EPISODE 20: THE STAR
RUN TIME: 59’ 55’’
DATE: 12/09/2022
[00:00:00 Soft piano chords accompanied by light percussion, interspersed with a gentle harp and electric guitar plucking in the background. Music plays and overlaps with Sarah’s introduction.]
[00:00:03] Sarah Cargill: Welcome to Tarot for the End of Times. A podcast where we utilize the tarot as a tool to navigate through epochs of deep change.
My name is Sarah Cargill. I’m an artist, cultural worker, and your host throughout the duration of this series.
In each episode, I’ll take a look at the archetypal figures presented in the Major Arcana from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck to discuss what each card has to say about navigating through cycles of change, chaos, and instability.
Throughout each episode, I’ll offer reflection questions and suggestions for exercises that might support you in inviting the energy and wisdom of these archetypes into your daily life and practice.
If you’d like to support this podcast and the person who makes it, you can make a monthly donation through my page on anchor.fm. Your generous act of community care and reciprocity helps me to access the resources I need to make projects like this possible and sustainable. You can also support this work by sharing this podcast with your friends and loved ones and, most importantly, by tuning in. Thanks for joining me.
[00:01:28 Music fades, introduction ends]
[00:01:31]
Hi there, welcome back. I know that here in the U.S. the holiday season is in full swing, and a lot of us, including myself, have complicated relationships to this time of year, so I wanted to offer something to keep you company while you do what you gotta do to, you know, take care of yourself and uh, I dunno, activate that parasympathetic nervous system. I know that I am.
Over on instagram I’ve been sharing some thoughts on spiritual co-regulation, so go ahead and check me out there if you wanna learn more about that, but also, along those lines, I wanted to offer this next episode as a tool for spiritual co-regulation as you move through this incredibly charged time of year. As a quick reminder, don’t forget to tag @snakeskin.tarot, not my personal IG account, when sharing this work with others. It just helps me keep things separate, you know? And it’s also a super simple but pretty impactful way to directly support my budding business. As an aside, it is also a space where I’m actively trying to get out of my own way [chortles] and get over my shit around being online, and I really appreciate the opportunity to practice trying in public with you all as my witnesses. So I’d love for you to join me there in that space where we can stay connected between podcast episodes. I appreciate y’all very, very much and am sending you all my love as we wrap up the end of 2022.
In stark contrast to what we see happen here in these internet streets, you all are such a thoughtful, imaginative, astute, liberation-minded and open-hearted collective of people that I have had the great pleasure of building actual community with over the last few years. While I totally recognize the parasocial aspects of this exchange, this particular container, for me, also feels like actual, tangible community. Like, you’re not just a theoretical mass of people I talk at, so... You have faces and names and stories and ideas and dreams and I am so grateful that is a place where we get to meet each other and share them. Thank you for witnessing me in my practice, and thank you for letting me witness you in yours. Without further ado, let me introduce you now to The Star.
[00:04:23 Gentle transition music plays. Light harp and piano chords accompanied by sparse bass beats.]
Roses. Cinnamon. Cardamom. A plume of perfume rises from the ground beneath her, rousing the Star from an unconscious sleep. Warm, nostalgic, heady, notes pluck on heartstrings that sound like home; like raucous laughter amongst familial femmes; like the sound of grandmothers and aunties gossiping over cut fruit; like the gasp of first love. An anchor. An alarm. Wake up! You can’t stay here.
[00:05:22]
A translucent veil of silvery particulate matter silently rains from the sky, obscuring the moonlight. The Star gently pivots her aching torso, to take in her immediate surroundings - an eerily serene hellscape, blanketed in the ash of a once-towering inferno, now just a mere memory. Combustion. Fire. That Original Magick. That’s what it took to return everything back to where it belongs. Back to soil. Back to ether. Back to Spirit. The ticket to your new life is the cost of your old one, and proof of purchase is in your empty hands.
Searching for the source of the haunting scent, The Star casts her gaze downward and finds fistfuls of dried rose petals, cinnamon sticks, and cardamom seeds sewn into her robe, tucked away in various compartments sewn into her robe. Her pockets and sleeves rustle from within, mimicking the sounds of dry, worn, loving hands that, even amidst the chaos, ensured that she, too, was accounted for. Of all the things to survive such a wreckage! She gratefully accepts the sustenance. Remnants of care left behind in the aftermath of crisis lined the depths of her pockets, staining her hands with the perfume of kinship that whispers: Wake up. You can’t stay here. So come and find us.
