For You to See Life - 4u2c.life

The Star ~ symbolic meanings painted in the card.

The card of the Star portrays a beautiful young woman with long, fair hair kneeling before an open chest. From the chest a noxious swarm of flying creatures rises filling the air with darkness. But the young woman's eyes are fixed on a bright star which hovers above her, within which can be seen a female figure in glowing white robes.

Pandora is, like Eve, a woman. It is the feminine side of human nature - feeling, instinct, imagination, intuition - which must probe for the truth despite the consequences.

The insects, unlike warmer- blooded creatures, are far from human consciousness and relationship. We cannot communicate with them, but are stung and goaded by nature itself.

The chest which Zeus sends to mankind with Pandora is like the apple in the Garden of Eden: something which is forbidden yet impossible to resist. It contains knowledge of the reality of human life, which means the death of naivete and childlike fantasy; yet it also contains the most precious attribute of the human spirit.

Major Arcana ~ The Star

Here we meet Pandora, who in myth opened the chest which Zeus had maliciously given to mankind, and released all the Spites. After the Titan Prometheus had stolen the sacred fire of the gods to give to mankind, the king of the gods resolved to inflict severe punishments on the human race, which culminated in the great flood described in the card of the Hanged Man. Before this flood, however, his anger was more subtle, although not yet satisfied. Zeus ordered Hephaistos the smith-god to fashion clay and water into a body, to give it vital force and human voice, and to make a virgin whose dazzling beauty would equal that of the immortal goddesses.

All the divinities heaped their special gifts on this new creature, who received the name of Pandora. Hermes, however, put perfidy into Pandora’s heart and lies into her mouth. This woman Zeus sent to Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus, along with a great chest. But Epimetheus, having been warned by his brother to accept no gifts from Zeus, respectfully excused himself However, having seen the terrible vengeance which the king of the gods then inflicted upon Prometheus, Epimetheus (whose name means ‘hindsight’) hastened to marry Pandora.

Prometheus, before he was seized and imprisoned on his lonely mountain peak, managed to warn Epimetheus not to touch the chest, and Epimetheus conveyed this warning to Pandora with frightening threats. But Hephaistos had made Pandora as foolish, mischievous and idle as she was beautiful. Presently she opened the lid of the chest, and the terrible afflictions which Zeus had gathered - Old Age, Labour, Sickness, Insanity, Vice and Passion - escaped and spread over the earth, infecting the whole of mankind. Hope alone, which had somehow got locked in the chest with the Spites, did not fly away.

On an inner level, the image of Pandora and the Star of Hope is a symbol of that part of us which, despite disappointment, depression and loss can still cling to a sense of meaning and a future which might grow out of the unhappiness of the past. The Star does not represent a fully formed conviction of future plans, or a solution to one’s problems, or a guide to action. Like the cards of the Hermit and the Hanged Man, the card of the Star is a card of waiting, for the sense of hope is a fragile light which glimmers and guides but does not dispel the darkness altogether. Hope is therefore shown as a female figure, because it is the irrational side of us - the intuition - which perceives the Star in the middle of the noxious swarm of Spites. Hope does not make the Spites go away, or undo the vengeance which Zeus has unleashed. But somehow in some mysterious way, it ofTers faith, and therefore in the image Pandora’s eyes are fixed not on the unhappiness of the human condition but on this vague, irrational, inexplicable sense that soon there will be a dawn.

This quality of hope has nothing to do with planned expectations. It is connected with something deep within us which has sometimes been called the will to live, and which - despite being a subjective expenence with no visible concrete reason - can often make the difference between life and death. Physicians know this about an ill patient - that the individual who has a sense of hope and a will to live can often find the inner resources to battle with a disease which would otherwise kill. Likewise individuals wrho have suffered tragic circumstances or been faced with challenges which are far greater than the ordinary human capacity to cope - such as those who experienced the imprisonment of concentration camps in Germany and Poland during the Second World War, or saw' families destroyed in the Russian invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1948 and Hungary in 1956 - have often expressed their belief that it was some inner feeling of faith and meaning that meant the difference between survival and complete collapse and death.

Hope is a profound and mysterious thing, for it would seem that it can transcend anything life offers us in the way of catastrophe. Yet it does not arise from an act of will, any more than the Star of Hope appears in the myth of Pandora through any deliberate action on her part. It is simply there, mysteriously locked in the chest along with all the woes, and if the individual can perceive its delicate glimmering then one’s response to difficulties is radically altered. Thus the Star, the guiding vision of hope and promise, arises not from intention but out of the ashes of the Tower which has been destroyed.

The Fool waits amidst the rubble, without any clear sense of how or what to rebuild. In the midst of this confusion and collapse of old attitudes and structures, the faint, elusive yet potent Star of Hope rises. On a divinatory level, the card of the Star when it appears in a spread portends the experience of hope, meaning and faith in the midst of difficulties. Although the Star too can be ambivalent, and can wram against blind hope without the necessary action to build upon it, the card of the Star is an augury of promise, an altogether welcome experience for the Fool who has passed through the collapse of everything which he believed to be of value in his life.

I will explain in my readings what each card means, this is a general interpritation taken from the Mythic Tarot Deck

Information Source: Mythic Tarot Deck
[published in 1986 by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene and Illustrated by Tricia Newell (not the New Mythic Tarot)]