TRUMP 17 - THE STAR
Genesis 1:16, "God made two great lights. The greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night, he also made the stars." With these next three cards, we have the great glorious trinity known as the lights of heaven. As we look out into the sky, there are, in fact, only three kinds of light: the stars, the Moon and the Sun.
The great light to guide day is the Sun. The lesser light to rule the night is the moon. And, the glorious canopy, the celestial ceiling, is the wonderful canopy of stars. It is interesting, if the Tarot cards are simply a form of stupid fortune telling, that they would bother with three such important symbols.
The Bible is full of references to stars. Often the three lights of heaven are grouped together. Specifically as it pertains to the stars, what does the Bible say?
First stars are used as an indicator of large numbers and blessing. 70 people entered Egypt and uncountable numbers as many as the stars of heavens left. This is a symbol of God's blessing of fruitfulness. Our descendants are as numerous as the stars. Our blessings are as numerous as the stars.
God sets, ordains and names the stars, each and every single one of them. The stars are a symbol of God's providence, his presence, his power, and his intimate involvement with all aspects of the universe. When you look up at the stars, the Bible tells us that God has set them each where they are, that each is exactly where it belongs, and that God knows the names of every one of them, deeply and personally.
The Biblical record and, of course, the record of the Tarot cards, is not that of a God who is lofty and far removed, dwelling somewhere out there. No, the God of the Bible, the God of the Torah, the God of the Tarot, the God of the Rota, is intimately involved with all aspects of creation, right here and right now. You can go somewhere else, but even there you will only be here. You can wait until later, but even then, it will only be now. This is the idea. Where can I go to hide from God? If I go to the highest heaven in the realm of the stars, you are there. If I go to the deepest part of the ocean, you are there. Therefore if you are seeking for God, there is nowhere you have to go, because he is as much present here as he is anywhere.
Also, you do not have to wait until any time, because God is eternal, He is infinite. He stands outside of the confines of time and space, and therefore cares not one wit about needing certain things to occur before others. Anytime we are ready, the light of Heaven will shine and illuminate us, whenever we are ready.
A third thing that the stars and lights of heaven indicate symbolically in the Bible is not actually a symbol, so much as a warning. The early peoples were very prone to worship the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. The Bible repeatedly forbids against this, and God delivers his punishment to those who do so. I believe this is an important warning to us, even today. There are temptations, even in this hopefully high Tarot study that we are doing. There are temptations to see these cards as pointing us to worshipping the star, or worshipping the Moon or the Sun. These are elements of the heavens which declare the glory of God and show forth His handiwork.
But the Tarot and the Bible are constantly calling us to move through the physical creation into the spiritual creation, to not worship the creation of the lights of Heaven, but to turn to and adore the Creator. It is part of the message here. The message of the star is deep and subtle, but it is very great.
We, at this stage in the soul’s development, are learning that all aspects of creation are simply extensions of the Divine mind They are not of themselves to be worshipped, but are rather to be seen as a pathway and an expression of the Divine mind. Therefore, we must be careful at all stages not to worship these things.
A fourth Biblical reference to the lights of Heaven is in prophesying and describing their darkening. The book of Matthew, for example, describes the distress of the last days. The Sun will be darkened. The Moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and all the heavenly bodies will be shaken. There will be signs in the Sun, the Moon and stars. On Earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexed at the roaring and tossing of the sea. When neither the Sun nor stars appear for many days, and all the storm continues to rage, we finally will give up all hope of being saved.
The symbolism here is quite plain. The light of Heaven is a reference to the actual consciousness of God. God is light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all. We have the three great lights of heaven. Heaven is the home of God, just as the earth is the home of God. Symbolically, the earth represents those base, more physical attributes of our existence. Heaven represents the highest, purest, spiritual part.
To say that the Sun, the Moon and the stars become darkened is to see no more light from them, that in the dark night of the soul, God's light can no longer be seen. There is no spiritual guidance. There is no help from the heavenly host. As we saw in the previous cards, that darkness comes from blocking things, from things which stand between us and the light. That is the essence of the symbolism that says that the stars will fall to the earth. This is not physically possible, and those fundamentalists who believe that the Bible must be taken absolutely literally, will not have a very good time interpreting that passage literally.
You see, a single star is millions upon millions of times larger then the earth is. And it is completely, physically, theoretically impossible for the stars to actually fall to the earth. If even one star came within a few million miles from the earth, the earth would be completely burned and disintegrated. So obviously we are not dealing with literal truth, we are dealing with symbolism. As we have said before, the Bible is replete with symbolism. To try and ignore that is to do ourselves a great and sad disservice.
The symbolism of the stars falling to earth is to show that the consciousness of God, the Divine celestial light, has become trapped within the earth. The pathway of involution takes the Divine limitless mind, the expanse of the ocean of God’s consciousness, and places it into ever lower and lower, denser vehicles. Until, finally the consciousness of God is focused upon ever smaller domains.
Ultimately the lights of Heaven fall to earth, and we are so obsessed with that tiny little speck of dirt on a rug that we lose any peace of our soul. We have no love; we have no hope. All seems darkness, futility and the void. We have all had this experience.
