Tarotcard The Star and Jung’s Personae

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the Stars”

Oscar Wilde

The Star is the Tarot card that has number 17 in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. It is preceded by The Tower and followed by The Moon. The ‘mainstream’ meanings assigned to this card are generally:

  1. Hope
  2. Daring to be vulnerable
  3. Showing yourself as you really are, taking off your mask
  4. You are good just the way you are (and so is the other person)
  5. ”To be naked” (to have nothing left), to start over
  6. Afraid to show your true self, pretending to be something other than you are

The phrase “taking off your mask” and being “naked” almost always recurs in the descriptions. In this blog article I want to eloborate on these meanings; Apparently, we don’t think it’s good to wear a mask. We also like it when other people show themselves without a mask. But is that really a good thing? Of course, there is much more to it.

When you look at this tarotcard in a Jungian way and draw a comparison with the concept of Jung’s ‘Persona’, you will see that there are some nuances to be made. These nuances can make a big difference when The Star shows up in your readings.  

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Tarot and Alchemy: a short introduction

When you think of Alchemy, you usually think of the 16th and 17th centuries. You probably see the image of (old) men brewing all kinds of concoctions from which they try to make gold. The candlelight and the old books & manuscript add an occult touch to this image. You might think it is a bit silly, but many great discoveries have been made during these experiments! And nowadays,  we are actually able to create gold out of other commodities (although this is such an expensive process that the costs do not outweigh the benefits of the gold obtained). You could, however,  argue that these alchemists were the forerunners of our “modern” sciences (physics, chemistry, medical sciences).

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