Twinkle, Twinkle Little Estoile

Outwith England and Wales, the term ‘star’ (or its direct translation) is commonly found in heraldic texts and blazons. In English heraldry it is a rarity, with a determined effort to avoid its use. What is a blazon? The blazon is the truth and essence of heraldry. As notation is to music, so is the blazon to heraldic art. A heraldic achievement is defined not by any one graphical representation but by this concise description - ensuring clarity and consistency in how arms are identified across various interpretations and artistic styles.

The modern coat of arms for the City of Sydney has a six pointed golden star above a shield. Unlike the coat of arms granted by the College of Arms as a blazon in 1908, the legal basis now is a specific design by a graphic artist, approved with powers assumed by members of the council in 1996. Personally I am fond of the design, especially the symbolism of the rainbow serpent, adorned with markings used by the Eora people, coiled around a rope. It is an inventive design but, without a blazon, it is a corporate logo resembling the style of heraldic art. The majority of civic arms in Australia were initially assumed and Sydney’s star crest actually made its debut a few decades before the official grant, as early heraldic designs were carved in Sydney’s golden sandstone.

In Germanic heraldry the blazon is direct and straightforward, written in contemporary language. For example, the arms of German author and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832):

einen blauen Schild mit silberner Einfassung und in dessen Mitte einen sechsstrahligen silbernen Morgenstern (a blue shield with a silver border and at its centre a six-rayed silver Morning Star)

Arms of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with the “herrlichen Morgenstern” (glorious Morning Star), 1775 

The Morning Star typically refers to the planet Venus when it appears in the east before sunrise, although it has also been applied to the brightest of stars, Sirius, which appears in the sky just before sunrise from early July to mid-September.

In the British Isles, the blazon consists of defined terms, some Anglo-Norman, some English, each with unique characteristics. For stars, the terms ‘estoile’, ‘star’ and ‘mullet’ define distinct shapes - either wavy or straight and with or without a hole in the middle. The College of Arms prefers estoile, mullet (or molet) and ‘mullet pierced’. In Scotland these respectively equate to estoile, star and mullet (historically defined as pierced). Conventions were not fully established in Scotland until the 19th century and, adding to the confusion, mullet in the English sense has since found its way north of the border too.

The shift from ‘star’ to specific terms distinguishing star-like shapes follows a consistent pattern of wavy estoiles and straight-sided mullets, evident in British works published since the 16th century.

John Guillim (c.1565-1621), who was Rouge Croix Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary at the College of Arms in London, uses only the terms Star and Mullet in A Display of Heraldrie, published 1610 (republished 1660 and as late as 1724):

It is holden, that the fixed Starres are discerned by their sparkling or twinkling, by reason that our sight being bound, as it were, by the forciblenesse of their resplendent raies, our eies doe become wavering and trembling in beholding them; and for this cause ought all Starres to be made with their raies or points waved.

So Guillim’s star, which today is called an estoile, has a unique shape for the representation of celestial stars. By default it has six wavy rays. Boutell’s Heraldry, revised by John Philip Brooke-Little between 1963 and 1983, provides a good definition:

The stars of heaven are blazoned as ESTOILES, and have six (or sometimes more) wavy rays. The estoile must be distinguished from the star-shaped figure called a molet, or mullet, which has straight rays and may be pierced. In Scotland the term star applies to an unpierced molet.

Guillim goes further, taking issue with the tinctures, or colours, of the arms of the Ingleby family of Ripley Castle. He provides the blazon Sable, a Star Argent (a silver star on a black shield) but suggests that the star should be Or (golden) and the shield Azure (blue):

If this Starre were born Or, which is his proper colour, it would adde much more grace unto it, especially in regard of the Azury Field, the proper colour of the Heavens, wherein Starres have their naturall mansion.

Arms of Sir William Ingleby, (1518-1578), of Ripley Castle 

Now some may say that dark space is mostly a void, an absence of light, and that what the colours of light’s spectrum combine to produce is called ‘white light’, but where’s the myth and romance? Not forgetting too that in Guillim’s day no one had seen the heavens except through earth’s atmosphere. Ask instead an artist how the night sky appears to them. Ask Vincent van Gogh what he saw before the sunrise one morning in 1889 that inspired him to paint The Starry Night.

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, 1889

And while we’re asking questions, might the prominent, bright star in Ingleby’s arms be Sirius, or could it be Venus, like van Gogh’s distinctive morning star which rises above the horizon with its unique appearance, and which is not actually a star at all? The answer is provided by Gerard Legh in The Accedens of Armory, published 1562:

This is the pole Artike, who leadeth the shyppmaster, and sheweth the Astronomer, the waye to all other starres.

A star of the heavens, according to British tradition, is an Estoile Or (golden, with six wavy rays) and the heavens themselves are Azure (blue). This interpretation probably derives from principles established in London during the 16th century but cannot be applied to earlier heraldry or beyond the British Isles and Commonwealth countries. Elsewhere, stars may be explicitly named in the blazon, as with Goethe’s Morgenstern, but apart from certain depictions of the North Star, no comparable convention consistently distinguishes celestial stars by form and colour.

Guillim’s ideal is realised in the coat of arms of the City of Hobart in Tasmania. The wavy star is taken from the arms of Lord Robert Hobart, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire, after whom the city was named.

Arms of Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1560-1625), of Blickling Hall, Politician, as depicted in Guillim’s “

A Display of Heraldrie

”

, 1610

The tincture chosen for the City of Hobart shield was Azure, decided not by a Herald versed in the works of Guillim but by local Architect and Alderman Iliffe Gordon Anderson (1890–1963), who designed the arms in 1951 after “many hours of painstaking research”. The design was granted by the College of Arms in 1953. The same combination of tinctures has since found its way to Denmark, where Hobart born Queen Mary of Denmark has two golden ‘Commonwealth stars’ on an Azure chief in her coat of arms.

Municipal arms of the City of Hobart (lion passant Wikimedia: Sodacan, Jack Ryan Morris)

If celestial stars are distinguished by colour and shape, was it an estoile that “did light and arrest upon the standard of Aubre de Vere” and, by falling to earth, was it transformed into a mullet? Given the historical ambiguity and “fusion of fact and fancy” in heraldry, sometimes our eyes do tremble, yet sometimes, perhaps, we might just call a star a star.

Estoile, Star of Six Points and Mullet Or

Euch bedaur’ ich, unglücksel’ge Sterne,

Die ihr schön seyd und so herrlich scheinet,

Dem bedrängten Schiffer gerne leuchtet,

Unbelohnt von Göttern und von Menschen.

Denn ihr liebt nicht, kanntet nie die Liebe!

Unaufhaltsam führen ew’ge Stunden

Eure Reihen durch den weiten Himmel.

Welche Reise habt ihr schon vollendet,

Seit ich weilend in dem Arm der Liebsten

Euer und der Mitternacht vergessen!

Nachtgedanken (Night Thoughts) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1789.

I pity you, unfortunate stars,
You who are beautiful and shine so gloriously,
Willingly lighting the way for the troubled sailor,
Unrewarded by gods and by men:
For you do not love, have never known love!
Unstoppably, eternal hours guide
Your ranks across the vast heavens.
What journeys you have already completed,
Since I, resting in the arms of my beloved,
Forgot you and the midnight hour!

Pillars of Creation, James Webb Space Telescope, 2022 (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

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