March 7, 2010 - The Nine of Cups

I wouldn't say I love the Nine of Cups. There's a bit of guilt that comes when I get it. I think it's the smug look on the man's face, his cups all lined in a row, "his" cups. It seems a selfish card and good little girls aren't selfish, at least that was what I was told again and again as a child. It's funny how the lessons of childhood last and last. We hardly know we carry them still until something triggers the behavior and we are 7 again, trying to please.

The question today was the one I usually ask: What is the one thing I need to know today for the health and happiness of my heart in the coming year?

The Nine of Cups is sometimes called the "wish card." It says your wish will come true. I shiver at this, the kind of frisson that comes when you are deliciously frightened, when threat and desire are just at the edge of pleasure and the slightest tip, could rush to pain. Like everyone, I have my deep, dark wishes, the ones I won't admit to, won't even utter. For all my good behavior as a child, I was a wild thing. I ruled myself with an iron hand, afraid lest my emotions overwhelm me, lest I hurt others as I was often hurt. My wish coming true will hurt another, I'm sure. My wish coming true means I am putting my desires before another's. It goes against the years of my childhood. I was not supposed to want and yet I do.

The Nine of Cups is also a card of feeling satisfied, that all's right with the world. This is another stretch for me. I've blogged about this before, my Grandmother's legacy of keeping a lid on smugness and pleasure so the gods won't be jealous. I look at the man in the card and am certain the gods will find some way to humble him. Hubris is always punished, at least if you're a devotee of Greek myths or spent any time with my Grandmother Katherine. Apparently you can take the girl out of Greece but apparently not Greece out of the girl.

Finally, the Nine of Cups is a card of enjoying sensual pleasures. It asks you to be fully present in this material world and to enjoy the glories of it. This too gives me pause. Since my bypass surgery I have not re-entered this world fully. I feel more spirit than body, as if time is borrowed, not really mine. I experience the beauty of the world with an intensity that comes, I think, from feeling no longer quite of it. I think the Nine of Cups is calling me back from the edge, to be not just in the world, but of it. I hope I can do it. I hope I can be brave enough.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Nine of Teacups depicts a dinner of friends and family at the Weston household. Mr. Weston oversees the happy table. The card speaks of an "open," welcoming, and happy heart. The bypass surgery literally opened my heart. Now it is time to figuratively open it, to be brave, to be myself. Alaska was a step in that direction. And as Machado said, the path is made by walking. There are no road maps to healing. We each of us find our own way from "cure" to healed, writing and rewriting our story of illness and recovery, perhaps in process revising our life story. The Nine of Teacups doesn't assure happiness, just your right to it. It's up to us to take the necessary actions to achieve Mr. Weston's state of contentment.