WELLNESS & WELL-BEING
Be a Star in Your Own Life
By Julia Gordon-Bramer
W
e now teeter on the edge of summer, which
reminds me of the Star tarot card, featuring
a beautiful naked woman who keeps one foot
on land and one in a pool of water.
Whether it was the older ideals for beauty
or just a forward-thinking artist, this tarot lovely is not perfect by our
modern model standards. Her face is a little plain, she keeps her long
hair pulled back, and she has a little bit of extra weight around the
middle. Yet I don’t think there is anyone who could look at this card and
not say that she is beautiful - just as she is.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all saw ourselves communing this
easily with nature and our own bodies? The woman dips into the
water with one jar and pours onto the land with another. A pelican
sits on a tree in the distance. The sky is filled with one great star (the
sun) and little stars overhead. What better card to reflect on for the
swimsuit edition?
The Star is a card of hopes and dreams coming true. It can also be
read as a card of celebrity. Some say that the woman is the mythological
virgin Pandora, who opened the proverbial taboo box. She accidentally
released all sorts of evil upon the world, and only hope remained. We
can draw a lot of similarities between this story and that of Eve in the
Garden of Eden, which also fits this card well.
The Star is a card that says to never, ever give up hope. Hope is the
thing that keeps us sane in these uncertain times. The fact that Pandora
is naked is important. This is not a card about seduction; rather it shows
that she was not afraid to be vulnerable. There is no possibility of
intimacy without vulnerability, and if you’re interested in this subject,
I recommend you check out the work of Brené Brown, who’s built a
career on this topic.
But back to the tarot: All the heavy clothes and protections we wear
are good at keeping us hidden, but what about enjoying the warm rays
of the sun? Let’s make summer our metaphor for stepping into the real
truth about ourselves as the Star card does, and for stepping out into
the world without a lot of baggage. Our own hopes and dreams are
found in the place where we get real, and we can brave our nakedness as
the beauty on the Star tarot card does, and in swimsuit season, that may
be literally, as well as figuratively.
What dreams are you dipping into? Maybe now is the time to take
the plunge.
Gordon-Bramer is a professional tarot card
reader in St. Louis, and author of “Fixed Stars
Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath” and the
“Decoding Sylvia Plath” series. Visit her website at
juliagordonbramer.com.
SAVVY I SOPHISTICATED I SASSY
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