The Star Tarot Card Meaning

The Star upright meaning

Waite's entry for this card does not open with hope. His list starts with "Loss, theft, privation, abandonment", and only then comes the turn: "another reading says" "hope and bright prospects". The card most sites describe today is the second reading in Waite's own entry.

The Golden Dawn's short list is split the same way: "Hope, faith, unexpected help. Or dreaminess, deceived hope, etc." The modern sites kept the first half. Biddy Tarot lists "Hope, faith, purpose, renewal, spirituality", and Labyrinthos has "hope, inspiration, positivity, faith, renewal, healing, rejuvenation".

Biddy Tarot ties the hopeful reading to position. It writes, "As The Star follows The Tower card in Tarot, it comes as a welcome reprieve after a period of destruction and turmoil." Our guess is that the order of the deck helps, since the loss sits in the card before.

The Star reversed: lost hope or something else?

A reversed Star does not say that things are hopeless. The Tarot Guide puts it in one sentence: "The Star reversed does not indicate that things are hopeless, only that you feel they are." That describes a mood in a reading, and it is no verdict on your life. If a low mood is heavy or lasting, a card cannot stand in for real help from a professional.

Waite's own reversed words are "Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence." None of them is about lost hope. The despair reading is modern: Biddy Tarot lists "Lack of faith, despair, self-trust, disconnection", and Labyrinthos gives "hopelessness, despair, negativity, lack of faith, despondent". The lists barely overlap, so we treat them as two readings of one upside-down picture.

To tell them apart, ask where the lost faith sits. Labyrinthos asks, "Where in your life are you feeling hopeless?" If the answer is one situation, the modern reading fits. If you feel you have lost your footing in general, Waite's plainer word, impotence, may describe it better.

Is The Star a yes or no card?

You are deciding whether to call your sister after two years of silence, and you pull the Star. On the upright card the pages agree. Tarot.com ends its page with "the answer is YES." Zenithalign scores it a Yes, and TarotAtlas leans the same way. Every site we checked reads it as a yes.

We read that yes as a direction. It fits questions about starting again, healing and patience. It cannot say how one particular call will go, and Waite's opening list of loss is a good reason not to hear a promise in it. Book T adds its own brake with "deceived hope".

Reversed is where the answers soften. Zenithalign scores it a Conditional Yes, and Tarot.com gives no separate reversed answer. We read reversed as not yet: look at what is draining your hope first, then ask again.

The Star in love: single, relationship, feelings, heartbreak

Single

Does the Star mean someone is on the way? The sites keep it about you first. Tarot.com tells singles, "Don't give up." and adds that it starts with "showing up for yourself like you're already loved". Our reading: this is a card for getting your own footing back, and it names no person.

In a relationship

For a couple, Tarot.com reads "a period of renewed connection, forgiveness, or shared vision". Labyrinthos is more careful: a rough patch can be a time of healing, but only so long as the two of you "remain communicative and honest with one another". The Star repairs nothing by itself, but it marks a pause in the damage and a chance to talk.

The Star as feelings

Labyrinthos describes a person who "views you as a guiding light, brimming with potential and positivity". Reversed, the same site reads "a sense of disillusionment or disappointment", often from past experiences. Neither description predicts what anyone will do.

After heartbreak

Waite's first list contains "abandonment", the heartbreak word, and the card sits on the far side of it. Tarot.com calls the Star "a soft reopening of the heart". Our reading is that healing has no deadline, and the next small step is enough.

Astrology side of the same question: Aquarius compatibility with every sign · Aquarius in love.

The Star as work and money

Set the Star beside the Tower, the card before it. Waite gives the Tower "Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin." The Star is how a workplace feels after a layoff round or a failed launch has finished landing, when people start to say what they want next. Tarot.com calls it "your green light for inspiration and long-term vision".

Reversed, the card fits flat motivation. Labyrinthos lists "lack of motivation, lack of enthusiasm, pessimism about work". Biddy Tarot says it matters in career readings "when you feel disconnected from the work you do". Neither site says to quit. Ask what first made the work matter to you.

