The enlightened master, Shree Rajneesh, seems to have had this in mind when he said:
"The poet is in search. His search is for the beautiful. But beauty is nothing but truth glimpsed. Truth, when you just glimpse at it for a moment, appears as beauty. When truth is realized totally, then you come to know that beauty was only a function of truth. Wherever truth exists there exists beauty—it is the shadow of truth. When truth is seen through screens, it is beauty; when beauty is naked, it is truth."
Notice that Rajneesh refers to beauty as a function of Truth. This function is what we're witnessing in the suspended animation of The Star.
Nuith says:
"Help me, or warrior lord of Thebes in my unveiling before the Children of men!"
This "unveiling" is of The Priestess. The "Children of men" are none other than The Lovers, a card whose full title is “The Children of the Voice”. Lastly, the "warrior lord of Thebes" is The Chariot, and he holds the Graal open to the observer: this is the "unveiling" of Nuith. The Star is the call that beckons to the hero. Indeed, the blue canopy above the Charioteer represents the Queen of Space.
Nuith cries in the "Book of the Law":
"To me! To me!”
The path of Aleph is the path upon which we find the "Vision of God Face to Face" and, as no man may look upon the face of God and live, we're only allowed to hear His (Her) voice. For example, Moses didn't encounter God on Mount Sinai, but instead sees a burning bush out of which comes the voice of God. Saul is thrown down and blinded by a bright light out of which issued the voice of Christ. Lord Krishna, in the "Bhagavad-Gita", revealed Himself in his higher form to Arjuna "With innumerable mouths and eyes, faces too marvelous to stare at.” Anyone familiar with both the "Book of the Law" and the "Bhagavad-Gita" can easily recognize all three Thelemic deities in the figure of Krishna. What Krishna is doing for Arjuna, Nuith is doing for us (not only Crowley) in the first chapter of the "Book of the Law". She's not revealing Truth to us. Rather, she's preparing us so that we may become mature enough to contain it. She's seducing us to find it. Nuith is the Queen of Space in whom all-ness and nothingness converge. She's the absence of the self-contraction, dissolving into the suchness of things. In this card we don't see the goddess, for she can't be seen. We see instead an enticing invitation to The Lovers within each of us to come and dwell within the nondual state of The Priestess, the "Body of Nuith," which is a mystery of the thirteenth path on the Tree of Life (Gimel):
"The perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!”
-"Book of the Law", Ch.1, V.45.
Where is beauty? Is it in the eye of the beholder? For a great majority of people, beauty is associated with images of nature’s bounty. For others, beauty is found in youth. Very rarely does someone associate beauty with sadness, old age, or death. How many people are capable of seeing the beauty in old age? The cover of just about every magazine in the commercialized world proves that there are pitifully few who can answer this question in the affirmative!
The Star reminds us that God is always present in each and every moment of our lives. The problem is that our eyes have become incapable of seeing the miracle that's happening all around us. For children, the world is a magical place full of mystery and wonder, but as we grow older our eyes grow darker. The necessary knowledge we accumulate destroys the mystery of existence. But there exists in each of us a potential for reconnecting, a homecoming, and a day of Be With Us. But how? When? And where?
To stare into the eyes of someone you've known for many years as though you're seeing them for the first time; to wake up at dawn just to see the sun rise; to look upon existence as though you're the first ever to see it, and to look upon it as you would the face of your beloved: this is the highest message of The Star.
The star goddess holds two chalices---one gold, the other blue. The gold chalice contains images of things to come, hopes and fears about tomorrow. The blue chalice contains the past: memories, reflections, and conclusions; and the star goddess allows these to spill from her cup without resistance or grasping. In the figure of Nuith we see the beauty of the timeless present, the eternal Now. She washes her eyes and sees clearly. Crystal clear, actually, as the crystals in the card are a symbol of clarity.
The Zen Master, Hung Chin, writes:
"Silently and serenely one forgets all words. Clearly and vividly "that" appears before him. When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges; in its essence, one is clearly aware. Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness; full of wonder is this pure reflection. Dew and the moon, stars and streams, snow on pine trees and clouds hovering on the mountain peaks---from darkness they all become glowingly bright; from obscurity they all turn to resplendent light. Infinite wonder permeates this serenity; in this reflection all intentional efforts vanish. Serenity is the word of all teachings. The truth of serene-reflection is perfect and complete. Oh look! The hundred rivers flow in tumbling torrents to the great ocean!"
As an expression of the archetypal Feminine, the goddess of The Star is Aphrodite Pelagia, or "Ocean Born Aphrodite." Her association with archetypal Venus is affirmed by the seven-pointed star seen in three different places within the card. She's also the virginal Artemis, bathing nude. That she's a "virgin" (intact) goddess and can't be otherwise is rather obvious, for how can anything be added to or taken away from that which contains all? It's impossible! All one can do is participate. You can, however, consciously choose either to participate or remain in the delusion that you're separate. How do you consciously participate? By participating! But to participate you mustn't allow fear to defeat you. How to win over fear? It's simple (but not easy). In a word:
Love!
