9 of Cups: Pisces II
Hermetic Title: Happiness / Material Happiness
Decan ruler (Chaldean): Jupiter
Corresponding majors: The Wheel of Fortune (Jupiter) and The Moon (Pisces)
Dates: February 29 - March 9
Nine cups, polished and golden, pose atop a draped display, looking for all the world like the candles on a birthday cake. Go ahead, blow them out and make a wish! For indeed, we have arrived at last at the famous "card of wishes". Something magical is about to happen (though as always in magic, the causal mechanism is shrouded from view). The 9 of Cups is the Lord of Happiness - for what is happier than the moment when one believes one's fondest wish is about to be fulfilled? Happier, you could even say, than the fulfillment itself - for in the anticipation lies much of the sweetness.
Benefics and Malefics at work: the Lords of Disappointment, Happiness, and Sorrow.
Jovial Fortune
In the 9 of Cups, last card of Jupiter in our journey, we find the Greater Benefic in fine fettle. Besides ruling the decan, he is the traditional ruler of Pisces. Small wonder he is the Lord of Happiness! just as Saturn, the Greater Malefic, is the Lord of Sorrow when exalted in Libra, and Mars, the Lesser Malefic, is the Lord of Disappointment when in rulership in Scorpio.
Back in Leo II, the 6 of Wands, I speculated about the 'overall dignity' of the Jupiter minors, by combining their astrological essential dignity with their Tree of Life placement. I'm not a huge fan of esoteric point systems, but the resulting grid was certainly thought-provoking.
Central decans (3, 6, and 9 - especially the 6 and 9, which occupy the Middle Pillar kabbalistically) provide a fulcrum; a place of balance. As the last such place in our journey, in Pisces' teeming seas under Jove's benign watch, the 9 of Cups is fortunate any way you look at it.
The Double Meaning of Providence
Once upon a time - and maybe still today, in more godly neighborhoods than mine, "Providence" meant "God's will": the notion that a benevolent divine intention guides every earthly action. But more often nowadays when we say we're trusting to providence - or when we quaintly exclaim, "how providential!" when we run into a friend on the street - we're talking about chance. So which is it, when we speak of "providence"? Are we speaking of capricious Fortune, or are we speaking of an omniscient God? And what does it say about our worldview that we can no longer tell the two apart?
We invoke Providence when circumstance takes us by surprise. We trust that "everything happens for a reason". I think that both of the 9 of Cups' corresponding major arcana, the Wheel of Fortune and the Moon, have something to say about the mysterious workings of Providence.
I've recently started thinking about how the planetary archetypes express themselves through metaphor. If Jupiter is the Wheel, what properties of the Wheel arise in Jupiter's decans? Reflecting on it, I can't help feeling that each of the five Jovial minors has a Providential quality:
There is a third, linguistically obscure though etymologically obvious meaning of "providence," which is "to look ahead". By this I think theologians mean "prudence" - foresight, planning ahead. But I like to think of it as not just looking ahead, but looking forward to - joyously anticipating. This happy state of what affect theorists call "interest-excitement" (a vital element of what Mikhail Cziksentmihalyi called "flow") captures the essence of the 9 of Cups. We are excited and happy not merely because of what we have, but because of what's to come. We don't know for sure - and a modicum of surprise is a large part of the pleasure - but we have a happy premonition that Providence will, well, provide.
'Most Fruitful of the Stars'
The archetypal Moon stands for many things in human symbol-language - motherhood, uncertainty, flexibility, speed, public image, magic, dreams. But here in 9 of Cups territory, paired with Fortune, she is the midwife of Fate. Agrippa says of the Moon that she is ..."the most fruitful of the stars, and receiving the beams and influences of all the other planets and stars as a conception, bringing them both to the inferior world as being next to itself; for all the stars have influence on it, being the last receiver, which afterwards communicateth the influences of all the superiors to these inferiors, and pours them forth on the Earth....without the Moon intermediating, we cannot at any time attract the power of the superiors."
In other words, the Moon has the power to shape and transform our destinies. To visit the lunar realm is to take a step backstage, where reality is still negotiable. We can see a graphic representation of this on the Tree of Life. The paths of the Wheel and the Moon trace a descent through the Pillar of Force. Along the way they gather the blessings of Chesed, sphere of Jupiter, and Netzach, sphere of Venus, and deliver them to us in Malkuth.
Malkuth, of course, is our own living world; the realm of our physical bodies and five senses. Everything above it on the Tree is, you could say, the domain of Providence. On Providence's map, we can also look at the sphere of the Moon as planet (as opposed to the path of the Moon as card) and see the same thing. The sphere of the Moon is the ninth, Yesod, just one step away from our earthly kingdom (indeed, in traditional Kabbalah, there is only one path between the two rather than the three paths seen in esoteric tarot's Tree). In Yesod, the imagination holds unequalled power to shape reality as it gathers for expression in Malkuth.
