The Celestial Lights: Star-Moon-Sun

The Star, the Moon, and the Sun—the celestial lights—form a bridge in the tarot trump sequence between Hell (Devil and Tower cards) and Heaven (Judgment and World cards). The scenes depicted on these three cards vary so much from one deck to another that there seems to be no consensus about their meaning. These enigmatic cards bring up several questions: Why these celestial objects and not others? Why are they in that particular order in the trump sequence? What does each card symbolize? Does a story run through all three cards? We’ll attempt to answer these questions below.

Variable Imagery in the Star, Moon, and Sun Cards

The variety of images displayed on the earliest Star, Moon, and Sun cards make it difficult to see a consistent theme or story in the sequence. Three sets of Italian tarot cards rooted in the 15^th century illustrate this point.

The Visconti-Sforza deck was hand painted for the Duke and Duchess of Milan shortly after 1450; although the Star and Moon cards were created about 25 years later. These cards display classical influences: the Star might be Venus, the Moon is most likely Diana, and the putto on the Sun card holds the mask of Helios.

These cards belong to a block-printed deck from the late 1400s known as the Budapest tarot. A man holds up a star, similar to Venus in the Visconti-Sforza card above. Another man holds up the Moon, and the Sun shines on a forest.

This Bolognese deck was printed in the mid-18^th century, but its imagery dates to the early 16^th century. The Star card shows a puzzling scene where a pope is about to crown the man in the center. The Moon card depicts astronomers, and the sun card has a woman with a distaff and spindle who is often identified as Clotho, one of the three Fates.

Certain decks have unique imagery that’s not seen in any other deck. For instance, the 16^th-century Tarot de Paris Moon card shows a man serenading a naked woman under her balcony. The naked child on a horse in the Vievil deck dates from about 1650.

The woman with a spindle on Bolognese Sun cards was transferred to the Moon card of the Vievil deck which served as the model for the 18^th-century Rouën-Brussels pattern. The example shown here is from the 1762 Vandenborre tarot. If imagery can shift between cards with no loss of meaning, then the image probably had no special significance in the minds of the deck creators.

The images we’re most familiar with come from the Tarot de Marseille pattern that originated in 17^th-century France (top row). The Star and Moon cards in the 1909 Waite Smith deck are closely based on the Tarot de Marseille. Their symbolism will be discussed in detail in the articles on the individual cards.

Thanks to the variety of images on these cards, we are free to project a wide range of stories onto the card sequence. Let’s look at some popular interpretations that have become attached to these cards over the years.

Signs of the Zodiac

According to this theory, which only applies to the Tarot de Marseille pattern, the woman pouring water is Aquarius, the crayfish on the Moon card refers to Cancer, and the two boys on the Tarot de Marseille Sun card are the Gemini twins.

Aquarius is generally depicted as a man pouring water from one jug, although we occasionally see a man or woman pouring from two jugs. A few renaissance paintings show a woman pouring water from two jars, but these are always in the context of classical river deities or water nymphs. The Moon rules the sign of Cancer, so this association is plausible; but there is no obvious astrological connection between Gemini and the Sun.

No one has been able to explain why these particular zodiac signs would be highlighted in the trump series. Astrology has always been a major force in western civilization, but attributing zodiac signs to these cards seems arbitrary and out of context with the rest of the deck.

Theological Virtues

Some historians have asserted that the three lights are actually the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity. There’s a precedent for this. One of the earliest known trionfi decks, the Visconti di Modrone, commissioned by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti about1441, contains the theological virtues (shown above). Only a handful of trump cards remain from this deck, so it’s impossible to know if these virtues substituted for other cards, or if this was an extended deck with extra cards. Since the cards aren’t numbered, we don’t know where the theological virtues were placed in the trump sequence.

When the tarot deck was extended to ninety-seven cards, creating the game of Minchiate in the 1460s, the theological virtues were added immediately after the Tower, in the same position as the three lights in the standard tarot deck. This leads to speculation that the Star, Moon and Sun were always understood to be the theological virtues. However, this is not a strong argument because the Star, Moon and Sun appear toward the end of the Minchiate sequence in their usual position just before the World and Judgment cards. In addition, none of the imagery associated with these three tarot cards bears any resemblance to the conventional images of the three virtues. The three moral virtues, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance, always appear in tarot as conventional, easily recognizable allegories. It seems unlikely that the deck creator would disguise the theological virtues with completely unrelated imagery.

Occultist Egyptomania

The Egyptian connection only works with the Tarot de Marseille and related decks. The naked woman in the Star card is Isis pouring out the two headwaters of the Nile to start the annual flooding. The Nile floods when the star Sirius rises in the east, in the sign of Cancer, in summer when the sun is brightest. This story makes sense if you interpret the entire trump series through an occultist/Egyptian filter. Otherwise, it doesn’t fit with the Christian theme of the rest of the cards.