The Star exemplifies the path of devotional love: the dissolution of the self in the Beloved. Just as we found love, and the bliss of love, through the dissolution of the self through another person (The Lovers), in The Star we surrender the self to existence itself.
An anecdote:
The lover, spellbound and infatuated, walked boldly down the hall to the bedroom of his beloved and knocked on the door. "Who is it?" asked the voice from inside. "It is I," said the lover. "Go away," retorted the voice of his beloved, "For there is not enough room in these chambers for the both of us."
Heartbroken, the lover fled to the nearby forest to meditate. After a period of one week, the lover returned to his beloved and again knocked on her bedroom door. "Who is it?" asked the beloved. "It is YOU," the lover proclaimed confidently.
The door was opened immediately.
This is the same attitude we must have with respect to the Divine. We must feel it everywhere, inside and out, pervading the entire universe. In the "Book of the Law", Ch.1, V.27, we read:
"Then the priest answered and said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat: O Nuith, continuous one of Heaven, let it ever be thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!"
In the Thoth deck, the Hebrew letter Heh is attributed to The Star. She's opening a window through which we might glimpse eternity, inviting us to be reabsorbed into Godhead. She allows us no time to reason it out. The Queen of Space will not be hesitated over.
A story to illustrate the main point…
In a certain village, a beautiful young woman suddenly appeared out of the blue. Nobody knew where she came from. People gathered together, the whole town gathered---and all the young men, almost three hundred young men, wanted to marry this woman.
The woman said, "Look, I am one and you are three hundred. I can be married only to one, so I leave you with a task. I’ll come back tomorrow. The man who can repeat Buddha's Lotus Sutra, I’ll marry him.
So the young men rushed to their homes. They didn't eat, they didn't sleep, they practiced reciting the Sutra the whole night. Ten succeeded. The next morning the woman came back, and those ten men offe
red to recite the Sutra for her. The woman listened.
They succeeded.
She said, "Right, but I’m only one woman. How can I marry ten men? I’ll give you twenty-four hours again. The one who can also explain the meaning of the Lotus Sutra, him I’ll marry”.
The ten men rushed back home to meditate upon the meaning of the Sutra. The next day, only three men appeared. They had understood the meaning. So the woman said, "But the trouble remains. From three hundred to three is a great improvement, but again, I can’t marry three men---I can marry only one. So, twenty-four hours more…the one who embodies the Sutra, that’s the man I’ll marry.
The next day only one man came, and it was clear that he embodied the Sutra. The woman took him to her house outside the town. The man had never seen the house before; it was very beautiful, almost a dreamland. And the parents of the woman were standing at the gate. They received the young man and said, "We’re very happy".
The woman went inside, and the man chitchatted a little with the parents. Then the parents said, "You go. She must be waiting for you. This is her room." They showed him. He opened the door, but there was nobody there. It was an empty room. But there was a door entering into a large garden. So he looked---maybe she went into the garden. On the path there were footprints. He walked almost a mile. The garden ended and now he was standing on the bank of a beautiful river; but the woman wasn’t there. The footprints had also disappeared. The only thing left was the woman’s golden shoes. Now he was perplexed. He looked back, but there was no garden, no house, no parents, nothing; all had disappeared. He looked again. The shoes were gone, the river was gone. All that there was, was emptiness---and a great laughter. And he laughed too.
He got married!
Daniel Goleman, in his remarkable book, "The Meditative Mind"---Varieties of Meditative Experience”, speaks of this ecstatic merging of the individual psyche with the divine paradox of Emptiness and Fullness:
"What is so provocative about these moments is that we are out of personal control, and yet all seems harmonious and all right."
What a perfect description of the transpersonal state! Nuith is Agape fortifying Eros.
The shadow side of The Star pertains to wishful thinking and also vanity. I've written elsewhere that The Star heralds the escape from the egoistic confines of The Tower, so when I now tell you that The Star also represents one of the many ways one becomes locked inside The Tower, I may appear contradictory. The case in point: the "self-image."
The problem with self-image is that it can't possibly be an accurate representation of who we truly are. I've created the following anecdote to illustrate the point:
A modest young woman is out at the bar with some friends one Saturday night when suddenly a man comes up to her and tells her how beautiful he thinks she is. Flattered, she blushes and says thank you. She left the bar that night feeling a bit more confident than usual, so she decided next weekend to go out again, but this time alone. Again, while sitting alone at the bar, the same man came up to her with the same comment on her looks. Again she blushes, says "thank you," and returns home feeling quite good about herself.
The following weekend she decided once again to go out to the same bar. With her newfound sense of confidence, she puts on her favorite dress, does her makeup, and heads out to the bar. Like clockwork, the same man walks up to her and delivers his compliment, but this time she neither blushes nor says, "thank you." Instead, she arrogantly looks the other way and ignores him.
