An odd synchronicity occurred when drawing this card today. One of the DJs I follow on Twitch did a set based on Devo’s fourth album, New Traditionalists, and the conversation in the chat naturally led on to some discussion of the cult 1981 animated movie HEAVY METAL, in which some of the songs feature.
I don’t plan to dwell here on the many, many legitimate complaints about misogyny and sexism that have been raised against this movie. Frequently puerile, and clearly targeted at an audience of teenaged boys, the female characters in the movie exist entirely to scream and have sex and to have massive cartoon breasts which they display at any given opportunity.
Not Taarna, though, the Last Taarakian. Taarna is a total badass.
Which is ironic, really, because she has a very nice ass, and since she spends half of her screentime naked (it wouldn’t be a HEAVY METAL sketch if she didn’t) you get to see it an awful lot. Surprisingly for HEAVY METAL though, that’s not the point of her character. As deadly as she is beautiful, over the course of her segment Taarna subdues the zombie army, avenges the slain of the fallen city of Kraan, and ultimately defeats the Loc-Nar, condemning the Sum of All Evil to slumber for another generation. She draws strength from her mission and from her surroundings, suffers, rallies, and finds new strength when the old has failed her. In short, she follows the Hero’s Journey.
What I find interesting, though, is the scene in which Taarna visits an abandoned temple and gains her armour and her sword. Beginning naked, she clothes herself piece by piece in a lengthy sequence of beautifully rotoscoped animation, sort of like a reverse Inanna. The comparison with the Star is pretty obvious.
In the film, Taarna draws her weapons, and hence her power, out of the ground. The figure on the Star is pouring water into the ground, nourishing it. Archetypally, it seems impossible to have one without the other.
The Star follows the Tower in the major arcana, and represents a huge tonal shift from the destruction and violence we see on that card. After a painful rebirth there follows a moment of peace, a light guiding us upwards. The Star sets the theme for the spiritual fulfilment we find in the final triad of the major arcana.
As the covid crisis lumbers on, and we all prepare to ease ourselves out of lockdown, there’s a real sense that maybe the tumult is behind us, and that there’s a way out of all this if we can follow our star. Perhaps there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, after all.
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