Hence we encounter the resilience of the 9 of Wands, the fearful projections of the 9 of Swords, the green thumb of the 9 of Pentacles, and, of course, the wish-granting elixir of the 9 of Cups - Love Potion No. 9! Reality bends, twists, thrashes, evolves in the 9, to be crystallized into tangible events as it passes into the 10 and our own rigid perception of linear time. It is, of course, a vain exercise to speak of metaphysical causes as if they were Newtonian ones. Still, it's hard to look at the paths and spheres of the Tree and not feel as if you were beholding the hidden mechanism of wishes coming true.
I'm reminded of the Chinese myth of the Moon goddess, Chang'E. Once a mortal, she drank the drug of immortality meant for her husband. But in a case of epic unintended consequences, its strength caused her to float into the heavens and she came to rest on the moon, where her husband - and the rest of us - long for her to this day. In other words, be careful what you wish for!
I'm also reminded of something we spoke of in the 3 of Cups: the Nine is the fruit of the Three. Remember that the 3 of Cups is the Lord of Abundance? If that's the case, then 3 x Abundance must equal Happiness - which I think we can all agree to be self-evidently true.
Lucky Fish
To everyone's everlasting confusion, it's the High Priestess card that corresponds to the Moon as traditional planet and nocturnal luminary - not the Moon card. Instead, the Moon card corresponds to the zodiacal sign of Pisces. This makes some intuitive sense, since the Moon rules the seas, home to all fishes; on the card, we see a sea creature crawling up from the waters. The story of Pisces, the constellation, is a story of escape. Pursued by the monstrous, serpentine Typhon, Aphrodite and her son, Eros turned themselves into fish, plunged into a river, and fled. Another origin myth suggests that Aphrodite emerged from an egg hatched by a fish. Either way, the goddess has a primal connection to the world's waters ("Venus is cold and moist and a fortune," states Picatrix III.7), as well as the sign of the world's waters; she is exalted at 27° Pisces.
from the Anna K Lenormand
As the saying "plenty more fish in the sea!" implies, fish imply abundance, wealth, and a certain amount of luck; each time he casts a line into the sea the fisherman trusts to chance far more than the farmer. In Lenormand decks, the card of the fish signifies financial matters: commerce, markets, business transactions.
Innumerable are the myths of magic and the sea. Fish swallow golden rings, only for them to turn up as inevitable plot devices at royal feasts. Messages travel vast distances in bottles, washing up on distant shores. Talking fish grant three wishes to foolish fishwives. In all cases, the fortuitous fish with its glittering scales signifies a powerful change of fortune - to be grasped quickly or lost forever. The nature of this change is fleeting and mutable, like the sign of Pisces itself. It may come down to following a serendipitous hunch, like Harry Potter following his instincts after downing a lucky dose of Felix Felicis potion.
from Maggie Kneen’s sumptuous Psy-Cards deck.
‘High and Great Matters’
Tarot scholars Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin have suggested that Pamela Colman Smith's 9 of Cups is a portrait of Shakespeare's Falstaff, from Henry IV. Although there is no specific citation to be had from either Waite or Smith, it is easy to see a Falstaffian temperament in the self-satisfied figure on his bench. His arms rest comfortably over his ample belly whilst a surplus of tasty brews lined up behind him, evidence of a Jupiter-sized appetite. Perhaps he is good-natured, expansive, and foolish like Falstaff; perhaps he is merely well-fed and smug. Maybe he's stoned!
Picatrix concurs, mentioning in some renditions that the figure occupying this decan is occupying himself with food or food trays. All versions concur that the decan signifies "matters of importance" or "high, serious and thoughtful". This, while hardly the hedonism of a Falstaff, is also in keeping with great-minded Jupiter. In the nebulous seas of Pisces, spiritual surrender, dissolution of the boundaries of self, and boundless desire blend into one another.
The Everyday 9 of Cups
I have had the pleasure - and it is a very great pleasure indeed - of drawing the 9 of Cups 48 times in the 5 years I've been recording cards. Every iteration is a little different. Sometimes there are gifts, sometimes there's great food, or books I enjoyed, or simply taking the time for a leisurely walk in the woods. What my 9 of Cups days have in common, though, is a certain exceptionalism - a moment of relief and true indulgence amidst the usual dutiful rounds.
The Takeaway
When you draw the 9 of Cups, be of good cheer, for something wonderful is about to happen! Indeed, something wonderful already has. Will you win the lottery? will you sample something utterly delicious? Will you find yourself with an unexpected hour of perfect freedom? Anything and everything is possible.
Remember, though, that this is the card of wishes, not expectations. Surprise is of the essence! Expecting a boon, like the fisherman's wife, is a recipe for disappointment (see 5 of Cups above). We learned in the 3 of Cups to embrace abundance, the appreciation of what we have. Now that we have arrived at thrice the 3, we embrace happiness by appreciating the unexpected. So wish with all your heart, so you may delight in even the smallest of Fortune's children!