The Glorious Star

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

Galileo
This year is gathering momentum!

There are some fabulous events coming up later in the year which I am very excited about! Watch this space!

In the meantime, we are about to start the Tarot courses at the College of Psychic Studies and I am so looking forward to meeting new participants and especially thrilled to catch up with the gorgeous souls who are continuing in the groups.

I am very happy that our first Kitchen Table Workshop of 2017 is fully booked.

The two half day workshops are the Star and then in the afternoon we have the Moon. I love those events; it’s a fab opportunity to gather around the table and get down and dirty with the deeper meanings of the Tarot archetypes. It’s a joy to learn from each other and to share experiences and stories that encourage us to relate to the hidden depths in the cards. Within the sessions there is a very real sense of shared wisdom, passion and inspiration; all of these contributions are unbelievably valuable to us on our journey. The destination may not be clear, and perhaps it is not as important as we first assume, the most vital thing is that we are on a road to somewhere.

The Star card is amongst the most loved in the deck.

It offers salve to the soul, inspires optimism and hope, gives us a sense of transcendence and we are reminded that we experience nothing we can’t handle.

The imagery in the Star is very beautiful and when understood symbolically can truly open the door to a wider view of the relationship between people and their spirituality.

The number of the Star is 17, 1+7 = 8, which is the number of the Strength card. In the RWS deck, the figure is female. Perhaps the woman in Strength is the very same in the Star? If that be the case, then we can attribute patience, prudence, gentility, fortitude and controlled passion too as qualities to the Star.

The 8 pointed star.

The 8 pointed star is reminiscent of Ishtar, Goddess of sex, war and love who can be dated back to Babylon at around 2000 BCE. Innana can also be included, she is the Goddess of light and love, life and death and Venus, the morning and evening star. Interestingly, 8 years is the length of a full cycle of Venus. The Greeks recognised Venus as Eve and the morning star 1,500 years after the Sumerians. (Babylon).

This 8 pointed star can be found widely in Islamic patterns, called Zillij, Moroccan tiles are a good example of the prevalence of this patterning and can be found all over Morocco and indeed other Islamic countries. However, the 8 pointed star was around before Islam which began about 14,000 years ago. This star was discovered in Ur, a place that is connected to Abraham and he was represented by an 8 petalled rosette. Babylonian star cult is the core and archetype of ancient astrology.

So, how did this Pagan star become an Islamic symbol?

Sumer was located where several civilisations converged and the symbol migrated to other cultures through time. The purpose of this being it accommodated astrology, astrotheology, supporting the story of creation. Plus, planetary aspects determined times and places for prayer.

The 8 pointed star became central to the study of geometry, the idea being to seek and understand creation, not to worship it but to honour the creator. These studies supported the belief that humans are the greatest of all created.

The Star card transcends us to a higher spiritual awakening encouraging to step ever further into the unknown.

So, this lovely card becomes a time of dramatic insight, a significant portent that needs to be understood. The intuition and the vision it produces is nothing unless it can be acted upon. The Star encourages us to work with our intuition – the dream – for it to become an everyday reality.

As for the Moon, she is the beholder and the messenger of the dream. She beckons you to travel into distant landscapes within and blesses us with the way of the mysteries.I hope you enjoyed our little sojourn with the Star and my snippets of accumulated insight which brings a broader view and background to this mystical archetype.

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