Here we find Nuit / Nuith / Nut, the Goddess of Night in her manifest (that is, physical) form. We studied this figure in our exploration of the Aeon card, which featured Nuit in her “formless form,” back-bending in infinite space over Horus. That tension between form and formlessness feels appropriate for the major arcana card that corresponds to Aquarius: a sign of the least embodied element (air), ruled by Saturn, who deals in structure.
As in the Rider-Waite-Smith rendition of the card, the sign Aquarius arrives in the shape of the water bearer: the figures in both decks occupied in the labour of pouring. In the R.W.S. version, the woman kneels with one foot on the earth, the other under-water, implying a bridge between form and formlessness, or boundaries and boundaryless-ness. I’ll come back to this bridge, for it captures something of the essence of Aquarius.
Crowley linked this card to the Hebrew letter heh, which means window. As the author at Esoteric Meanings points out, a window’s main function is to transfer light: like the stars (or our stars, the sun.) When considering the sign of Aquarius, I am taken with how light might also represent knowledge or “enlightenment.”
The R.W.S. version of this card features an eight pointed star, which is mythologically associated with the Star of Ishtar or Inanna (and thereby Venus.) This makes sense for an astrologer, because we know planetary Venus draws her own star around the ecliptic in eight year cycles. Crowley’s star has seven points, which is known as the Elven or Fairy star (and used as a symbol of the A.A, the inner order of the O.T.O., of which Crowley was one of the most famous members.) Again, as an astrologer, I associate seven with the planet Saturn, the 7th “wandering star” counted in traditional astrology. Of course, we also count his cycle in seven year increments, or Saturn squares. Interestingly, Crowley links the seven-pointed star to Venus as well, as Venus rules the 7th sphere on the Tree of Life: Netzach.
This blurring between Venus and Saturn feels significant, as it catches on the inherent tension of this card, one of the most aesthetically “feminine” and nocturnal in the deck, though it correlates to a traditionally “masculine” and diurnal sign. In his Book of Thoth, Crowley describes the water in the background of this card as the “great sea of Binah,” the 3rd sphere on the Tree of Life, which relates to intuitive understanding, contemplation, and the womb that gives shape to the spirit of God. What is the planet we associate with this sphere? None other than Saturn.
That Saturn might be considered a feminine planet is not a new concept in astrology. In the Hellenistic text, Carmen Astrologicum, Dorotheus says: “…the feminine planets are Saturn, Venus and the Moon, the masculine ones are the Sun, Jupiter, and Mars.” Though Dorotheus is the only astrologer who asserts the femininity of Saturn (to my knowledge), the notion does offer a pleasing symmetry between the nocturnal / diurnal and masculine / feminine planets. For more information on the theory of Saturn as a feminine planet, and particularly Saturn as Crone, check out Charles Obert’s excellent discussion on the subject at Student of Astrology.
This polarity between diurnal and nocturnal is further represented on the card between the gold and silver chalices: the former, solar, the latter lunar, or even Saturnian. Indeed, this imagery calls to mind the axis between sun-ruled Leo and his opposite: wintry, Saturn-ruled Aquarius. As suggested earlier, there is an inherently bridging quality in the archetype of Aquarius. Many Aquarians I know take for granted the assumption (radical for some) that we should share, cooperate, freely exchange our efforts and our ideas. On the one hand, Aquarius is independent, free-spirited, intellectually expansive, as represented by the Air element. On the other hand, Aquarius is fixed in belief, tethered to logic, if their own, ingeniously innovated. This sign is the water-bearer, but not water. Aquarius conveys the water of knowledge in the Saturn structure of two vessels or cups.
In his Book of Thoth, Crowley suggests that to understand this card, one must understand the first chapter of the Book of the Law, which chronicles the manifesting of Nuit and her masculine counterpart, Hadit. Several lines from this text underline the divinity and uniqueness in all of us, another egalitarian (and Aquarian) concept. Crowley writes: “every man and every woman is a star,” and later: “For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.” In the mouth of Nuit, Crowley continues: “I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.”
In addition to heh, The Star has been linked to the Hebrew letter tzaddi, which means fish hook. Traditionally, tzaddi has also been assigned to the Emperor, and the two cards appear interchangeable in the Golden Dawn list of correspondences. In The Law is For All, Crowley writes: I see no harm in revealing the mystery of Tzaddi to ‘the wise’; others will hardly understand my explanations. Tzaddi is the letter of The Emperor, the Trump IV, and He is the Star, the Trump XVII. Aquarius and Aries are therefore counterchanged, revolving on the pivot of Pisces, just as, in the Trumps VIII and XI, Leo and Libra do about Virgo. This last revelation makes our Tarot attributions sublimely, perfectly, flawlessly symmetrical.
I won’t spend more on the Golden Dawn correspondences between the Hebrew letters and the tarot keys, but again I find it worth pausing on, this symmetry and swapping between genders: The Star for the Emperor; the Goddess of Night as Aquarius; the womb, Binah, as Saturn. It does feel appropriately Aquarian, this defying of convention, at once rigid in its logic and contra-normative.
Angeles Arrien’s description for The Star quotes Heidegger, who says: “a person is not a thing or a process, but an opening through which the Absolute can manifest.” Arrien elaborates on this sentiment: “the Star card reminds us that each of us is an opening for light, or a gateway through which the Absolute can manifest.” That is God, or divinity, or Spirit.
If any sign recognizes the divinity in all of us, and the collective light that pools when we work together, it is Aquarius. And maybe that contributes to the feminine thread of Saturn: the wise woman goddess who sees herself reflected in you, the womb as a pliant container for life, but ultimately, still a structure.
References:
Liber AL vel Legis by Aleister Crowley
The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley
The Law is For All by Aleister Crowley
Student of Astrology by Charles Obert