A rush of memories surge through her meridians, activating dormant pockets of energy - just enough to get her moving. A gust of wind nudges her forward and she takes a step to steady her balance. A familiar voice from within then whispers, “hey, this way,” as she takes another tentative step, listening outwardly for other clues that might confirm the gentle suggestion. Her senses pick up on the sound of water rushing in the distance, lifting another memory from the vaults of her psyche: Right. Where there is water, there is life. And through remembrance she finds a way forward, leaving a trail of footsteps and rose petals in the soft sheet of chalky gray ash, pointing the way out for the next femme who has lost everything. Hey, we keep us safe, you know. Every small act of care actually matters.
Armed with clues, memory, and the love of those who came before her, The Star makes her way into the wilderness, in search of life. As the soil beneath her feet slowly transitions back to a more familiar, earthen texture, each step kicks up its scent - freshly turned, damp, alive. She grips the dirt between wiggling toes, quietly celebrating the miracle of her homecoming.
Suddenly, her one-person parade is halted by the prick of a small thorn on the sole of her right foot. She pauses to examine the puncture, leaning against an old tree for support as she pulls the thorn from her heel. Tiny beads of blood bubble up to the surface, and The Star offers droplets from her own wellspring back to the land. A small price to pay for new beginnings.
Still leaning against the old tree, she remembers: RIGHT. Where there are thorns, there are flowers. She promptly scans the area with all of her available senses to locate the source and, soon enough, discovers a patch of rose bushes budding in the distance. She lands in front of a wild rose bush, fragrant with the lush, bold scent of unencumbered bloom. “What it must be like,” she wonders, “to bloom so freely”… Shaking off the last bits of blood that dangle from the edge of her heel, she plucks a few petals, she tears the hem of her robe and neatly stacks silky red discs in the palm of her hand. She then gently places them on the strip of fabric and lowers her heel, carefully aligning the rose petals with her puncture wound. She then secures her makeshift bandage with a series of knots passed down to her from women and femmes who’ve learned how to recover mid-harvest while gathering medicines from hidden places. She then lifts her foot, rotating her ankle to examine her handiwork. Satisfied, she continues on.
[00:10:59]
There are no distinguishable paths laid in a wilderness such as this, but The Star remembers to trust the guidance of trees. She weaves through the woodland, taking her time to glide icy fingertips over peeling bark, stopping occasionally to admire her ancient friends as she wonders, damn, how many lifetimes - how many deaths, how many forest fires it took for them to become so magnificent. She daydreams as the trees rustle in the occasional gust of wind that breaks through the canopy, whispering back stories and carefully kept wishes between shimmies.
Another gust of wind makes its way directly to The Star, grazing the nape of her neck, pulling goosebumps to the surface. A familiar scent crawls its way to her from all directions, alerting her to the changes in her environment. The moon, no longer obstructed by nebulous ash, casts a cool, white light that seeps through the canopy, spilling luminescent nectar onto the forest floor. Her surroundings begin to shimmer, trembling under the moon’s sweetness. The light reveals what her eyes couldn’t perceive in the darkness - tiny, star-shaped buds sprouting from the tips of delicate branches. “Ooooh,” she whispers, “cinnamon,” as if reciting the secret words to a long-forgotten spell as she reaches into her pockets to pull out a handful of cinnamon sticks. She repeats the incantation with exhilaration, rushing to the nearest tree to skate ecstatic fingers over raw patches of freshly harvested bark. Finally. Yes. The second rest stop. Two out of three.
She places her bundle of cinnamon sticks on the protruding roots of a nearby tree, knowing she won’t be the last to pass by this hidden grove. She lifts her last cinnamon stick up to her mouth, wrapping her lips around the cylinder to moisten its tip and release the piquant heat. The spice dilates her blood vessels, bringing warmth back to the surface of her skin. She awaits a signal. A few moments pass and the moon, finally, gives her the go-ahead. “Alright, this way,” she says.
The sound of rushing water gradually amplifies and the ground beneath The Star’s feet moistens, affording her with a small luxury for aching limbs and sore feet. A short distance away, snippets of hushed laughter gently tinkle like ghostly silver bells. In an instant, the faint scent of boiling cardamom makes its way to her. A mere kiss on the nose softens the hardened edges of her stubborn, weary heart, and with renewed hope, The Star advances, following the music.
