Stars and Trumps

Living, as he has, in the lower southern hemisphere for most of his life the present author has a distinctly southern acquaintance with the night sky. At the southern reaches of the Australian continent the stars appear quite different to how they appear at other latitudes, and especially how they appear in the history-rich temperate zone latitudes of the northern hemisphere. During his recent extended travels, therefore, which have taken him through most of Hindoostan, along the Malacca Straits, across western China, around the Japanese islands and then through the east Indies, he has taken every opportunity to study the night sky from the unfamiliar vantage of northern climes. There were some excellent clear nights when he was in the Himalayas, and again in southern Goa, and in parts of Siam, and in the boat from Shanghai to Osaka, and most recently, in the more equitorial zone, on the long sandy beaches of Bali and Lombok. 

The first thing of interest to a southerner is the pole star: a fixture of the heavens lacking in the southern hemisphere but literally pivotal to the workings of the northern sky. Polar mythology is primary in all the great traditions. The pole star is axis mundi, and the way in which the constellations circle it - notably the Dipper, scooping up the waters of Ocean through the seasons - constitutes the essential motifs of Hindoo and Chinese spirituality especially. This fact was underlined for the present author in many temples and sacred places he visited. The symbolism of the pole star and the cosmology centred on the pole star is everywhere. In some Chinese temples it is perfectly explicit; star maps adorn the altars. Even more ubiquitous, seen throughout the whole of Asia, is the sacred symbol of the hyperborean swastika which depicts the Dipper circling the axial centre, as in this diagram:

You cannot see this from the southern hemisphere. The author was happy to see it with his own eyes. Yet the pole star itself, he discovers, is unspectacular. It is surprsingly dim, isn't it? It is hardly a blazing feature of the firmament. Its importance only becomes obvious through sustained stargazing throughout the revolving tides of the year. 

Some things in the northern skyscape, though, are immediately striking. The three bright stars of Orion draw attention, in the right circumstances, to the enduring importance of Sothis, Sirius, the 'Shining One', which is indeed a blazing feature of the firmament and often dominates the night. It is visible in the south too, of course - the brightest star in the heavens the world over - but in the south it is seen from a different (reversed) perspective. The long history of human fascination with Sothis is not difficult to understand. On one night in eastern India it shone like a diamond high above the Arabian Sea, its light reflecting upon the dark, sedate waters. In Lombok, late at night, it was particularly clear, shining with a steady, intense white-blue light under the black silhouettes of hills, cliff tops, forests and volcanos. There is the Sun, the Moon, and then there is Sothis, the so-called Dog Star, which has loomed large in human mythology and starlore since the beginnings of the human adventure. On one occasion on his travels the author saw it in a classical arrangement with the three stars of Orion pointing to its brilliant presence low in the sky during the depths of the night. This is the arrangement of stars that some suppose is alluded to in the Three Kings and Star of Bethlehem story in Christian mythology, as in the picture below. It is not so obvious when seen in southern climes. In the northern hemisphere, at certain times of the year, it is too plain to be overlooked.

*
*  *
*  *  * 

This star-gazing, in turn, has set the author to consideration (exactly the right word, to con + sider, sidereal = star) of one of the key cultural representations of stellar mythology in the western tradition, the Star trump in the tarot. The possibility that the story of the three kings describes a particular arrangement of stars, and that the 'Star in the East' that the kings pursue is Sothis, reminds him that the earliest representations of the Star trump in the tarot depict that mythologem. Thus:

The first question to be answered regarding this tarot card is: what star is it that is being depicted? The most likely answer, surely, is Sothis. Let us note, for start, that this card is one of three that form a set and a sequence, the 'celestial' trumps: The Star, the Moon, the Sun. These seem to be deliberately arranged in the traditional tarot sequence in order of increasing luminosity. The Sun is the brightest object in the sky. Before it comes the Moon, the second brightest. And before the Moon card is The Star, the third brightest object in the sky - in which case it would follow that the star in question is Sothis. 