Also, fifth, the star is a sign for the birth of the Son of God. This comes from the New Testament in Matthew 2:2, "Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the East and come to worship him." Matthew 2:7, "Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. When they saw the star they were overjoyed."
I am not claiming here that the Magi did not actually see a physical star. I am perfectly willing to grant that they did. The power of religion, and hopefully I have made the case clearly enough at this point, is that whether they actually saw a physical star or not, simply does not matter. This would be a part of history. This would be an event that occurred to them thousands of years ago. And if it is a fact, and its only value is in the concrete physical history, then it has no value whatsoever and should be removed from the Bible. But if this event is also an indication of a symbolic meaning, then we have much to learn from it. We have the three-fold path--the three lights of heaven, and we approach them in this order: the star, the Moon and the Sun.
The star is the smallest of the lights. It is the dimmest of the three. The reason it is dim and the reason it appears to be small is not because the star is actually small. The star is just farther away. Our sun is a star, however, our sun is limitlessly closer to us by several orders of magnitude than the stars are. You’ll remember that we discussed “an order of magnitude” when we were analyzing The Empress.
An order of magnitude is a power of ten. If something is one foot long and something else is ten feet long, then the longer piece is one order of magnitude larger then the smaller piece. Our sun is 93 million miles away. If you multiply 93 million times 10, that equals 900 million. Times ten again is 9 billion. Times ten is 90 billion. Times 10 is 900 billion. The nearest star to us is 5 orders of magnitude away because it is more than 9 trillion miles away; it is 27 trillion miles away.
Therefore our sun is 5 orders of magnitude closer to us then the nearest star. It is no larger or smaller than the average stars. Some stars are larger than ours; some are smaller. Ours is a very average sun. The reason the stars are dimmer and the reason they are smaller, to repeat, is because they are farther away. The symbolism of the star is to account for the very moment of the birth of the Son of God.
The Magi studied the heavens, and they watched the stars. When one particular star was properly placed, they knew that this meant that the Son of God had been born. The Magi were early astronomers. They gazed up into the heavens. One thing that we have lost, especially in modernized America, is all contact with the lights of Heaven. We no longer rule our days according to sunrise and sunset. We no longer rule our harvest and activities by the phase of the moon. We no longer gaze up into the heavens at night to dream and gain visions.
In Jesus’ day, in the warmth of the Palestinian desert, the Magi could lay out at night, and they were not distracted by television or radio. They could gaze up into the heavens and just watch the stars. In that time, the stars were television. The stars were the active story which the Magi studied and listened to. When they looked up into the heavens, they saw a message. That message was of the redeeming plan of God. The signs of the zodiac indicate the ancient revelations, the ancient visions that the Magi and others had, as they gazed into the heavens and saw the redemptive plan of God.
Just as the Tarot cards have fallen from grace and are used for fortune telling, so too the zodiac, which is a divine revelation, has fallen from grace and is being used for simple stupid fortune telling. It was never meant to be. As we discussed before, each one of the signs of the zodiac is a collection of images, pictures and symbols, all of which combine to form the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
He was born of Virgo, the virgin. He is Aquarius, the water bearer to feed us with streams of living water. He is Aires, the ram or lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He is Gemini, part God, part man with the dual nature. He is Libra, the great judge who will come to discern truth from falsehood and through whom God will judge the world. He is the conqueror of Scorpio, the serpent who will sting him on the heels. He is Pieces, the fish. The word “fish” is an acronym for Jesus Christ God's Son Savior. That's why we see these little fish symbols on the back of cars today. He is Pisces, the Son of God.
We could go into great detail, but this subject is so vast that it deserves a book all its own. Fortunately for us, such a book has been written, Bullinger's "The Witness of Stars." He discusses in that book every zodiacal sign and every miniature constellation inside of the larger constellations. He even gives the ancient, original names that were given to these stars thousands of years ago, and tells how those very names mean, "She who brings forth the Savior."
The point of this discussion is to show you that the pathway of the stars, the pathway of the birth of the Son of God, is the moment when the absolute true light is born and lives cleanly and purely inside of you. The star is also used as a symbol of the fulfillment of the birth. What do I mean by that? Jesus refers to himself as the morning star in Revelation 22:16. "I Jesus have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and offspring of David and the bright morning star."
What is the morning star? The morning star is Venus. It's not actually a star; it's a planet. Most mornings you can look toward the East and see a very bright light, obviously much brighter than any of the other stars or lights. That’s the planet Venus, the nearest neighbor to Earth. The morning star became a symbol of newness, because it happens in the morning. Rebirth. We can wake up in the morning and see that the lights of Heaven are still there. We can begin the day afresh, with a moment of devotion, a moment of contemplation, and a moment of attuning ourselves with thankfulness that God's revelation and the lights of Heaven still shine. We can attune ourselves to that energy, that focus, that purpose, that divine grace, and let it be our guiding purpose all day long. Jesus says he is the morning star.