[00:14:36]
The sound of rushing water eventually reaches its peak and, before she knew it, The Star was ankle-deep in the path of a stream. Her movement liquifies as she glides her feet across slick river rocks, occasionally gripping the mud with her toes for stability. The water quickly reaches her calves, then her thighs. It eventually reaches her waist, then her neck until, finally, she loses grip of the ground beneath her altogether and she starts to float. The water, now still, yields the spotlight - there’s a shift in the environment’s sonic texture. What was once a distant tinkle in the wind unfolds into a robust clamor - The sounds of laughter, chatter, crackling fire logs, and roiling vats of water grow louder as The Star paddles her way to shore.
Unbeknownst to The Star, a stealthy night watcher, obscured by tall stalks of bulrush, takes her cue and mimics a bird call to alert the camp. The camp grows quiet until the silence is broken: “Hey, y’all! She’s over there!”
A flurry of tightly orchestrated movement erupts as some members of the camp prepare for The Star’s arrival. Still paddling to shore, The Star watches a striking team of femmes across all genders and spectrums of kinship - grannies, mamas, aunties, auntcles, homies, siblings and niblings - as they rush to the shoreline, demarcating the space with steaming terracotta jugs, each filled with fresh water boiled with generous, unmeasured fistfuls of cardamom. The steam casts a silvery haze that blankets the surface of the pond, reminding The Star of what she just managed to survive. A few volunteers congregate by the water. Some lift the terracotta jugs above their heads and lower them gently onto their crowns, while others fill cross-body leather sachets with fresh clay that coated the edge of the shoreline. They find their formation, filing out in a single line, wading through water and a thicket of aquatic plants to make their way towards The Star. “You’re almost there, baby,” they murmur, overlapping in repetition. “You’re almost there, baby.” A chorus to the world’s shortest prayer - “you got this.”
Digging deep for one last push, The Star paddled with all that she had left, until she felt the tips of her toes graze the mud once again. She lowers her legs and stands upright, digging her digits back into the clay as she releases a sigh. Then, without missing a beat, the femmes break form and flock to their beloved. Waist-deep in pond water, they use their bodies to cast a tight circle around The Star. Saturated in water, blood, tears, and remnants of an old life well-lived, her robe cleaves to her bare skin as she struggles to slip off the weight of her past. One by one, her treasured beloveds glide forward to help peel off her tattered second skin as others slather freshly harvested clay onto her face, then her neck, then her shoulders, chest, and back. As the clay dries, a pair of helpers break from the circle to dispose of the robe. An elder catches The Star’s eyes as they dart with nervousness, and so she cups her face with muddy palms to meet her gaze, as if to say, “we have something better for you.” And so, placing forehead against forehead, breath against breath, spirit resting against spirit, warm, spiced water washes over them as they gazed in awe at the God they witnessed in each other.
[00:19:38 Gentle transition music plays. Light harp and piano chords accompanied by sparse bass beats.]
The Star card in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck depicts the Aquarian archetype as a nude, golden-haired person, traditionally presumed to be a woman, kneeling by a pool of water or a pond in a lush, open field. She hovers over the body of water with a lowered gaze, reflecting on the miracle of her survival. She kneels on dry land with one leg while her other foot rests on the surface of the water. Similarly to how Aquarian magic has this uncanny ability to dress woo in a heaping dollop of searing logic, this symbolic juxtaposition of land and water represents the archetype’s ability to ground her intuitive and spiritual nudges in practicality and logic. The Aquarian energy of this archetype offers a simple yet potent reminder about community care in the aftermath of crisis - caring for yourself is a critical step towards caring for others, and caring for others is a necessary step toward extending care to yourself.
The Star carries two jugs filled with water, pouring libation into the pond with one hand while pouring libation onto the land with the other, again, drawing our attention to this juxtaposition between land and water. This air sign archetype bridges space between the collective consciousness (as represented by the pool of water) and our immediate, material reality (as represented by the land she kneels on), teaching us what it means to engage the full spectrum of our humanity that exists between “me” and “we”.
The imagery here invokes the memory of an archetype we met earlier in the series: Temperance. Like Temperance, The Star card is about integration. It’s about realignment, and finding attunement with your divine humanity. There are a total of 8 stars illustrated on this card - 7 small stars to represent the 7 chakras or energetic centers coming into alignment, and one giant star in the center to represent the truth of one’s essence and the essence of one’s truth.
