The Star (Tarot card)

File:RWS Tarot 17 Star.jpg

The Star (XVII) from the Rider-Waite deck

The Star (XVII) is the seventeenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.

Description

A naked woman kneels by the water; one foot is in the water, one foot is on the land. Above her head a star shines out. In each hand she holds a jug. From one jug she pours a liquid into the water. From the other jug she pours a liquid onto the land. In other, older decks, a woman (or sometimes even a man) is simply looking and sometimes gesturing at a large star in the sky.

In popular culture

• In The House of the Dead 4, part of Sega's House of the Dead series, The Star appears as a levitating humanoid able to control projectiles of light and serves as the penultimate boss of the game. All bosses in the House of the Dead series are named after the Major Arcana.
• The main character of the third series of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Jotaro Kujo, is the user of Star Platinum, a powerful Stand that possesses super-strength and super-speed. It was named after this tarot card.
• The Star card is a major theme in Tom Robbins' "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas." An altered version of the card appears in "Part One" and is discussed throughout the book.
• In the SNES video game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, the Star Tarot card depicts a woman in a white dress standing on clouds and pouring two jugs of water from the starry sky onto the world. On drawing the card after liberation of one of the towns, it increases characters' agility by 1 point, and also increases their agility more when used in battle than when drawn on liberation, but only until the battle ends.

References

• A. E. Waite's 1910 Pictorial Key to the Tarot
• Juliette Wood, Folklore 109 (1998):15-24, The Celtic Tarot and the Secret Tradition: A Study in Modern Legend Making (1998)