XVII - The Star

Titles: The Daughter of the Firmament, The Dweller between the Waters
Hebrew letter: ה (He = window = 5) [Single Letter = Zodiacal Trump]
Element: Air
Astrology: Aquarius ♒ - Fixed Air - The water bearer (ruler: Saturn/Uranus, exaltation: -; detriment: Sun, fall: Neptune)
Time: 21 January - 18 February
Path on the Tree of Life: 15th Path (Chokmah ↔ Tiphareth; 2 ↔ 6)

Symbols/Colours:

the picture represents Nuith, our Lady of the Stars;
the figure of the goddess is shown in manifestation, that is, not as the surrounding space of heaven, shown in Atu XX, where she is the pure philosophical idea continuous and omniform; in this card she is definitely personified as a human-seeming figure; she is represented as bearing two cups, one golden, held high above her head, from which she pours water upon it; (these cups resemble breasts, as it is written: "the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps");
behind the figure of the goddess is the celestial globe; most prominent among its features is the seven-pointed Star of Venus, as if declaring the principal characteristic of her nature to be Love; from the golden cup she pours this ethereal water, which is also milk and oil and blood, upon her own head, indicating the eternal renewal of the categories, the inexhaustible possibilities of existence;
the left hand, lowered, holds a silver cup, from which also she pours the immortal liquor of her life. (this liquor is the Amrita of the Indian philosophers, the Nepenthe and Ambrosia of the Greeks, the Alkahest and Universal Medicine of the Alchemists, the Blood of the Grail; or, rather, the nectar which is the mother of that blood; she pours it upon the junction of land and water. this water is the water of the Great Sea of Binah; in the manifestation of Nuith on a lower plane, she is the Great Mother;
in the left-hand corner of the picture is the star of Babalon; for Babalon is yet a further materialization of the original idea of Nuith; she is the Scarlet Woman, the sacred Harlot who is the lady of Atu XI;
from this star, behind the celestial sphere itself, issue the curled rays of spiritual light;
every form of energy in this picture is spiral;
it is only in the lower cup that the forms of energy issuing forth show rectilinear characteristics.