The Star as advice and as a person

Take the figure's posture as a picture of steady footing: Waite writes that "her left knee is on the land and her right foot upon the water". That reading is ours. Tarot.com's advice is gentle: "You don't have to fix everything overnight." Pick one small thing that rebuilds a routine, such as a walk at the same hour each day.

Described as a person, the Star shares what they have and makes no show of it. That picture is ours. Biddy Tarot writes, "The Star also suggests a generous spirit."

Symbolism of the Rider–Waite–Smith card

• The great star. Waite describes "a great, radiant star of eight rays, surrounded by seven lesser stars". Wikipedia says some late 15th-century depictions show six points instead.
• The naked figure. Waite says the figure "expresses eternal youth and beauty". Biddy Tarot reads her nakedness as vulnerability and purity.
• Knee and foot. Waite writes, "Her left knee is on the land and her right foot upon the water." Wikipedia notes that Temperance also stands in both land and water, but is "depicted as standing and rigid".
• The two ewers. Waite says she "pours Water of Life from two great ewers, irrigating sea and land". Biddy Tarot counts five rivulets on the ground, for the five senses.
• The bird and the tree. Waite places "a shrub or tree, whereon a bird alights" on the right. Labyrinthos reads the bird as the holy ibis of thought.

Is the Star only a card of hope? What Waite wrote

Waite is unimpressed by the usual reading. In Part II he writes, "The summary of several tawdry explanations says that it is a card of hope." His own answer is larger: "she is in reality the Great Mother in the Kabalistic Sephira Binah". He gives the card two mottoes, "Waters of Life freely" and "Gifts of the Spirit". Pages that stop at plain hope give the summary Waite calls the result of "several tawdry explanations".

The Golden Dawn's Book T titles the card "The Daughter of the Firmament, the dweller between the Waters", with the letter Tzaddi and the sign Aquarius. Its second sentence, "Or dreaminess, deceived hope", is the half the sites dropped. Not one of the leading pages carries that second half. Their cautions sit in the reversed card as lost faith and despair, which is a different warning.

The Star and Aquarius: the card's zodiac sign

Attributions from Book T (Golden Dawn, c. 1892; printed 1912).

In our sample of 35,064 dates from 1930 to 2025, Aquarius holds at least one of ten planets on 53.2%, so many charts give the Star a sign to point at even when the Sun is elsewhere. Book T gives the card Aquarius and the letter Tzaddi. Aquarius is an air sign ruled by Saturn; Wikipedia calls it "the fixed-air sign of Aquarius".

Saturn also rules the Devil and the World in Book T. Aquarius has three minor cards: the Five of Swords (Defeat, Venus), the Six of Swords (Earned Success, Mercury) and the Seven of Swords (Unstable Effort, the Moon). A run from Defeat to Earned Success sounds like Waite's double list, loss first and then something better. That link is our guess, not Book T's.

The three Aquarius cards of the minor arcana

Next Aquarius season: the Sun enters Aquarius on January 20, 2:30 a.m. EST and stays until February 18, 4:33 p.m. EST (2027, US Eastern time).

The picture shows a woman pouring water, yet Wikipedia calls Aquarius "the fixed-air sign". The tool below shows where Aquarius falls in your own chart.

Questions about The Star

Next to The Star

In the Major Arcana: The Tower (16) ← The Star (17) → The Moon (18).

Aquarius on this site: Aquarius zodiac sign · Aquarius rising · Mercury in Aquarius · Venus in Aquarius · your full birth chart.

All 22 cards with their signs and planets: tarot card meanings.

Written by The Zodiac Atlas editorial team with the help of AI and edited by a person. Quotations are from Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot and the Golden Dawn's Book T, both in the public domain; the card picture is a 1910 printing of Pamela Colman Smith's drawing for the 1909 deck. Sign dates and planet positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris (tropical zodiac). Tarot and astrology are symbolic traditions; they do not predict events.