The energy of The Star, in a word, offers up that Uranian spark to reignite our inner fire of hope. That hope is critical because it propels us to integrate all of the experiences we’ve reaped from Tower Season into the totality of our lived experience and perspective. If Tower Season shatters the neat containers that compartmentalize the messier, stickier, trickier parts of ourselves, then The Star offers an electric jolt of hope that awakens us from the stupor of survival, allowing us the chance to take up space by boldly claiming every single part of you that has brought you to this moment of awe as you to soften into a new form. What distinguishes these archetypes from each other is that, while Temperance ushers in integration through balance and moderation, The Star realigns us front the inside out by coaxing us to give voice to unsung wishes and soft-spoken dreams that were tucked tightly under our tongues in the name of safety.
Ubiquitously known as the “wish fulfillment card”, this archetype leaves us with the gifts of epiphany and the experience of Oneness. It is fleeting but it is REAL. Tilting on the Leo/Aquarius axis, The Star traverses that no-man’s land between “I” and “We”, shadow and light, where the seed of integration germinates. The Star offers an opportunity to welcome back the parts of you that were banished and exiled to the deep recesses of your psyche in the name of survival. And I get it. I get it, I get it, I get it. But the magic of integration is that once you begin to lift the veil that keeps you from you, you then begin to discover that this very veil can also be lifted from the space that separates you from others, if you so choose, of course. And if you choose to lift that veil, you’ll then begin to discover that, well shit, you’re not so separate from others. And so The Star is where the discipline of hope finally demonstrates its virtue and its grace. Can we get an “amen”? [Laughs]
[00:25:39]
In the upright position, The Star card triggers our dormant zest for life, bringing us back from the ashes of a shattered facade. It represents renewed hope, a spiritual and emotional homecoming, and a moment when your most authentic self shines through as you shed the burden of old, habitual, limiting beliefs. This card indicates the culmination of all the brave and painful choices you had to make in order for you to finally choose yourself, instead of your baggage. While I certainly don’t deny the unrelenting brutality of Tower Seasons, what I also know to be true is that there ain’t nothin’ like knowing what you’re made of, and I, personally, would not trade that self knowledge for anything.
As part of my research for this episode, I’ve been reading a book by a person named Meggan Watterson called “Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet”. And y’all, I frequently get requests for book recommendations and, full stop, this book is setting my heart on fire in, like, the best way. Now, full transparency, I am one of the few people out there who has not directly experienced religious trauma in my family of origin. Aside from, you know, generally being impacted by fundamentalist Christian cultural and religious hegemony as both just a person existing in this world and as a spiritual care practitioner whose work is heavily informed by Hoodoo and other diasporically specific practices, I, personally, have not been exposed to the kind of religious trauma that I’ve heard many people in my community grapple with. You know, I don’t wanna overstep here, so without doing that, without overstepping as someone who doesn’t identify as Christian and who cannot speak to that experience or from that perspective, keeping that in mind, I do still feel like this book does offer a lot of meaningful research to help us just demystify the patriarchal underpinnings of canonical Christian scripture and, specifically, how the process of canonization itself was a way to legitimize misogyny. I wanna add that while I do believe that some of the more… I guess, like, subtly expressed sentiments around sex work, I feel like, could be re-examined and reworked - namely because, personally, I DO consider sex work to be a kind of sacred, holy work, and my hope is that if a new edition comes out, that perspective could be taken into consideration - but in either case, this book was pretty instrumental in grounding this episode in the appropriate hermeneutical framework, by which I mean the framework through which we read and interpret sacred text. “Hermeneutics” is a word I picked up from this book, too, so… anyway. I wanna to continue this episode with a few inserts from the book.
On a broader level, I also wanted to take this moment to insert an alternative spiritual discourse around Christianity as we, at least here in the U.S., continue to come to grips with the U.S. Pluto Return and the subsequent socio-political consequences generated by the ongoing weaponization of and escalated violence invoked by fundamentalist Christian rhetoric. Best believe that the two are related, right? This is a moment where I implore all of us to stay engaged and continue to challenge any kind of dogma that seeks to diminish the humanity of others. My intention with this podcast is to bring Spirit into this liberation work, precisely because that’s what makes it sustainable for me. And that is the end of my disclaimer [laughs]. Moving on.
