In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, The Star does not appear in isolation.
It is XVII, and immediately before it stands XVI — The Tower: one of the deck's most violent images, a structure struck from above, its crown blown away as figures fall toward the earth.
Then the card changes.
No collapsing architecture. No fire. No falling bodies.
There is water, earth, an open sky, and a figure quietly pouring from two vessels beneath the stars.
Whether or not one treats the Major Arcana as a continuous narrative, the juxtaposition is striking. The Tower is followed by a scene almost completely emptied of violence.
After catastrophe comes stillness.
Eight Stars in an Open Sky
Pamela Colman Smith illustrated the deck under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, and the cards were first published in 1909. In Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, he describes The Star as containing one great eight-rayed star surrounded by seven smaller stars, also of eight rays.
The number and arrangement give the sky an extraordinary visual order.
Below them, the central figure kneels with one knee on land and one foot at the water. She pours from two large vessels: one stream returns to the pool while the other nourishes the land.
Waite called these the “Waters of Life.” He described what the figure communicates to the landscape as something coming from the heavens and the elements.
Nothing in the picture appears scarce.
The water flows freely.
The stars remain overhead.
Life continues.
The Mysterious Bird
Then there is one tiny detail that has generated an enormous amount of interpretation.
Look toward the tree behind the figure.
There is a bird.
Modern explanations routinely identify it as a sacred ibis, connecting it to Thoth, the ancient Egyptian deity associated with writing and wisdom. That interpretation is widespread in contemporary tarot literature.
But there is a problem.
Waite never identifies the bird.
His original description says only that on the right is a shrub or tree “whereon a bird alights.” No species. No ibis. No Thoth.
And Pamela Colman Smith apparently left us no surviving explanation telling us exactly what she intended the little bird to represent.
That makes the most historically responsible answer wonderfully unsatisfying:
We don't know.
The ibis interpretation is certainly plausible. Waite and Smith worked in an occult environment deeply interested in Egyptian symbolism, and the ibis had a long-established association with Thoth. But saying that the bird is definitively the sacred ibis of Thoth goes further than the primary source allows.
Its intended identity appears to have been lost to history.
Perhaps that uncertainty makes the card more interesting rather than less.
A tiny bird has been sitting in that tree for more than a century, watched by millions of people, and we still cannot say with certainty why Smith put it there.
What Waite Actually Said
The Star is often reduced today to a single keyword:
Hope.
Waite acknowledged that interpretation, although his own discussion was considerably more complicated. He referred to hope as part of the card's conventional explanation, while also connecting the figure to spiritual gifts, interior light, and Kabbalistic symbolism.
The modern emphasis on renewal nevertheless fits the image remarkably well.
Look at what Smith chose not to show.
There is no rebuilding underway.
Nobody is repairing The Tower.
There are no tools, scaffolds, plans, or armies arriving to restore what was lost.
Instead, the figure simply kneels.
She pours water.
The earth receives it.
The sky remains above her.
That distinction matters.
Hope Without Urgency
We often imagine recovery as immediate action.
Something breaks, so fix it.
Something falls, so rebuild it.
Something is lost, so replace it.
The Star presents another possibility.
Sometimes the first thing after destruction is simply the recognition that something remains.
Water still flows.
The ground is still beneath you.
The stars have not disappeared.
The world did not end merely because one structure within it collapsed.
That is a quieter conception of hope than triumph, victory, or rebirth.
It asks almost nothing.
It does not promise that the Tower will be reconstructed exactly as it was.
Perhaps it should not be.
Instead, The Star offers something more elemental: enough light to see by and enough water for life to continue.
After Everything Falls Apart
That may explain why Smith's image has remained so powerful.
The Star does not deny what came before it.
Its position immediately after The Tower means the destruction is still there in the sequence. Turn one card backward and you can see it.
But turn forward again and the sky opens.
The contrast is the meaning.
The Star does not shout.
It does not conquer anything.
It does not even ask you to rebuild.
It simply reminds you that after everything falls apart, the sky is still there.
And somewhere in a little tree at the edge of the picture, a mysterious bird continues to watch—a detail whose original meaning may have disappeared even while the image itself endured.
Perhaps some symbols are strongest precisely because we cannot recover every answer.
And perhaps some forms of hope work the same way.
The Star — XVII — Catalog No. 2118
Tarot — Within Symbolism
Symbols Worth Wearing.