The Star

From the Latin 'stella'. The early Italian name 'Le Stelle' is plural — 'the stars' — reflecting the several stars shown above the figure. The card is one of the most stable images in the Major Arcana, barely changing across four centuries.

From the Visconti-Sforza deck onward a naked woman kneels by the water, pouring liquid from two vessels, while a large star and several smaller stars shine overhead. The Marseille image is essentially identical to the later Waite version — a rare continuity. The figure likely echoes Isis-Sirius and the classical water-pouring zodiacal sign of Aquarius.

Smith refined the inherited image with great fidelity. A naked woman kneels with her right knee on the land and her left foot in the water, pouring from two pitchers — one into the pool, one onto the earth. Above her shine eight stars, one large and golden, the other seven small. A tree with a bird completes the scene.

The nakedness is true selfhood, unarmored and unashamed. The eight stars are Sirius and the seven classical planets, or the octagram of rebirth. The two streams unite the conscious and unconscious, heaven and earth; the pool is the deep self; the bird on the tree is the soul's messenger. After the Tower's fall, the Star is the quiet return of hope and guidance.

The Marseille and Waite images are nearly identical, making the Star the least changed of the trumps. In the Thoth deck Crowley attributes the card to Aquarius and depicts the goddess Nut pouring the waters of the cosmos, with a great star of Sirius at the center and lotuses below.

The card echoes Isis-Sirius, whose heliacal rising marked the Nile flood and the renewal of life, and Venus as the morning star. Astrologically it corresponds to Aquarius. As trump number 17 it follows the catastrophe of the Tower — the first gentle light after the demolition, the calm guidance that returns when false structures fall.