[00:30:44]
On page 22 of Watterson’s book, she writes, “you have to die all the way before you can resurrect.” And this is what we experience when moving from The Tower to The Star. There is an intimate bond between death and birth that demands a certain level of respect. This is a package deal - just like love and grief, you can’t have one without the other - and The Star is an archetype that can only deliver our wishes to fruition once we fully accept that. This card teaches us about the intimate relationship between beginnings and endings, and through this revelation, we encounter the miracle of our own infinity.
So, what’s love got to do with all this? Love is the infinite essence, and it is THAT love, that ESSENCE, that bridges the gap that separates “me” from “we”, right? That’s the essence that’s being depicted through the image of the giant star in this card. That love is what also binds our inherent humanity with our divinity. That love is the glue. By activating that love, we become that much more human and that much more divine, and by integrating our inherent humanity with our inherent divinity, or, as Watterson states, by “merging the ego with the soul,” we partake in the process of uncovering our inherent wholeness. Starting over, therefore, is not necessarily about starting from zero. It’s not a “clean slate” and I encourage us to really examine this idea of “clean state”/”blank slate”/”purity”, right? Like…[makes disapproving sound], as an aside. But anyway, it is not a clean slate, but rather, The Star offers us a moment of clarity, of remembrance that draws your awareness to the infinity that lives within, to the love that lives within, to what’s been true all along. THAT is what The Star shines its light on.
Gospel of Mary, Chapter 3, verses 1-3. It reads: “Then Peter said to him, ‘You [as in Jesus] have been explaining every topic to us; tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?’ The Savior replied, “There is no such thing as sin.” WHAT?! [laughs in disbelief] What? Like…I can see why the patriarchy tried to destroy and delegitimize this scripture, like, that was probably too much for them [chortles]. But what does all this mean?!
Watterson goes on to explain that according to the Gospel of Mary, “there’s nothing inherently sinful about the body, sex, or sexuality. Being human isn’t a punishment, or something we need to endure or transcend. Being human is the whole point…We are this body and, yes, all the raging humanity it demands. And also, we are this soul. Both.” Watterson continues later on in the book to anchor us in a profoundly refreshing perspective about what sin is and what it isn’t. She continues to write: “Sin in Mary’s gospel is not about a long list of moral or religious laws; it’s not about wrong action. Sin is simply forgetting the truth and reality of the soul - and then acting from that forgetful state… sin is something we produce within ourselves when we misunderstand the truth of who we are… Sin comes from forgetting, and is remedied by simply remembering that messy truth that we are both soul and ego.”
[00:35:21]
Sin is, therefore, not about the ways in which we act out some kind of inherent rottenness - we are not born WRONG - sin is what happens when we act from that place of forgetfulness or inner dividedness. The Tower, as disruptive as it is, primes us for The Star by making us confront our own forgetfulness so that we can remember who we are at our core, contradictions and all. The Star, therefore, isn’t about salvation from the grips of The Tower, but about remembrance, and it’s that remembrance that activates the portal where the fully human self and the fully divine self can merge.
Let’s take a closer look at the numerology of this card. Just as there are a total of 8 stars depicted on the card, The Star, as the 17th archetype of the Major Arcana series, is vibrationally matched to the number 8. When turned on its side, the number 8 looks a whole lot like the symbol for infinity, which is a symbol that we encounter with the 8th Major Arcana, the Strength Card. So already, we can see that there’s a relationship that’s established between these two archetypes. Namely, we’re looking at the Leo/Aquarius axis here. If The Star card is governed by Aquarius, then its natural counterpart, in my opinion, is the Strength card. You know, we could also make the argument that The Sun card acts as the natural counterpart to The Star, both astrologically and numerologically, and while I don’t disagree, we’re simply not there yet so… bear with me here.
The story that accompanies today’s episode unfurled in my consciousness after reading about the early Christian Saint, Thecla, in the section in Watterson’s book titled “The Girl Who Baptized Herself”. I want to talk about this Leo/Aquarius axis, but I want to set it up first with the story of Thecla, the 17-yr-old priestess who radically defied patriarchal violence with love.
In the time shortly after Christ’s crucifixion, Christinanity was not only taboo, it was illegal. This context alone gives us a pretty good idea of what was at stake for those like Paul the Apostle, for example, and Thecla, specifically, who dared to learn about and spread the teachings of Christ as not just a young woman, but a young unmarried woman. Which, you know, is a big deal for reasons that we’ll get into in a second.