The next day, listening to a sermon at her local church, she glances to her left to find the very same man who had given her "looks" so much praise. When the service had ended, she walked up to him and said, "hello." The man looked at her with a rather confused look and said, "I'm sorry, do I know you?" The man couldn't remember her at all for the simple fact that he’d been drunk each time he saw her. At the time delirious from the effects of alcohol, the man probably would have thought the most hideous woman on earth attractive!
Needless to say, the woman's vanity was shattered immediately.
This is how it is:
We allow others to define us and then, should anything conflict with our established self-image, we suffer. The virtuous man refuses to believe that there is any vice within him, and whatever vicious qualities he finds are immediately explained away. Most of us, should we decide to make an honest list of our so-called virtues, would find that an equally long list could be made of our many vices. So it happens that whenever you find within yourself the opposite of that which you believe yourself to be, your self-image shatters like a stained-glass window.
Says Rajneesh:
"Anger is not an act. Rather, you are anger. Sex is not just an act; you are sex. Greed is not just an act; you are greed. Accepting this means throwing away the self-image. And we all have built beautiful self-images."
Kabbalistically speaking, the self-image is an issue pertaining to five paths:
•Nun
•Tzaddi
•Samekh
•Peh
•Ayin.
The path of Nun (Death) reveals the self-image as changeable and, therefore, non-essential. The path of Tzaddi (The Emperor) heralds the psychological "narcissism reflex," for the path of Tzaddi is defined as the capacity to perceive something outside of oneself. This refers to self-projection which, in turn, leads to self-protection, an aspect of the path of Peh (The Tower). This tendency may also lead to self-destruction, depending upon personality type. The path of Ayin (The Devil) conceals our self-deceptions as well as Shadow: those things we refuse to believe are part of us. And the path of Samekh (Art) contains the potential for integration. It must be remembered that the path of Tzaddi is more accurately associated with The Star when dealing with self-projection, and I see no reason why one shouldn’t imagine her on her traditional path when doing so. This self-projection isn't the same as that of The Lovers. In the latter card, the projection is onto another person, whereas in The Star it's simply how one perceives oneself, e.g., "fat," "thin," "beautiful," "ugly," and so forth. However, this brand of self-projection does occur in The Lovers on some level, as in the case of a parent trying to "live through" the child. A way out of self-projection and self-protection is through self-reflection. i.e., The Priestess, in combination with re-integration, i.e., Art.
The Star goddess favors actualized potential. For example, it's wonderful to dance; it's limiting, however, to become a dancer. To meditate is one of the most significant things in life; to become a meditator, however, is to no longer be meditative.
As we're told in the "Bhagavad-Gita":
"We have a right to our works, but not to the fruit of our works."
This statement reminds us that should we decide to do something, we should do it without any desire for reward.
Nuith seconds that motion:
For true will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."
-Book of the Law, Ch.1, v.44.
The Star is associated with zodiacal Aquarius, in which Saturn rules and Neptune is exalted. Saturn, as the setter of limits, may feel a tad bit uncomfortable with oceanic Neptune. Indeed, some modern-day astrologers associate Aquarius, not with Saturn, but with Uranus. Certainly Uranus is far more congenial to Neptune than Saturn could ever be! Neptune is Lord of Dreams, and Uranus---The Fool---is he who dances his way into ecstatic abandon, for he's none other than Dionysus. Furthermore, Nuith represents the illimitable cosmos which can't be divided. Saturn is, in this respect, her child. The Star could be said to embody the desire to return to the carefree state of The Fool whom, as Uranus, is also a "sky god."
One interesting connection of The Star to Saturn is revealed in The Universe. The Hebrew letter attributed to The Star is Heh, which means "window." Looking at The Universe we see the same naked goddess, virginal, ascending rather than descending, into heaven. Around her head is a halo which, on closer inspection, is really a reflection of light, as if someone flashed a
camera to capture the phenomenon. This reflection indicates the presence of glass---a window---and we can see where this is leading. I'm sure the reader can come up with many interesting interpretations for this, but I'd like to say that it represents our ability to see past our limited point of view; an escape from the confines of The Tower.
Another card associated with Uranus is Lust. As we now know, the Thelemic goddesses, Babalon (Lust) and Nuith (The Star), are manifestations of the immeasurable. The Fool is the primordial creative chaos, so we can safely say that Lust is an orgasmic tidal wave of creative ecstasy. The butterfly seen in both The Fool and The Star shows us that we can become transformed through channeling such intensity. We're being encouraged to look within to find where our patterns of holding are. This suppression-reflex can be compared to our ability to hold back urine throughout the night, even though we're basically unconscious.
On the Tree of Life, The Star occupies the path adjacent the path of The Lovers. That the formula of the Major Arcana is love should by now come as no surprise; love is one, despite its myriad forms of expression. Love is not lust or pride (Lust). Nor is it narcissism or attachment (The Lovers). Love isn't desire (The Star). Love isn't any of the lesser manifestations of these Trumps.
Predicting The Present Page 24