when i was twenty, deep in my thesis-obsession, i got an ourobouros tattooed on my belly. i’ve talked about this before, about how the ourobouros is a reminder that everything is cyclical, in the context of the death card.
i find that everything echoes in tarot; that death reminds us of the way everything must end and begin again is echoed in the transition between the destruction of the tower and the renewal of the star.
the star has come up twice before, and each time i talked about hope, that being the primary thing i associate with the card. today while shuffling to pick the card for today’s newsletter, the star fell out and on a whim i decided to look up what the personal space tarot guide had to say about it. i wanted to say something different, this time.
it opens with “If The Tower is a forest fire, The Star is the new life that peeks out from the cracks of the scorched earth” and then continues, “What’s most interesting about growth after devastation is that it doesn’t exactly come back the same as it was before.”
which of course reminds me of the ourobouros and the cycle of life leading to death leading to decay leading to new growth, but it also reminds me of a line from one of my favorite books, lighthousekeeping by jeanette winterson: “nothing keeps the same form forever, child, not even pew.” (i’d explain who pew is but really you should just go read the book.)
may this sentiment be a comfort to you this week, darlings, no matter at which point in the cycle you may be. even though good things end, so too do bad things.
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this week’s deck: personal space tarot
this week’s crystals: quartz, one of which is in fact a tiny crystal ball perched on a snake vertebra