One day, Paul makes a stop at a local small village to speak about his adventures with Christ and catches the attention of Thecla, a young noblewoman with plans to marry, who hears him through her bedroom window. Paul’s stories and teachings set Thecla’s soul on fire, and she refused to leave her post for three days and nights so as not to miss a word.
This sudden onset of passion had both Thecla’s fiance and mother PRESSED, okay? And it definitely didn’t help that Thecla was now making plans to get the fuck out of this teenage bride situation to lead a life that she could authentically call her own. Both her fiance and her mother, threatened by her streak of independence and seemingly sudden awakening, decide to let their local politician know about what the fuck Paul’s been up to in their village, stating that he was a magician who was persuading young women to ditch their to-be husbands for God - in otherwords, persuading them not to marry. Once word gets out, Paul is arrested and incarcerated.
[00:39:25]
Upon learning about Paul’s imprisonment, Thecla decides to pay him a visit. She leaves her home in the middle of the night and, when she arrives at the place where Paul is imprisoned, she strips herself of her jewelry and other valuable personals that reminded her of the life she’s trying to escape, and presents the items as a “offering” *cough, cough, a BRIBE* to the prison guards who keep watch. She’s then granted admission and, for the rest of the evening, she sits in devotional quietude at Paul’s feet.
Word about Thecla’s scandalous midnight visit makes its rounds in the village, and both Thecla’s mother and fiance are just pissed to no end. In a fit of disproportionate rage, Thecla’s fiance and mother betray her yet again by ratting her and Paul out, this time, with the intention to permanently end this. Her mother makes the suggestion that, as punishment for defying the law of her soon-to-be husband, Thecla should be burned at the fucking stake. Ooooh. Biblical! While Paul is whipped and exiled from that part of town, Thecla is stripped of her clothing and bound to a stake in the middle of the town square. As onlookers watch the flames of the pyre close in on her, Thecla makes the sign of the cross and, suddenly, a heavy thundercloud rolls over their heads to release a deluge of rain. The pyre is extinguished and Thecla gives herself the baptism of the century.
Once freed from the stake, Thecla retrieves a robe that was left behind in the vicinity to clothe herself. Knowing that this robe would not only shield her from the elements but, because the robe was made in a style that was typically worn by men, I assume that she probably was also privy to the other layers of protection that such a garment would provide, at least temporarily. She then sets off to find Paul once more.
Thecla is informed of Paul’s whereabouts and, upon finding him, asks to join his travels. Paul, however, in a fit of feigned paternalistic concern, attempts to dissuade Thecla from continuing her pilgrimage in fear that her beauty, her faith, and her status as an unmarried woman would lead to more legal ramifications. Thecla insists, making the case for a baptism by stating, “Only give me the seal of Christ and no trial will touch me.” But, in true gatekeeper fashion, Paul tells Thecla to be patient. And so she waits while faithfully remaining at Paul’s side.
In the midst of their ministry, they arrive in the bustling town center of Antioch. I’m gonna pause here here to offer a quick content warning for brief mention of attempted sexual assault, okay? That’s a part of the story… brief pause…okay. Thecla is noticed by a predatory, high government official named Alexander, who decides that he wants to “claim” Thecla for himself. He tries to convince Paul to give her over to him by bribing him with money and power. Rather than come to Thecla’s defense, Paul, being the man that he is, disowns her with the swiftness of a coursing river! And yes, that was a Mulan reference. [Laughs in frustration] Paul is giving just straight up giving Mariah Carey, “I don’t know her” energy, okay? And Alexander decides to throw his weight around and attempts to assault her right there in broad motherfuckin’ daylight to claim what he has already decided is his. Fucking infuriating.
[00:43:48]
But then! But then, Thecla said, “Fuck around and find out!” Being who she is, Thecla resists Alexander’s predatory advances, tearing at his clothes and knocking his crown off his silly little head, drawing attention from a crowd of onlookers. Ashamed and embarrassed by being found the fuck out, Alexander stops his advances and leaves, but not without a plan to punish Thecla for bruising his fragile little ego.
Thecla is soon brought before a court and sentenced to a brutal death in the local stadium. Because biblical punishments tend to favor humiliation and violence, Thecla is, once again, stripped of her clothing and thrown into the stadium to meet the wrath of hungry beasts. Her apparent crime? Sacrilege. Ain’t that some shit?! That’s some shit.
