Divinatory meaning
- Upright
- Loss, theft, privation, abandonment; another reading says-hope and bright prospects,
- Reversed
- Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.
major arcana
17
The Star
Suit: Trumps Major Arcana
Core interpretation
The Star follows the ruin of the Tower with clear water and open sky. It brings hope, renewal and the quiet restoration that begins when inspiration is allowed to flow into life.
A card carries more than one history. Its place in the tarot pack, Golden Dawn path, Rider–Waite–Smith reading and later variants are kept beside their own sources, since the same name can do different work in different decks.
8 sourced claims: 4 traditional , 3 modern , 1 contested
In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck
The meanings are Waite's own words from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. They belong to one influential school of reading and do not exhaust what the cards have meant in other hands.
A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, Rider–Waite–Smith — Part III, §3, The Greater Arcana and their Divinatory Meanings.
The same card in the Thoth deck
The Star · XVII · The Daughter of the Firmament, the Dweller between the Waters
What the card shows
ModernA naked figure pours water upon land and pool beneath one great star and seven smaller lights, offering the waters of life and gifts of spirit.
A concise paraphrase of Waite's published explanation of the Pamela Colman Smith design, not a universal description of all historical decks.
Divinatory meaning
ModernWaite records two sharply different upright traditions for The Star: one emphasises loss or abandonment, while the other emphasises hope and bright prospects. Reversed, the card can indicate arrogance, impotence or hope that cannot yet be translated into action.
Waite himself warns that many fortune-telling allocations are artificial and arbitrary; these are historical Rider–Waite–Smith meanings, not assertions of fact.
Tree of Life association
Hermetic Qabalah
Path 28 · צ Tzaddi · Netzach to Yesod
- Letter
- Tzaddi — Fish-hook
- Zodiac
- Aquarius
Book T establishes this Tarot-to-letter attribution. The path number and endpoints belong to this tradition's canonical Kircher arrangement.
Sources (2)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Twenty-Two Keys of the Book, pp. 5–7
Golden Dawn correspondences 4 sourced claims
Book T's formal title, Tree or elemental place, astrological attribution, and characteristic reading. This is the system used by the Hermetic Tree.
The Daughter of the Firmament, the Dweller between the Waters
The formal esoteric title printed in Book T.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Titles of the Symbols, pp. 5–7
צ · Tzaddi
A Golden Dawn correspondence, not a claim about the historical origin of the card or a universal Jewish letter-to-card system.
Sources (2)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Twenty-Two Keys of the Book, pp. 5–7
Aquarius
Book T's attribution carried by the Hebrew letter and therefore by this path.
Sources (2)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Twenty-Two Keys of the Book, pp. 5–7
Hope, faith, and unexpected help, shadowed by dreaminess or deceived hope.
Paraphrased from Book T's brief meanings; its dignity method reads a card in relation to neighbouring cards rather than as a fixed keyword.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Brief Meanings of Twenty-Two Keys, pp. 46–47
History and variants 2 sourced claims
Historical context and places where influential decks or occult systems differ.
One of the twenty-one figured trumps plus the Fool found beside the four ordinary suits in historical tarot packs.
Museum history dates the earliest documentary references to the 1440s–1450s in northern Italy and identifies tarot's original use as a trick-taking game. The occult-Qabalistic reading is later.
Sources (1)
- Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards , Metropolitan Museum of Art online article, 2016 — paragraphs 1–4
Book T assigns the Star to Tzaddi and Aquarius; Crowley's Thoth system instead assigns it to Heh while retaining Aquarius.
The Tree keeps the attributions of Book T; the Thelemic counterchange appears alongside them as a documented variant.
Sources (2)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Twenty-Two Keys of the Book, pp. 5–7
- The Book of Thoth , First edition, O.T.O., 1944 — Theory of the Tarot; Atu IV and XVII · contradicts
Correspondences 3 sourced correspondences
| Relation | To | First attested |
|---|---|---|
| Tarot trump of | Path 28 · Tzaddi | 1888 CE |
| Hebrew-letter attribution | Tzaddi | 1888 CE |
| Astrological attribution | Aquarius | 1888 CE |