The Star

Correspondences

Number

XVII

Hebrew letter

צ Tzaddi, “Fish-hook” (value 90)

Attribution

♒︎ Aquarius

Golden Dawn title

The Daughter of the Firmament; the Dweller between the Waters

Thoth

The Star (Crowley moves this card to Heh; see below)

Marseille

L’Étoile

Case’s key word

Revelation (meditation)

Path on the Tree

The 28th path, joining Netzach and Yesod

The letter

Tzaddi, the fish-hook, draws up what is hidden in the waters. The word tzaddik, the righteous one, comes from the same root, and the Tzaddik is also the name of Yesod. Its ordinary value is 90 and its final form (ץ) 900. Case gives it the faculty of meditation (imagination in some lists): the hook that catches the fish of insight in the deep.

On the Tree

The 28th path joins Netzach to Yesod: the feelings of Venus brought into the astral images of the Moon. In the Philosophus grade the candidate passes along it.

The Star in the Waite deck

Smith’s Star is a naked woman kneeling by a pool, one foot on the water and one on land, pouring water from two jugs, one into the pool and one onto the land, where it runs off in five streams. Above her shine a great eight-pointed star and seven smaller ones; an ibis sits in a tree behind. Case’s key word is revelation (or meditation): the quiet hope that follows the Tower’s destruction.

Crowley’s exchange

Because “Tzaddi is not the Star” (The Book of the Law I:57), Crowley gave the Star to Heh and the Emperor to Tzaddi. On his Tree the 28th path carries the Emperor, and the 15th the Star. The Golden Dawn, Waite and Case keep the Star here.

The Star in the Thoth deck

Harris’s Star is Nuit, the night sky of The Book of the Law, pouring the waters of immortality from a golden and a silver cup onto her own head and onto the earth. Behind her shines the seven-pointed star of Babalon; a great celestial globe spirals; crystals and roses fill the lower part of the card. Crowley’s Star is the promise of the new aeon: “every man and every woman is a star.”