The Sequence

The Star, Moon and Sun cards seem to be arranged arbitrarily. They should have been placed in their familiar astronomical order, or in the order they appear in the Bible. Instead, their sequence was chosen to serve the internal logic of the card game.

The Apocalypse Sequence in Tarot

Tarot trumps fifteen through twenty-one are called the Apocalypse sequence, as they closely correlate to the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Christian Bible, which describes the cataclysmic end of the world. The celestial lights that appear in the tarot deck are mentioned together in the Bible four times, but always in the order of sun, moon and stars. (Luke 21:25-28, Revelation 6:12-13, 8:12 and 12:1-2)

Any three planets, constellations, or bright stars could have been placed after the Tower in the trump sequence. The deck designer chose the celestial bodies that appear together repeatedly in the Bible, yet they weren’t placed in their biblical sequence.

Geocentric Ladder of Planets

The geocentric model of the cosmos, with the earth surrounded by concentric rings of elemental and planetary energies, was the reigning world view from ancient Greece to the 18^th century. If the tarot sequence had followed the geocentric model, the cards would have been ordered Moon, Sun, and Star. Even though popular culture, art and medicine were heavily influenced by astrology when tarot was invented, the designer of the trump cards ignored this familiar sequence of celestial lights.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Aleghieri

The greatest work of Italian literature, the Divine Comedy, was written by Dante between 1308 and 1321. The poem traces Dante’s journey of from the darkest depths of hell to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in a vision of God in His heavenly glory. The sequence of the trump cards from the Devil to the World might have been inspired by this poem, with the Devil and Tower cards representing, respectively, Hell and Purgatory. The Star, Moon and Sun cards represent Dante’s ascension into Heaven with the cards ordered in increasing brightness. The Judgment card represents the revelation of the divine light and the World card represents God and his Creation as described in the Bible in the first book of Genesis.

The Cards as Hierarchy in the Game

We’ve considered the Star, Moon, and Sun cards as zodiac signs, as Christian virtues, as figures in Greek and Egyptian myth, as part of the Divine Comedy, and as illustrating a Bible story. None of the images on these cards strongly correlates with any of these systems. The great variety of imagery suggests that no particular story was universally identified with the individual Star, Moon, and Sun cards. Some images were regional favorites, while some seem to be the whimsical creation of a single deck designer.

Perhaps these cards signify nothing more than just the stars, the moon and the sun. At least one 15^th-century Italian card maker, the creator of the Rosenwald tarot shown above, felt no need to illustrate these cards with any other image. The celestial objects inhabit the top portion of the tarot card, making them easily identified by card players. The imagery in the bottom portion of these three cards is decorative and not designed to tell a continuous story or correspond to any symbol system.

The order of the three lights in the trump sequence corresponds to their brightness in the sky. Just as higher numbered trump cards capture lower numbered cards, so a full moon outshines the stars, and the sun outshines both the stars and the moon. In the Tarot de Marseille and related decks, the relative size of the celestial bodies on the cards is designed to help the players instantly recognize which card trumps the others.


In subsequent articles, we’ll look at each card in the context of myth, religion, and art history. Then we’ll consider various attempts to create a coherent story from this sequence of three cards.

Links to articles on individual cards:
The Star
The Moon
The Sun

Next Page-The Star
Tarot History Home

Illustrations:

Book of the Queen. Paris 1410-1414. Collection of the British Museum. Harley MS 4431, f. 189v

I Tarocchi dei Visconti. Milan c. 1450. Reproduced by Il Meneghello, Milan, 1996.

Budapest Tarot. Late 15^th century. Recreated by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, 2017. Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Tarocco Bolognese Al Mondo, 1725. Facsimile by Marco Benedetti, Rome, 2020. Collection of The British Museum.

Tarot de Paris, c. 1650. Facsimile by André Dimanche/Grimaud, 1980. Collection of Bibliothèque Nationale Française, Paris.

Tarot de Jacques Vieville. Paris, mid-17^th century. Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française. Facsimile produced by Heron Boechat, Bordeaux, c. 1980.

Tarocco Bolognese Dalla Torre. 17^th century. Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française.

Tarot Flamand Vandenborre, Brussels, 1762. Restored by Pablo Robledo, Argentina, 2018.

Tarot Jean-Pierre Laurent, Belfort France, 1735. Yves Reynaud 2020.

The Centennial Waite Smith Tarot Deck. London, 1909. U.S. Games System, Inc., Stamford, CT, 2009.

Aquarius. Medieval manuscript of the zodiac. 15^th century.

Visconti di Modrone Tarot, Milan, c. 1441. Restored by Il Meneghello, 2017.

Cloisters Apocalypse, c. 1330, Normandy.

Geocentric model of the Universe.

Paradise, Dante Aleghieri. Giovanni di Paolo, Siena, 1444-1450. Illuminated manuscript. Collection of the British Library.

The Rosenwald Deck, c. 1475. Re-created by Sullivan Hismans at Tarot Sheet Revival, 2017. Collection of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

François Gassmann Tarot, Geneva, 1840. Restored by Yves Reynaud, 2020.