I just came across a quote that really hit me as a Star card message:

“The human spirit is not some addition to the universe, but emerged out of the universe itself.”

— Sister Miriam MacGillis

I wrote a little blurb on my instagram when I was introducing the Star card pendant, “I love the Star, a card that signifies hope and the interconnectedness of our lives to one another and to the so-called natural world. As above, so below.”

As I was writing this I wasn’t sure how to articulate myself around the concept of the natural world. I wanted to put natural in quotes but perhaps that could be taken as not thinking that our world is a natural place any more now that it is so concrete-encrusted and oil-slicked and at odds with life itself. But that is not what I mean at all. I mean the so-called natural world, as in: we call the world natural as if nature is something that is apart from us. But we, humans, are natural. We are nature. We are made of stars. And the world we have created from the resources of the earth is somehow, strangely, of the stars too.

The Star card from the Smith-Waite tarot

My first deck, a Smith-Waite (aka Rider-Waite) my mum got me at a psychic fair in a motel conference room, has my handwriting on it. At some point my teenage self decided to write the keywords directly on the cards. The Star card in that deck still bears the keywords: Astral Religion. I can’t recall now which book these keywords were from but I’ve always been put off by them. I’m like, “So, what… this card is about astrology? …or a religious practice of star worship?” I never really got it.

But it makes sense to me now. Maybe because I have gone through some shizzz and I have come out on the other side of it after struggling and failing and all along reading my horoscope everyday and pulling cards for some kind of twinkle of HOPE. I used to call astrology & tarot my crutch. It props me up when I’m confused and sad. It gives me a way to see myself as a smaller piece in a big picture and it helps me to see the parts of life that are difficult, as unique but interconnected influences. I find this comforting.

Eden Gray gives different keywords in Mastering the Tarot, “Courage, hope, inspiration. Gifts of the Spirit. Health will improve. Unselfish aid. Great love will be given and received. Insight into the meanings of life. No destruction is final.” (Gray, 1973, p. 134.)

“The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

So, to me, the Star is religion, it is science, it is magic, it is medicine, it is spirituality and it is simply whatever gives you hope. Reading science fiction gives me hope. The power of our imaginations to describe new worlds gives me hope that we can imagine a better world for each other here and now on Earth.

The Star is the card associated with the zodiac sign of Aquarius which is the sign that is most concerned with the well being of Earth and its peoples, of equanimity, and societal progress. I used the pitcher of the Water-Bearer in my design as it references Aquarius but also the female figure on the Star card who holds not one but two pitchers that she pours out on to the earth and into the water. I also placed eight eight-pointed stars in the design, surrounding and pouring out of the pitcher, like a flowing galaxy.

The reverse of the pendant features the sigil I designed that is a reference to the Aquarius symbol and the astrological glyph for Aquarius’s modern planetary ruler, Uranus. The sigil emphasizes the star, the vessel, and the overflowing water in two directions.