HOPE AS RESISTANCE

Image of hand holding The Star card Jerico Mandybur's Neo Tarot on a colourful hand painted background.

This Friday marks the beginning of Aquarius season. Personally, I’m an Aquarius moon (aloof humanitarians, unite!) and The Star is my “life path” card, so I thought some insights into the card and a ritual practice to welcome in this new energy were called for.

In my book, Neo Tarot: A Fresh Approach to Self-Care, Healing & Empowerment, the affirmation for The Star is “I have the power to heal and become a beacon of hope for others.” But why does Aquarius correspond with The Star in tarot? And why is The Star about “hope”?

“Hope is fragile. Precious. Hope catches the light, splitting the darkness. Revealing your destiny.” So says Mother Aughra.

The Star comes directly after The Tower, a card etched deep into our collective consciousness through stories like the Tower of Babel. The tower’s levelling represents the fall of ego, the forced elimination of edifice, the destruction of conceit, hubris, and the illusion of separation and hierarchy. When it seems like all else is lost, what have we got but our will to survive? Our stubborn persistence that it’s not the end? Our hope? And through what force but hope do we come to realise all that remains?

The figure in The Star is not a Pollyanna. They are a dogged survivor. They’re hope their resistance. When others might peek from their own (still standing for now) towers and grimace or wonder bemused at the gall—nakedness, the nothingness—of this figure, the water bearer themselves exist in a state of revelatory connectedness.

It’s only by losing everything that we realise how little we need. It’s only when all we thought we knew is exposed as fiction (as avidyā, Advaitins would say) that we’re cleansed and renewed by the truth of unity—the formless absolute that is the mind of God/dess—in all things.

And in a world of atomisation and individualism, centering one’s spiritual nourishment and vision for the world around collectivism, unity, and hope may mean being made a pariah. Defending those ideas strongly can even mean being thought of as a tactless eccentric (I relate). But if we can learn to embody the water bearer in the Star Card by practicing trust and hope with quiet confidence and by staying the course, we remember that we are all aspects of the same force, dreaming.

And that there is nothing to get attached to. As long as humanity can’t seem to grasp these concepts, The Star holds hope for us and pours forth a vision of unity, connection, and oneness onto the world. This is their gift.

A powerful example of The Star in popular culture, for me, is the uncomplicated, resolutely hopeful truth of Nina Simone’s “I Got Life”.

A Ritual for The Star

Start by lighting a candle and placing a fire-safe dish next to it. Then pull your favourite Star card from your deck/s and begin to connect with it. Do this in whatever way feels good to you—I recommend displaying it in front of you at eye level and simply breathing mindfully while slowly taking in all the colours and images within the card.

Now, watch the above performance again. Then, picking up a pen and paper, let the hurt or frustrated part of you (only to whatever level you’re comfortable and resourced to do so) flow through your pen. What don’t you have? List the objects, trophies, assets, and situations you don’t have and wish you did. List the “things” you did have and lost. For example, you might like to write “I don’t have a partner, I don’t have a good credit score, I don’t have a Range Rover” etc.

Let this be a cathartic process, where you allow yourself to simply audit from the position of a neutral witness: what don’t you have? Once you feel complete in your list, fold it up and use your candle to burn it and place it in your fire-safe dish. Watch it burn. Exhale and imagine release your emotional bonds to these things.

But wait, you’re not finished!! Head on over to ☆THE DREAMER☆ to get the ritual in full.

This is a short excerpt from the latest edition of ☆THE DREAMER☆, my free newsletter and online space dedicated to exploring creativity, magic, the occult, neurodiversity, and mental health. Read more from this article at the link below!

Xo Jerico

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