The identification of the star on the trump with the Star of Bethlehem is made explicit again in some modern tarot designs, such as this:

But it also seems to be the relevant identification in other early designs that show a handsome youth who, in context, is most likely King David (the star being King David's star, Bethlehem indicating the House of David and the Davidic royal line). Thus:

The context of this iconography, of course, is Renaissance Italy and when we compare this crude sketch of a male figure with the classical David we see the resemblance, thus:

To reiterate: these early designs are concerned with the Star of Bethlehem, the Star of David - simple Christian symbolism. When Christians think of stars it is the star that presided over the birth of Christ that must come first to their minds. The earliest tarot designs have this basic Christian meaning. Arguably, the star in question is Sothis, third most luminous object in the sky, and the star to which the "three kings" of "Orion's belt" point.

*
*  *
*  *  * 

At a certain juncture in the development of tarot symbolism, however, this simple Christian symbolism became complicated with a different iconography and the three kings of the east, or King David, as the case may be, were replaced by a female figure. It seems that this first occurred in northern Italy in the late 1400s. This is the symbolism that became standard and which continues in the tarot to this day. It introduces a second question regarding this trump: who is the female figure on the card? 

Again, many of the early designs deviate quite markedly from the later ones. Here, for instance, is one of the early depictions of the 'Star':

This is not Christian symbolism: it is pagan allegory. The female figure is most likely Ourania, the ancient Greek muse of astronomy in her night-blue attire. The star, in that case, need not be a specific star but is merely generic although, again, Sothis must be regarded as the prime candidate simply because it is the brightest star in the sky. Sothis is THE star, per se. 

Whatever the case, a female figure, rather than kings and David, makes her appearance, and in tarot designs thereafter the star is associated with a woman. Most likely, too, another factor assisted this shift. In some early sets of trumps the Christian virtues, personified in the medieval manner, appear in place of some of the now familiar designs. In such cases, the virtue of Hope (as in the trinity Faith, Hope and Charity) appears in place of the Star. Thus the female figure who later appeared on the cards is an adaptation of Hope, and indeed this positive attribution has continued to be part of the divinatory meanings ascribed to the card by cartomancers. 

On the other hand, this same woman becomes naked in the course of the transformation of the card designs and she thus appears to be the same female figure who appears on the Temperance card, the World card and elsewhere in the iconography of the trumps. In this respect she seems to be a representation of Anima Mundi - the World Soul - of Christo-Neoplatonic cosmology who was routinely depicted as a naked woman in this way. The World card, the last in the sequence of trumps, in particular, seems to confirm this identification. As with all the tarot trumps, the Star card is, we can see, a convergence of many different streams of late medieval and Renaissance symbolism, both pagan and Christian, iconographical and moral.

*
*  *
*  *  * 

It will be noted that in all the various designs of the star trump considered thus far there is no appearance of the waters that feature in the later designs. Historically, this is a late element in the design. First there is the star - some early designs simply show a star with no other details, as in the so-called Rosenwold Sheet, an uncut printing of card designs. See below:

Secondly, the female figure appears with the star, replacing kings and male figures. But only later does this female figure become associated with water. In the design that became normative, of course, she is holding pitchers of water and pouring them out. Star. Woman. Waters. These are the components of what became the traditional design. 

How then do we explain the appearance of water in the Star card, and how is water associated with (a) the star and (b) the woman? This is the third of the three questions to which the trump design gives rise. What are the waters we see on the card? There are three questions to be answered: 

What star is it? 
Who is the woman? 
What are the waters? 

On the face of it, the appearance of the water in the symbolism of the card seems to reinforce the view that the star in question is Sothis. The connection coincides with the ancient Egyptian themes that many have detected in the tarot trumps. No doubt, claims that the tarot is of ancient Egyptian origin are unfounded in themselves, but certain iconographical themes in the traditional designs, albeit of Italian origin, do seem to perpetuate motifs that go back to ancient Egypt. The Egyptian association of Sothis with the cycles of the Nile - and the star with water - is an association that persists in Europe well beyond ancient times. One can make a good case that this is why water appears in the symbolism of the card. The cycles of Sothis are related to the flooding of the Nile and hence, by extension, to fertility and irrigation. What star is it? Sothis. The water symbolism of the card tells us so. No other star has such a long-standing and archetypal association with water.

