Luigi Mangione and The Star
What 2024's tarot card reveals to us about collective healing
With the year 2024 came many things: a Trump reprisal, aliens, the continued slaughter of innocent lives supported by our tax dollars… Leading us, the collective, to grow— jaded? unsurprised? disenchanted? bored? apathetic?
Humans have a tremendous skill to normalize. No matter how much cognitive dissonance it takes, our processing systems prioritize sanity at all costs. This is a gift, truly, one that will do us well in the ever-quickening future, but it also comes at a cost.
Sometimes things have to crumble completely for us to wake up.
The health care system has not crumbled completely, though one can argue that this is because it never existed in the first place. All over the world, yes, even in countries where treatments for heart attacks and cancer are free, health care has never really been “health” care; it has always been “sick” care.
Our systems of care are reactive, not preventative. We seek care when we are sick, not healthy. We live in toxic systems, drink polluted water, work ourselves to death, breathe tainted air, eat manufactured food, and then go to the doctor for a pill to make it better.
This is a broad diagnosis, of course, but one that is mostly true.
The solution to most, if not all, of our health problems exists outside the realm of a doctor’s prescriptions. An actual health care system would require a lower “cost” of living—or even, no cost of living at all. An actual health care system would create the conditions for people to enjoy life free from the suffering that exploitation and greed necessitate.
Enter: Luigi.
The perfect end to 2024 and the archetypes it represented numerologically.
2 + 0 + 2 + 4 = 8
The year “2024” is associated with three tarot cards: Justice, Strength, and The Star.
Most years are associated with two tarot cards, but eight is a special number in the tarot. The eighth card of the Major Arcana is a cipher.
Depending on what deck you use, you will find one of two cards in its place. In traditional decks, the 8th card is Justice, but in modern decks, the 8th card is Strength.
The other “8” card in the deck is the seventeenth card, The Star.
1 + 7 = 8
The Star, most often referred to as a card of “healing,” perfectly encapsulates our current collective consciousness around health, self-empowerment, and (r)evolution.
Coming after The Tower (♂) and before The Moon (♓︎), The Star is an Aquarius (♒︎) card. Aquarius is the second last sign of the zodiac and represents the collective. It is a fixed air sign that is associated with innovation and re-imagining the status quo.
Whatever you think of Mr. Mangione, you cannot deny that he is tapped into, and working with, the collective unconscious.
The most widely known and referenced depiction of The Star (from the Rider Waite Smith deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith) depicts a naked woman as the Aquarian water bearer. With one foot resting on the ground and the other foot resting on top of a pool of water, she showcases the balance between the human and the divine.
We see this balance represented again with the water she pours on land splitting into five streams (five = four limbs and a head = the human) while the water she pours into the pool merges without delineation.
This depiction of The Star invites us to live fully in our bodies while also tapping into something greater than our bodies. The water bearer encourages us to remember that even though to be in a body is to have an experience of separation from source, that we must keep the knowledge that we are inherently divine (and powerful) at the front of our minds.
The shadow side of The Star is spiritual bypassing. This is what healing has become today. A trillion dollar wellness industry has replaced community care, the non-market solution for our unwellness, with self-care and an endless parade of products and services meant to “fix” us. When we look to her shadow side, The Star reminds us that no amount of “healing” will ever be enough.
We have been conditioned and manipulated to believe that we are broken, and we have been tricked into believing that healing this brokenness is an individual problem, not a collective one. From this place of disempowerment, we have forgotten our power—and our divinity.
Not Luigi though. He remembered his power. Even if that power appears to align with the war games they have taught us are the only solution, he made a choice outside of the lines of dictated by our current system. He took action without regret—something we are feeling into for 2025, a year of The Hermit (9) and The Moon (18).
True healing is knowing that we are whole, no matter what. And remembering that wholeness is the key to accessing our internal source of power.
Luigi’s actions reveal both the ascended and shadow sides of The Star.
By sparking conversations around what health care could be and what it clearly is not, we have the opportunity to imagine a world where no one profits from anyone else’s unwellness. By taking action, he has sparked a feeling of power and possibility within people. What else could happen if we stop playing by the rules of a rigged game?
Meanwhile, his shadow stretches long over the angry masses as they refresh their feeds looking for the next meme to calm their rattled nerves. There is nothing wrong with shadows, of course; we cannot escape them—it is the nature of being in a body to cast a shadow—but The Star reminds us that the real (r)evolution will not be televised and cannot be placed upon a pedestal.
There are no heroes coming to save us. The only true savior is the one we find inside ourselves. Luckily, that hero is ever present and waiting patiently to shine their light.
2025 awaits and with it, the lessons of The Hermit and The Moon. As we wrap up 2024, I am giving thanks for all that has unfolded. May we all step forward with the excitement of something new.