And so, they then release the first beast: a lioness. As the lioness charges toward Thecla, their eyes lock in to each other, eliciting a moment of ineffable mutual recognition. To everyone’s disappointment, the lioness stops charging and, upon approaching Thecla, lies down at her feet. But this isn’t where the miracle ends. Governmental officials begin sending out other hungry, wild animals to help finish the job, but, in an act of great interspecies femme for femme solidarity, every single one is mauled to death by this lioness. Frustrated and also thrown by the curveball, the so-called arbiters of justice eventually kill the lioness, but their efforts boomerang, and the crowd begins to turn.
Calls of unholy judgment begin to ricochet across the stadium, as the women of the crowd boldly name the true sacrilege, which is to punish a love so true with death. Thecla then makes a beeline for the watery pit of ferocious sea lions as more and more beasts are released into the stadium. Standing at the edge of the pit she declares, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize myself,” and plunges into the pool. Upon entering the water, a protective ring of fire ignites around the pit and for the third and final time, at least within this story, Thecla saves herself.
In a moment of utter recognition and clarity, in a moment of remembrance, the women in the crowd rise up and begin tossing fistfuls of rose petals, cinnamon, cardamom and spikenard into the stadium, filling the arena with a heavy perfume that lulls all the beasts to sleep. Crying out in unison, “as if from one mouth,” the women and femmes in the crowd praise Thecla for her unflinching display of courage. And what is courage but the merging of love and freedom?
Watterson concludes this story with the following: “She began to do what her heart was telling her to do. And this was sacrilege to those in power: That she refused to obey or validate any authority outside of her. Even, and ultimately, Paul’s. She baptized herself because she realized she could. She realized that all along within her she contained the power to save herself. And so she did.” And thus, Thecla becomes a symbol for sacred courage, transformative love, and unrelenting, unapologetic freedom.
[00:48:08]
As is the case in politics, religion, and interpersonal relations, protecting the structures of patriarchy comes at a pretty steep price: emboldened, willful ignorance. In 325 AD, a group of men took part in a gathering called the First Council of Nicaea where they collectively decided which scripture would be included within the Christian canon and which would be destroyed. The Gospel of Mary and other such early Christian scriptures like The Acts of Paul and Thecla were purposefully left out of the canon to intentionally devalue and erase the spiritual wisdom and contributions of women and femmes, precisely because of the threat it posed to patriarchy.
If the Gospel of Mary and other such banned scriptures emphasize that salvation is not something that’s given to you, but rather emerges through the process of remembrance, through the process of internal reconciliation, and dissolving the illusions that keep us separate from one another, then where does that leave the iron fist of patriarchy? Empty. Ineffective. God, irrelevant! When I read that story about Thecla, I didn’t see God in the miraculous rain and fire, I saw God in that precise moment when all those women and femmes in the crowd collectively recognized themselves in Thecla, narrowing that gap between “me” and “we” through the recognition that their liberation was so intimately tied to hers. Along these lines, The Star card often appears when we are ready to wake up to our own power and recognize the essence of God, the essence of love, that exists within us, and how that essence also ties us to the love that exists within others. This is what we mean when we say, “as within, so without.” It appears when we remember that salvation is something we give to ourselves, and it appears when we are ready to take up the divine duty to fight for and bear witness to the liberation of others. The story of Thecla gorgeously demonstrates the intimate relationship between the between Leo and Aquarius, between the heart’s song and the soul’s voice. Love without freedom is just another form of bondage, and freedom without love leads to gratuitous destruction. It appears when we are ready to, as Watterson states, “attain the freedom the soul remembers.” This is what it means to traverse the Leo/Aquarius axis. Love begets freedom, and freedom begets love.
Watterson pulls a quote from the Gospel of Philip, which I’ll paraphrase here: “ [Love] is the highest and vastest freedom.” I’ll add here that, in addition to courage, hope is what we find at the intersection of love (as represented by the Strength card) and freedom (as represented by the Star card). And now, with this context, I can finally speak to what the Star Card does through its role within the Leo/Aquarius axis. Thecla’s love is what awakened her to her freedom, and her freedom is what inspired and emboldened her to keep loving. Thecla’s love is also what awakened the collective to the love that layed dormant in their own hearts, and this, too, was activated by Thecla’s commitment to her freedom. Along these lines, the Leo/Aquarius axis, and by extension, The Star Card, wants us to understand the relationship between love and freedom and wants us to embody that love by getting free.
