Not sure whom I sourced this from. I read Arcanum 17 10 years ago. I am very fond of Surrealism. I was more fond of DADA but…after all I too aged.
Tarot Arcanum 17: Hope
The star of eight points always represents Venus, the star of dawn. We find the Venustic Initiation within the Seventeenth Arcanum.
The symbol of Venus shows us that the circle of the Spirit must be upon the cross of sex, meaning, sex must be under the control of the Spirit. When the symbol is inverted it represents that the Spirit is dominated by sex.
Hebrew Letter: Peh פ
Timetable: Eighth Hour of Apollonius: “The astral virtues of the elements, of the seeds of every genre.”
Transcendental Axiom: “Some men require signs in order to believe, others require wisdom in order to act, but the hopeful heart bears everything within its hopes.”
Forecasting Element: It predicts Intuition, support, illumination, births, brief afflictions and brief satisfactions, displeasures and reconciliations, privations; abandonments and benefits.
Arcanum 17 is The Star card. for some is the sign of renewal. it is a card that exudes feminine energy & harmony.
The stars in the night sky, a feminine figure kneeling down towards the earth, pouring streams of water into the pond and onto the earth. i don’t know why but at some point during the summer i wrote these notes in the form of a poem on my notes app. probably because at that point i found online a poetry book by d.h. lawrence titled birds, beasts and flowers and i was inspired by its vibes. inside there are poems about birds, flowers, trees, and animals, the most well-known being the one about the Snake, probably the best out of this collection (derrida has written about it). don’t know why I was thinking about figs. maybe because it was summer and I remembered a girl telling me that every fig contains traces of a dead wasp. google says it’s not 100% true (wasps go to specific fig trees) but it seemed so interesting this idea of a wasp corpse giving the nutrients needed for the creation of plump juicy fruit. a fruit that i can’t bring myself to eat despite its sweetness. is it because of its looks that signify too much sweetness? in his poem about figs d.h lawrence of course mentions that fig is a very feminine fruit because fig has pussy energy according to the Romans (he’s very sexist, i only want to appropriate the good parts of this book).
arcanum 17 served as an inspiration to the famous surrealist Andre Breton, who was a tarot connoisseur and he wrote a book with that title during a trip to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec in the months that followed the Normandy landings of 1944. for Breton there was hope again in the air. "the Star," as he said is “a symbol of hope and resurrection”.
Rachel Pollack (author/comic book writer/tarot expert) writes:
so the Arcanum 17 is energy getting back to a primitive state of existence, nameless energy. where words haven’t appeared yet and we’re placed back to the darkness of the cosmos gently waking up from the light of a new world. we’re getting back to that place of unshaped desire, chaotic and full of amniotic water; a cosmic womb. this happens to us all from time to time. a resurrection, a feeling that we can pour our energy & love into something new.
The star doesn’t seem like an action card. it’s got this equally deep primal energy as the Moon card, though the Moon has an even wilder side; it’s more vocal than this one. at first, we could say that it’s more about inner peace. this seemingly peaceful card insinuates this connection with our inner life & our environment. a reminder that a lot of times life happens out of the grid, out of social media. but that’s what makes it an action card in that way, the energy that it carries. for some, this energy could be manifested as an inner process only but i think that it could also manifest through creativity. the kind of creativity that doesn’t follow rules, like children painting, no restrictions, without thinking of an audience. it’s about creating without thinking you have to monetize your hobby.
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Breton in an interview later on says: “Arcanum 17 […] is none other than sensitivity as the seed of intellectual life”. what form would our intellectual life take if it stemmed from different kinds of knowledge? i feel like Breton’s sensitivity would be translated into something else today, like love maybe. https://www.academia.edu/9302765/Arcanum_17_with_Apertures_Grafted_to_the_End_by_Andre_Breton_and_Compulsive_Beauty_by_Hal_Foster
Fay look online internet Archive for the History of the Occult Tarot.
I like Tarot cards, they are colourful and interesting. My friend, in Sydney is a professional Tarot reader. She told me that the meaning also depends on the other cards surrounding it, ie when doing a reading. I often wondered what the deeper meaning of the Star was. Looking at the card, I wondered perhaps if it was about abandonment as she is naked and emptying out water.
Thanks for the interpretations you presented.