I‘ve been meaning to write a post about the Major Arcana card Strength – the card that first lured me to the Tarot. Strength shows a wonderful lion, whose wild, masculine strength is tamed, or at least balanced, by the softer more feminine strength of his beautiful, clever companion. They have been much on my mind and I’d planned to write my first Tarot blog post about them, but as is the way with Tarot, I’ve been hijacked by another card, The Star.
The Star herself has always been an alluring character, offering us hope –
‘it’s alright, everything will be ok’,
‘the worse of it is over now’,
‘feel the blessed light of the stars upon you’,
‘it’s your time now for good things to come’,
‘you are blessed’.
The Star is also known as The Hope Card, arguably one of the most positive cards in the Tarot deck. I’m always happy to see her in a Tarot Spread.
So how did The Star come to hijack me? Well, I’d been to visit my elderly mother. She has dementia and whilst life can be a little stressful, it’s certainly interesting. Driving back down a long, steep and winding hill I was suddenly hit with a feeling of deep and utter despair. I felt as if a large receptacle of dense, despair had lodged itself in my stomach and it felt so dark and burdensome. The feeling was very intense and all-consuming, although it probably only lasted no more than a second or two. Before I had time to work out 
where this feeling came from, I next felt as if a similarly large sized jar of pure joy now was placed in my stomach. This joy was wonderful, similarly intense and more than countered the depths of despair I had just experienced. It felt so good and amazingly healing.
I realised that even when life becomes really bad, there is always hope. Obvious, I know, but easy to forget when at rock-bottom. Every time we feel despair within us, we must remember that we have still the capacity for joy and love – we just need to have that in focus to start the journey back towards it. Hang on, there’s always hope. Hope is our bridge to joy. And then The Star card came to mind and that’s how she hijacked me. I saw her mixing her two pots, the same pots that were within me, adding love and joy to the darkness that we might feel. Still driving along, I felt her turn to me with a knowing look and I knew that I had to write about her message.
It’s also the funny thing about the Universe, the Tarot and life in general. We sometimes receive profound messages at the most random of times, we just need to recognise them when they come. These messages might come out of the mouths of babes, they might be on an advertising billboard or in the texts of a book we are reading. And, what’s more these messages can offer us hope when we need it. Which, ladies and gentlemen, brings me back to The Star card. If you happen to be reading this and you are at an emotional low, then this message is for you. Have hope and know that you will experience love and joy again. Hang on in there. Go out and look at the stars. Pick one that shines brighter than the others and feel its healing energy upon you, lighting the way forward.
The images of The Star featured above are from left to right and clockwise; The Feng Shui Tarot, Touchstone Tarot, Shapeshifter Tarot, The Spiral Tarot, Rider Waite Tarot and The Bohemian Cats Tarot decks.