In that case, as many commentators suppose, the woman depicted may be meant to signify some Egyptian deity related to Sothis, most usually nominated as the goddess Isis. This, at least, would satisfactorily answer our three questions. The star is Sothis. The woman is Isis. The waters are the waters of the Nile. What has happened in the evolution of the card, then, is that these Egyptian motifs have been collected together in conjunction with the other streams of ideas such as Hope and Ourania and the Neoplatonic World-Soul. The final element in the design, the bird in the tree - almost always identified as an ibis - is likely to have been imported as part of this Egyptification at much the same time. 

*

*  *

*  *  *

There are, all the same, other questions to be answered and other considerations that might count against such neat identifications. The tarot designs are complex and their origins and history notoriously obscure. There is much scope for speculation. Nothing is ever simple. What are we to make of the posture of the woman on the card, for instance, and her act of pouring out the water? In some early designs she holds a single pitcher and pours the water into a river (or other body of water, the sea?) In what became the canonical design she is holding two pitchers or jugs and is pouring one onto land and one into the body of water. What symbolism is afoot here? And why is she positioned as she is? 

As historians of the tarot relate, the prototype for the two vessels of water would seem to be alchemical depictions of the mermaid Melusine of folklore, an allegorical figure representing the conjunctio oppositorum, the union of opposites. In alchemical iconography she is depicted expressing milk from one breast and blood from the other, as below:

This is probably French symbolism, although the legends of Melusine were known in Cyprus and may have come into Italy through certain Milanese-Cypriot connections. Some tarot designs, old and new, are clearly related to this iconography as the following two versions of the Star card show. Without drawing attention to vulgar colloquialisms, the breasts of the mermaid become the 'jugs' of the female figure on the card, a somewhat obvious adaptation: 

In any case, the mere fact of water in the design becomes further complicated with the importation of the idea of duality, two jugs (pitchers) - the two breasts of the female figure - and the idea, by extension, that the two vessels contain two different waters or waters for two different purposes. Blood and milk in the Melusine symbolism signifies the salty and the sweet respectively. It is a fair surmise, then, that the two vessels of water represent the two types of water, salty and fresh (or sweet). This distinction is then formalized in the tarot design by having the female figure pour one vessel into the body of water (the salt water of the sea) and one on land (the fresh water of the rivers). At the time that this further distinction was made the female figure was turned around to be facing the left rather than the right and she was given a distinctive posture. This again, as historians of the tarot have remarked, is not unprecedented. The female figure seems to have been adapted to the typical posture of personifications of the zodiacal sign Aquarius, the Water-bearer, in medieval astrological symbolism, thus:

The basis for this further collapsing together and blending of symbolisms is plain. The evolution of the figure on the card now identifies her as water-bearer and a figure of conjoined opposites represented by the two modes of water, salty and sweet. In this we see astrological and alchemical influences upon the design, co-mingling with all the others we have noted, until it arrives at its canonical form, thus:

   

In a Christian context, this final symbolism is rich in allusions. Let us note, for example, a passage from the Revelation of John, 10:1-2:  

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven... and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth.  

*
*  *
*  *  *

It occurs to the present author, all the same, that there are other possible interpretations of this symbolism. One further feature of the design requires an explanation, and it suggests that perhaps a quite different order of symbolism was in play during the development of the trump. In the early designs, as we saw above, there was often just a single star depicted upon the card. It was almost always eight-pointed. In the canonical design this eight-pointed star blazing in the centre of the card is accompanied by seven smaller stars. These, presumably, represent the seven planets, or alternatively, it is conceivable that they represent the seven sisters, the Pleiades, since that grouping of stars is in the same proximity as Sothis. But the seven stars appear quite late in the evolution of the design. As we see in the examples depicted above, when the Melusine motif of two jugs (breasts) - the conjunction of opposites - was introduced there were four stars, not seven, accompanying the central star. Here it is again:

The stages of development, then, were one star, then four, then seven. The question is: how many additional stars should there be and what do they represent? 

