from behind but here we show her in a ¾ profile pose with a supple energetic twist through her lean dancer’s body.

She is lit in such a way that her body has a strong shadow down the centre – and in the shadow are STARS, as if she was made of space itself – with blue light down her right side, our left, and pink light down her left side, our right.

Overhead with her right hand, she lofts a Golden Grail in a heh that suggests she’s just scooped cosmic matter from the ‘star’ above and is letting it pour from the lip of the cup in the form of condensing cosmic matter that splashes on her brow and runs down her body to replenish the earth which erupts into life where she kneels.

As the flowing nebular dust and light pours down it CRYSTALLIZES into gemstones – diamonds, rubies, emeralds etc as it tumbles to the ground (this to represent the crystallization into actuality of an intangible idea).

Her left hand extended between her thighs holds a SILVER CHALICE which pours its bloody liquid contents into the pool of physical materiality into which she has placed one extended foot. A clump of red roses grows on the edges of the pool and butterflies rise up from it.

Aquarius, my personal star sign, is an Air sign, so while we have a lot of what resembles liquid, the forms it takes are geometrical, rational – the wild flow of natural forces being contained and ordered into crystallised shapes by the analytical mind.

Her head is turned up to the right, looking up at the Cup she holds above her head. Her expression is one of joy; the thrill of standing under a refreshing shower.

Her hair sweeps around her body adding more sinuous lines of energy through the pose and ensuring that her nakedness is not gratuitously presented. As it goes, her hair turns from blue, where it emerges from her head, and becomes red where its tips sweep down into the pool of blood, the hair separating into tips.

She kneels on the mossy bank with one foot on the earth, while the other is dipped into the pool.

Behind her is the Star SIRIUS A with its smaller companion Sirius B, drawn to astronomically accurate scale and luminosity – so that the main star is blue-white and the smaller is a dwarf star of more UV blue.

Overlaid on the astronomical Sirius is a SEVEN-POINTED STAR OF VENUS and around it SEVEN more, then around them seven more, as if wrapped around the globe of the star, making 7 and 7 and 7.

The Hebrew letter attributed to this card by Crowley, who I tend to side with in these matters, is Heh which means ‘window’ – so we see Sirius through a free-floating window shape.

There are also SEVEN SPOTLIGHTS arranged around the composition, which blast down a dramatic showbiz light upon the figure. They give the impression that she’s on some kind of stage, as a performer.

One spotlight at top centre. Two below, on one the left one on the right. Two more below that but closer to one another. And the final two lower down and separated out to the edges.

It all looks theatrical – the floating window, the props.

Behind, we see a dark shore and beyond, the purpling Sea of Binah – there is a ruined pyramid there on the left of the picture, calling back to the destruction of the Osiris Aeon in the previous Card Trump 16 The Tower. More distant, we see the outlines of other still intact pyramids rising from the ocean’s eerie violet mist on the right-hand side.

In the procession of Aeons, the Star represents the renewal that follows the fall of the patriarchal Osiris pyramid and the raging destructive powers of the Horus Aeon.

The Star is a very positive card, suggestive of healing, renewal, recalibration and restoration following a period of turmoil.

Colours tend towards the blues and greens with some contrasting red and pink.