April 9, 2010 - The Ace of Cups

"What do I need to know today to help move me in the best, quickest, and happiest way toward my happy future?"   (That's me, forever trying to hedge my bets with smart wishing, as if.)

Such a beautiful card with the hope of spiritual peace, calm emotional waters, and the promise of deep drinks from a loving cup to soothe a tired and doubting soul.  The Ace of Cups is one of my favorite cards, filled with promise in the emotional realm.  A seed has been planted in the area of deep feeling, intimacy, attunement, compassion and love.  It hasn't been realized yet.  For now it's just possibility.  Seeds require care, cultivation, attention to promote their growth and even then they may not sprout, or they may overwhelm you.

When the Ace of Cups comes up in a reading, it's time to get in touch with your feelings and let your heart lead the way.  This isn't so easy for me, an air sign, and yet what was last year but a call to the heart, a challenge to be whole-hearted?  This card also signals a time of developing your intuition, a good thing for me who has lost touch with her inner voice.  I'm not sure I have any direct knowing anymore, although perhaps I know it so well these days I live it.  I can say I am more centered, more grounded, certainly more present and accounted for.  For all its hurt, I suppose love taught me the depth and breadth of me, the fullness of my cup, how much it holds.

The Ace of Cups is also a card of experiencing intimacy, falling in love, establishing a bond with another, going to even deeper levels.  This is the aspect of the card most people focus on in a reading.  When's the man coming?  Is he here?  Just around the corner.  These days this is the last aspect of the card I pay attention to.  Until I am content and sufficient unto myself, until I could live a happy and productive life alone, I am not fit really for love.

Finally, the Ace of Cups is a call to proceed with love.  Express affection, open yourself to others, letting your love light shine, forgiving and forgetting.  My tendency is to close down when hurt and the challenge for me after the heart attack and all the heart hurt that came before, has been to stay open, not shut down.  I am a dandelion, closed without the sun.  This card is my reminder to open even when I don't want to, to share that bright sunshine part of me instead of hiding my light under a bushel.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Ace of Teacups is depicted by a bone china teacup atop Jane Austen's novel, Persuasion.  (In Diane Wilkes book on the Jane Austen Tarot, she erroneously explains the card as represented by Emma, so the reader is on her own regarding the interpretation of this card.  Since all of Jane's novels deal with the heart and love, a case could be made for all of them to serve as the Ace of Cups.)  I first read Persuasion in college and found it profoundly moving.  Anne Elliot's assertion that "All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not an enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone," struck such a chord in me.  I was fresh and young with life ahead when I first read Persuasion, but it has come to be a book I profoundly resonate to.  It is a story of love, man's and woman's, and what each overcomes to be true to that first spark, that long simmering fire, that deep and wondrous connection that comes in the best of loves, the truest of loves.

Anne reminds me not to be closed, not to stop giving.  She reminds me also not to give up hope.  Maybe a specific love is gone, but that is not the only love.  Family, friends fill a life.  Work too.  Deep and profound connections exist, thrive.  A full life has not just one aspect, but all, in some part.  I suppose that's how we survive the most devastating good-byes, bouyed  by the love of those that remain.

I don't know what the Ace of Cups has in store for me, what seeds have been planted this spring, but I'll definitely keep you posted.