The Star Tarot Card Meaning and Art Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Designation
About the Deck
Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
These cards are featured in my book, "A Concise Guide to the Tarot" by Loren Lundgren. I took the information for the meanings on these tarot cards from "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination", by A. E. Waite, 1911, now in the public domain. I edited the tarot card descriptions and meanings for clarity and brevity, modernizing the text. I scanned in the original black and white illustrations of the cards drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, from the 1911 book. I digitally retouched and painted those illustrations in detailed color.
Provenance
Loren Lundgren, © 2021
Description
A large, radiant star of eight points, surrounded by seven lesser stars—also of eight points. The female figure in the foreground is entirely naked. Her left knee is on the land and her right foot on the water. She pours the Water of Life from two great pitchers, irrigating sea and land. Behind her is rising ground, and on the right a shrub on which a bird perches. The figure expresses eternal youth and beauty. The star is l'etoile flamboyante, a symbol of Freemasonry. The figure communicates to the earth around her the substance of the heavens and the elements.Meaning of The Star from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Upright
Loss, theft, deprivation, abandonment.
Reversed
Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Star, Dog-Star, or Sirius, also called fantastically the Star of the Magi. Grouped about it are seven minor luminaries, and beneath it is a naked female figure, with her left knee upon the earth and her right foot upon the water. She is in the act of pouring fluids from two vessels. A bird is perched on a tree near her; for this a butterfly on a rose has been substituted in some later cards. So also the Star has been called that of Hope. This is one of the cards which Court de Gebelin describes as wholly Egyptian-that is to say, in his own reverie.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Hope, Expectation, Bright promises
Reversed
Hopes not fulfilled, Expectations disappointed or fulfilled in a minor degree.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Hope.
