Nine of Cups.
Everything he asked for, and one chair.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
Nine cups on a curved counter, over a blue cloth that reaches the floor. A man sits in front on a low bench, arms folded, red cap, feet planted. Behind it all, flat yellow.
Getting what you asked for, and the nickname for this card is the wish. The picture is more careful than the nickname. All the care is in his arms and in the cloth that goes to the floor. If you have got a thing you wanted, the card is interested in what you have put behind the cloth.
Four things people go to on this card
- the shelf of cups
You went to the cups. Nine of them, up on a curved shelf behind him, where he cannot see them.
They are set out for somebody to look at. He is sitting with his back to them, facing out, which means the arrangement is not for him and he already knows what is in it.
Satisfaction that is being shown is still satisfaction. It is also a message. Ask who the message is for, because the answer tends to be one specific person, often not in the room and sometimes not alive, and the card is not mocking you for that.
Who are the cups arranged for, and have you told them?
- his folded arms
You stopped at the arms. Crossed high on the chest, with the chest pushed out and the feet apart.
The same arms say look at this and you cannot have any, and the picture does not separate the two. That is not hypocrisy. It is what pride looks like on somebody who had to fight for the thing.
There is a tell for it. If you have caught yourself telling the story of a win this week, listen for who you were arguing with while you told it. There is almost always a specific person, and they are almost never in the room when it happens.
Who were you arguing with when you told that story?
- the blue cloth
The cloth is where you went. It covers the counter and hangs to the floor, and you cannot see what is under it.
Nobody lifts a cloth while things are going well. Nothing sinister is drawn under this one: the picture makes no accusation and implies no rot. But it was drawn as a cover rather than a table, and you went to it.
What is under yours is usually dull rather than shameful. A debt. A job you would not choose again. A person doing the unseen half of the week without being thanked in a way that has ever landed. Lift it while the cups are still full.
What is under your cloth, and when did you last lift it?
- the yellow
You went to the background. No window, no landscape, no sky, only a flat yellow field with nothing in it.
This is the only card in the suit with no world outside the frame. Everywhere else in the Cups there is water, or a shore, or somebody in the distance. Here there is a room that does not open onto anything, and one man in it, happy, alone, with the picture passing no comment.
Nine cups, one bench. That is the shape of a wish granted in private. Ask who you would want sitting beside you, and whether you have actually told them the news yet.
Who would you want on the bench, and what is stopping you telling them the good news?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Nine of Cups 10° to 20° of Pisces, ruled by Jupiter, and Book T calls it the Lord of Material Happiness. The Sun is in it from 28 February to 10 March. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Eight of Cups, Saturn in Pisces, 18 February to 28 February. The one after is Ten of Cups, Mars in Pisces, 10 March to 20 March. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Nine of Cups on Yesod, the foundation, in Briah, the world of water: every nine is Yesod, in its own suit's world. It is the ninth place in the Tree of Life spread.
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.
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