Atu XVII “The Star” has a certain ‘technical’ aspect to it*, but it may be better called “The Stars” for average functionality. After the utterly shattering experience of Atu XVI “The Blasted Tower”, when all you thought was ‘certain’ is absolutely laid to waste, what is there left? The previous ‘prison walls’ have been completely destroyed, and now, “liberated”, what is there? A Vast Emptiness, but, wait, “it’s full of stars!” Amidst the overwhelming Sense of Emptiness, there appears to be “hopes” of “discreteness”. They may be mere “dots”, but they cascade a sense of “center-ness”; an odd sense of ‘unity’ for each of them amidst the “non-unity” of the vast emptiness.
Here is where all the metaphors of “hope” and “anticipation” arise. This is why this page (card) is associated with the Astrological House 11 (and then by further association the Zodiacal Sign Aquarius). After The Prison Walls have been utterly destroyed, the mind desperately seeks to re-assemble any sense of ‘certainty’. In that Vast Emptiness, the “sense of stars” is a first step to re-assembling that desperate ‘sense of certainty’.
For physical beings, who have grown up knowing only physical-gravitational being-ness, when that sense of ‘physical-gravitational being-ness’ is utterly violated on the most immediate parameter (Atu XVI), and plunged into An Emptiness, a lack of the previous, it is not surprising that the first attempt to re-assembly would be to seek out any similarity. In the “open emptiness” of “space”, the stars offer the first best evidence of the previous state.
(By the way, Atu IX “The Hermit” only really makes sense when you get that the Trump Series was crafted by those who had gone way past that stage, and had actually achieved this “Star” stage.)
The metaphors of “hope” and “ambition” are rather superficial with regard to this emblem. But in relation to using this page (card) in a reading, even though I would dissuade from “hope” and “ambition” metaphors, I may ask the querent: “If everything were to go-to-shit, and nobody gave a damn about you, What Might You Want?”
O-A-Hum
OPD
*There is the legend that “this star” is that of Sirius. Aside from all the other legends, there is one that is rather outstanding. The legend speaks that this was a “dying” system, and that in order to preserve that system, a kind of “projection” was induced. We “of the Earth” are the result of that projection. This metaphor calls into question all such as the “Matrix” metaphor. Thus the metaphors of “hope” take on a whole new flavor. Some ‘god-awful’ sense that “we” are the result of some desperate attempt to salvage a “dying class”. Now the whole ‘Holy Guardian Angel’ metaphor assumes a completely different flavor. I do not assume to ‘be correct’ about this; I simply wonder.
I have not been secret about my attitude about “deity”; which includes the sanctified ‘Holy Guardian Angel’ metaphor. There is a class of ‘entity’ which desperately requires that we “believe” in “its” existence, in order to exist. Even in “physical biology” we acquiesce to the existence of “parasites” that rely on a “host body” to accept its existence as part of its own functioning — without the host body “knowing”.
That is why I am glad I never took up Ceremonial Magick. (For those who did, just look into “Zen” as described by Alan Watts. He provides the clues to ‘separate’ from the “toxin” of Ceremonial Magick, and make it ‘fuller’ there-from.)
OPD Tarot 