Now we come to the central message of this card. We have seen that the stars represent the guiding light of God. We have seen that the stars indicate the birth of the Son of God. We have also seen that the Son of God calls himself the morning star. That, my friends, is all introduction. That is laying the groundwork for the true message of the Star. What is that message?
2nd Peter 1:19, "We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." Read that verse again.
The Tarot cards do not tell us one single thing that the Bible does not tell us. And, as you can tell by the many references to the Bible in this document, we really cannot understand the Tarot cards without the Bible. The two of them, Tarot and Torah, combine and relate and help illuminate one the other.
The Bible helps show us things that we could never really see in the Tarot. The Tarot helps us to crystallize our thinking and condense, through symbolic language, things which have always been in the Bible.
Jesus is the morning star, but that is not the end of the story. You will have the day of God dawn, and the morning star will rise in your heart. That is the purpose of this card. This card is an indication of the incarnation of God within you.
We have come so far on the pathway of the Tarot. We have learned of the divine nature of grace. We have learned that this is all God's revelation. We have learned that through controlling our divine will, we have all strength necessary. We have learned that we must proclaim and share the light, or will be extinguished. We have learned that all aspects reflect the name of God and are an expression of the divine glory. We have learned that the only powers that the Devil has are those we give to him. We have learned that through dying to ourselves, we can be born again. At this point, birth actually occurs. At this point, the Hanged Man has embraced death, has overcome the temptations of the Devil. We have died to our own thoughts in the Tower. We are now transformed and purified. Having dwelt in the word of God, we have the morning star rising inside of our very soul. As the Bible says, “Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.”
Jesus also says in Revelation 2:28, "I will also give him the morning star." That is this card. We are now prepared to actually look at the physical drawing.
We see a central star with 8 points on it. We have discussed the symbolism of the eight before. It symbolizes the cardinal points on the compass. It is the eight-fold pathway of God's grace. Around that central 1 star, there are 7 other stars. The 7 + 1 = 8. Every one of the 7 stars has 8 spokes, so the card is called the Star, the one star. There is only one star. That star is Jesus. The Bible tells us very clearly, "I am the morning star, thus says the Son of God." That is the one star, the large yellow one.
That morning star will rise in each of our hearts. It will be given to each of us, and we all, therefore, become the lesser lights of Heaven. We all become the Star. The Son of God is born in each of us and rises in all of our hearts.
So, we are the smaller white stars. We have the same exact shape as the large star. The 7 are all manifestations of the 1, indicating symbolically that the oneness of God is played out through all 7 moments of creation, through all 7 realms of the universe: matter, emotion, desire, mind, will, spirit, the realm of the angels and the spark of God himself.
That 1 star plus the 7 stars totals 8 stars, but the card is only called the Star. I guess the best illustration I can give of this is a radio broadcast. We have millions of radios, and they all create their own miniature voice. But, as I speak into the radio transmitter, there is only one speaker. That one voice multiplies through the many, and yet they are all connected only to the one. This is the divine glorious pathway of God, that the one becomes many, and the many remain the one. There is only one God. There is only one source origin in all. There is only one light.
That light multiplies itself into a limitless and infinite multiplex. As it does so, it appears that there are many, many parts. But through the light of revelation and through following the pathway of spiritual discovery, we remember that all of these different parts are, in fact, only one. There are many, many human beings on this earth, yet there is only one body of Christ. That is why there are one star and seven stars, yet the card is called the Star.
Underneath the Star, we see a woman who is naked. None of the creatures from here on in the Tarot cards have any clothes on whatsoever. Why? Because we are far beyond mortal frameworks here. Nakedness is a man-made sin. There is no shame in being naked. It is natural. The only shame is in our minds and in our inability to deal with it. As Adam and Eve partook from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the first thing they did was become aware of their nakedness and try to run and hide from it.
As we follow the pathway of God and enter into true revelation, and as the morning star is born inside of us, we overcome the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We see only the oneness and the goodness of God. And con-commitment with that, all shame at nakedness disappears. This is not a licentious comment; this is simply the truth.
Nakedness is one of our great and glorious man-made sins. It was never to be that way, and as we reach our fruition, it will cease to be that way.
Who is the maiden? Well, there are different interpretations. You could see her as being Eve, the purity of womanhood. You could see her as the bride of Christ. You could see her as Mother Nature. Perhaps, there is no genuine difference between these.
She has two pails of water. One is being poured out upon the sea. One is being poured out upon the land. This indicates beautifully that the streams of living water, which the Son of God will give us, are now flowing freely inside of our lives, and all aspects of our being are touched in this card.
We have the earth, which is full of the living water. We have the waters themselves. We have the bird on the tree in the background that flies in the air. We have the spark, which is the fire, the flame of God, which is the morning star, which is the Son of God, who is born in our hearts. Body, emotions, mind and spirit are all touched by the glorious unfolding of the light of God. That is the Star--the one star with the seven stars, making eight stars, which are only one star. That is the glory. That is the blessing.
The bird represents animated air. The consciousness which we have is so illuminated that it's actually alive. Just as we have streams of living water, we have streams of living air. That is the symbolism of that bird stuck back there on the tree.