The Tower didn’t teach you about the discipline of hope for nothing! Okay? As the Devil card reminds us just before it leads us to The Tower, love that seeks possession isn’t love at all, it’s non-consensual, unsexy bondage. Similarly, freedom that isn’t in service to love - that isn’t informed by love - isn’t real freedom, it’s an expression of one’s bondage to destruction, to entitlement, and to suffering. If the Strength card represents our heart, then the Star card is the freedom that animates it, and it is through this relational axis that we get to experience hope.
[00:53:28]
As mentioned earlier, the Star card in the upright position heralds a time of new, hopeful beginnings after a period of relentless undoing. It’s a spiritual homecoming that offers a poignant opportunity to choose yourself in ways that you could not give yourself permission to before your Great Unraveling. As exciting as this is, if you encounter the Star card in the upright position, I urge you to pace yourself as you reintegrate with the world at large. The Star is also a time to just witness the dust settle after Tower Season and decide where those lessons need further application. While the Star encourages you to boldly announce what was, up until this point, a mere whisper in the deepest recesses of your heart, remember that it takes an exorbitant amount of courage to say what you want (what you really, really want.) As exciting as it is to draw this “wish card”, there will be moments when choosing yourself is going to hurt like a motherfucker. But you didn’t get this far, you didn’t get this far, so you can abandon yourself again. So lean into the teachings of the Leo/Aquarius axis to just gather your resolve and do it anyway.
In the reverse, The Star card speaks to hopelessness (particularly the kind that is brought on by a broken heart or an existential crises. It also speaks to disappointment/pessimism/despair that’s disguised as apathy, and it can also indicate self abandonment and the unbearable weight of inauthenticity. The Star in reverse can also speak to bigotry disguised in progressive language and, if it represents a person or a figurehead, someone who is struggling with a Savior or Messiah Complex. Jessica Lanyadoo, the creator and host of “Ghost of a Podcast” has, on several occasions, spoken about the “Spirituality to Alt Right Pipeline,” where spiritual language, “aesthetic”, and concepts are used to get people to buy into harmful belief systems and circulate “spiritual justifications” for upholding systems of oppression and encouraging gratuitous acts of violence. I fuckin’ agree with her - it IS a slippery slope. There IS a dangerous pipeline here. And, in regards to that, I have a brief example.
There’s a documentary out on Netflix right now called “Orgasm Inc.” that exemplifies the Star Rx energy. It is a particularly chilling but also, unfortunately, relevant case study of what happens when unchecked ego and privilege meets unmetabolized pain, and how that can quickly lead to the emergence of so-called wellness leaders who are, actually, extremely dangerous, extremely harmful, and very very much in need of some deep fucking healing. Now, on that note, I DO NOT recommend watching this documentary if stories you are just generally in a dysregulated space. It’s a really intense…REALLY INTENSE fuckin’ documentary, but I just wanted to mention it briefly here because The Star card carries this element of vulnerability that needs to be recognized, that needs to be honored, and protected. There’s a reason why the Star appears AFTER the Tower, and not the other way around. While the magic of hope often offers us the levity we need to receive fresh starts, hope is not a fluffy light thing by any stretch of the word. So The Star card in reverse reminds us that we need to still hold hope with discernment and care.
[00:57:53]
I wanna thank each of you for tuning in and using this living body work as a companion to support you along your respective journeys; you doing so also affords me with the opportunity to be witnessed in my own. So thank you for sharing this work far and wide and for reviewing this podcast so that we can all find each other. I mean, it’s really fucking wild. Do y’all know… Do y’all know that this podcast is in the top 5% of Spotify’s most globally shared podcast?! Like, what?? What in the actual fuck, that is WILD! That is wild and, like, we’re doing this together and that’s so wild to me. Like, what excites me most about that is how it reveals just how intertwined all of our respective journeys are with one another. And that is so cute to me! [laughs with excitement] So, thank you for your grace as I move at a pace that feels sustainable and in alignment with my values - thank you for respecting that. There’s just a lot of noise out there and, I’m just trying to remain…intentional in all of this . As we inch closer to winter and 2022 comes to a close, I hope that you encounter opportunities to honor your freedom in loving ways. May we all remember our inherent interconnectedness, and may the constellations we form together remind us that we, too, are made of stardust.
[00:59:38 Outro music fades in, plays until the end]