If there are seven stars then we have some reasonable answers to the second part of this question. The additional stars represent either the planets or perhaps the Pleiades. But what of the four stars? When four stars were added to the design, what did they represent in the mind of the designer? The additional stars seem to be added to the design at the same time that water became associated with the star, and at first there were four stars, not seven. What, then, do four stars represent? The seven stars of the canonical design, it will be noticed, tend to be arranged somewhat awkwardly and are crowded in the given space. Designs with four stars on the other hand have a natural symmetry: the large star is in the centre and the four stars are arranged neatly around it. Perhaps the four stars are simply decorative devices just as the seven stars are instances of Hermetic exuberance? But that is unlikely. Every detail of all the tarot trumps seem to be deliberate. The designs may be arcane and there may indeed be a confusion, a hotch-potch, of various types of symbolism, but no details seem to be unintelligent or merely aesthetic. 

There is, however, no natural correlative to the four stars. Seven planets or the seven sisters (Pleiades) are natural models, but there is no natural set of four stars except, perhaps, the great Southern Cross, but that is a feature of the southern skies, not the northern. Most likely, then, they represent the four directions and/or the four seasons. The large star that they surround, therefore, takes on the symbolism of the centre, the axis. We have a central star and around it four smaller stars representing north, south, east and west and/or winter, spring, summer and autumn. But if that is the case, then we must question whether the central star is Sothis for it does not naturally carry such four-square significances. The star that does is, rather, Polaris, the pole star. Sothis is the brightest star in the heavens, but it is not, for all of that, axial. The pole star is dim to the eyes but it is the star around which the whole cosmos turns. 

It seems to the present author, in any case, that certain elements in the design of this trump might be better explained if we take the star to be the pole star rather than Sothis, or perhaps what we have is an overlapping of two different orders of symbolism. There are two great stars in the northern heavens. Sothis is the brightest. Polaris is the most axial. They are significant in two different ways. Perhaps, then, both stars come together in the Star trump? Perhaps they are interchangeable? Many of the themes we have considered might conceivably apply to both of these stars. We said, for instance, that Sothis is naturally associated with water, and it is by virtue of its association with the waters of the Nile, but the Dipper that, as we saw, circles the pole star, is conceived mythologically as a water-scoop that dips down into the waters of Ocean and irrigates the heavenly meadows. Thus, although it is perhaps less obvious and less appreciated, we might just as well attribute the water symbolism of the card to the pole star as to Sothis. 

In this respect, let us note - as some commentators have in the past - the fact that the female figure in the later designs is in a peculiar posture of arms and legs that somewhat resembles the swastika. Let us see her again:

It is clear from other tarot trumps - consider the Emperor card or the Hanging Man, for example - that the arms and legs of the figures are often made to form symbolic shapes. The Emperor's legs makle the sign of the planet Jupiter, for instance, and the Hanging Man's crossed leg makes the alchemical glyph for sulphur. Such devices are well established in tarot symbolism. In the canonical design, the naked water-bearer on the Star trump is very deliberately depicted with her arms and legs in a peculiar arrangement, and that arrangement strongly suggests the four arms of the swastika. 

We can explain that peculiarity by assuming that the star above her is the pole star. Other symbolism follows. In the Soofi tradition of the Mahometans - to draw upon another order of symbols for the sake of elucidation for a moment - much is made of various Koranic references to the "two seas" and their meeting place. These "two seas" are the two modes of water, salty and sweet. Their meeting place is the so-called bazahk, a symbolic notion of that place, the "heart", where a being of the physical world (the salty waters) can encounter the spiritual (the sweet). Such ideas are crucial to Soofi spirituality and by extension feature in Mahometan alchemy as well. By further extension, these same alchemical ideas inform the occidental alchemical tradition too, and this is what we find in the symbolism of the Star card insofar as it is alchemical. What this amounts to is this: that the bazahk, the meeting place of the "two seas", the physical and spiritual realms, is in the heart, the centre of one's being, and so to reach that place is to return to the spiritual centre, the axis of one's Self. The pole star has exactly such significances in a cosmological sense. The axis is where the "two seas" meet. 

One can interpret the Star card of the tarot in these terms. There is much more that one can say. Again, the symbolism of the tarot is rich and multivalent. These considerations are, at least, a starting point. In the first instance the meaning of the card is Sothic. The star is Sirius. But other streams of symbolism converge in its iconography. In particular, the axial symbolism of the pole star very well accounts for many of the themes of this card. The star is not only Sirius, but Polaris as well. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black