Shadows of Abundance

There’s a card in the Rider Tarot / Smith-Waite Tarot that I should love, but I hate it. It sets my shadow to full dark mode. There was a time when I pulled it often or it was pulled for me, and I believe it was meant as a blessing. But I recoiled every time I saw it. Truth be told, I probably rejected a lot of blessings in the process.

Can you guess which card it is?

It’s the 9 of Cups, the “wish card” of the tarot, where all your dreams come true. I’ll be posting about it for my minor arcanum Deep Dive series next week, but its numerological significance in the suit of emotions and its astrological correspondences hit my logical brain with joy. I know from my manifold systems of interpretation that it’s a dreamy and fulfilling card. And yet that smug son-of-a-bitch that Pamela Colman Smith illustrated, squatting like a toad in front of his wall of trophies, just grates on me.

The 9 of Cups, 9 of Coins, and Page of Cups from the True Black Tarot and the Knight of Cups prototype from the Ephemere Tarot by Arthur Wang.

As depicted in that seminal deck, the 9 of Cups looks to me like a card of privilege. It feels lazy and expectant. It’s a card of getting your wish without having to work for it. For me, that does not compute.

I really struggle with the concepts of ease and flow and abundance. I shouldn’t. I know how magic and will and focus work. And when I’m minding my own business, Hermit-ing away, I get into the magical flow of things. But then I see one of those high-gloss appeals to manifestation online or in a book, and I want to scream. A refrain of It’s not fair! runs through my head before I hear my mother responding, Life’s not fair.

And that’s appropriate. My lamentation is the cry of a spoiled child who hasn’t gotten his way. He played by certain rules and expected certain outcomes. Of course, no one likes when the rules change or when they’re applied unfairly. But this isn’t an issue of social justice. It’s an issue of behavior and expectation.

The reason why something as intangible as manifestation doesn’t work when we “play by the rules” is because we’re responding to preconceived notions of what is and what should be. We’re living through our same old state and just hoping for change because we think we’ve done something to earn it. When we do that, we’re missing the point. Aren’t we?

When you do the work with an expectation of a reward, then you’re engaging in a transaction. If I do this, I get this. But the magic of manifestation is transformation.

Do you know why it feels unfair to not receive the benefits expected? For me, it’s because I know that I probably wouldn’t have done the work otherwise. Now that’s a useful reality check. It feels unfair to me because I feel as if I’ve been tricked into doing something that I wouldn’t otherwise do. I feel much more at ease with the 9 of Pentacles, the astrological opposite of the 9 of Cups. My Virgo Moon is happy in that walled-off garden. She’s earned her rewards, and she’s made sacrifices to get them. Has the man in the 9 of Cups ever had to earn anything? Has he sacrificed anything? Is he worthy of his happiness?

In Western culture, struggle is virtue. We may be experiencing a blip in that trend with proselytizers of prosperity (the people who trigger my shadow side the strongest), but struggle has been the site of Western virtue for centuries. Blame it on Protestantism and capitalism, my WASP upbringing, and my self-recognized privilege. Blame it on my 10th House Chiron in Taurus, my 1st House Moon in Virgo, and my 6th House South Node in Capricorn. Blame it on social media influencers, snake-oil charlatans, or whatever else you choose. But at the end of the day, I value struggle, and I question ease.

Don’t misunderstand me: I love ease. I would love nothing more than to lounge around by a private pool with friends all day, drenched in coconut-scented sunscreen and drinking cocktails and floating around until the stars sparkle overhead. I love ease and physical comfort. I just don’t trust it out of context. What did you have to do to get to that place? It doesn’t just happen. And if it does, you didn’t really earn it because you didn’t have to struggle. Did you?

The 4 of Pentacles, 9 of Cups, 9 of Pentacles, and 4 of Cups from the Weiser Tarot, which recolors the original line work of the Rider Tarot / Smith-Waite Tarot.

The nine cups of the 9 of Cups look like trophies to me: they look like awards that have been won. They must have been earned. And yet, that’s the whole point of the 9 of Cups. They don’t have to be earned. They’re just there, waiting for you because the Universe is abundant. Isn’t that something?

As someone who often feels the need to cling to stability and security, who sits heavily in the energy of the 4 of Pentacles far more often than I’d like to admit, I envy the man in the 9 of Cups. The man in the 4 of Pentacles is clinging to what he has, desperate that he might lose even a sliver of it. Meanwhile, the man in the 9 of Cups is just sitting there, enjoying life and feeling secure in what he has, holding only himself. Smug son of a bitch.

Yikes. Clearly this shadow work of mine is still a work in progress. So what can I learn from this reaction?

Note that I haven’t abandoned this deck to find a figure who’s more likeable. I could just avoid images like the man in the 9 of Cups and enjoy contemplating the 9 of Cups through one of the many other decks I own. That would be the easy thing to do. It would be protectionist. It would be the 4 of Pentacles thing to do, to create a barrier for my own personal protection when I feel threatened. And I am triggered by this card—some part of my ego feels threatened—but I’m not actually in danger from this card, psychologically or otherwise. And that means that this is a good opportunity for shadow work for me. It’s a good opportunity to get out of that 4 of Pentacles mindset.

So let’s go back to what I can learn from my reactions. Let me consider a fourth card. I said that I don’t understand the 9 of Cups but I do understand the 9 of Pentacles. And since I feel as if I’m coming from a 4 of Pentacles place, what can I glean from the 4 of Cups?

Interestingly, the 4 of Cups is called “Luxury” in the Thoth Tarot. That’s a short step away from prosperity and abundance. But for me, it’s a card of emotional numbness and ingratitude. The 4s of tarot suggest stability, as well as the stagnation that comes from overly stable energies. (I’ve covered how that plays out for the 4 of Pentacles in my Deep Dive on that card.) In the 4s, there’s an initial saturation, a feeling of having and being enough. In the 4s, you’re comfortable enough to not have to push for more. So why does the figure in the 4 of Pentacles look so scared? Why does the figure in the 4 of Cups seem so ungrateful?

The 9 of Orbs (Pentacles) and 9 of Swords from the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot: Vitruvian Edition by Benebell Wen depict the same woman in two different settings: external and internal.

People fear losing what they have. In the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot by Benebell Wen, the woman in the 9 of Orbs (Pentacles) is the same woman in the 9 of Swords. I suspect that she’s often up at night worrying about holding onto everything she’s worked for and how much harder she’ll have to work to stay satisfied.

That’s because people adapt to their conditions. What was new and different, good or bad, soon becomes the new normal. It’s a surprising combination with our fear of loss since most people bounce back from the initial experience of losing something. Some get back what they had or gain more, but some don’t. Still, their brains can reset. What matters is emotional connection.

On a practical, logical level, I think we all know that much of what we chase in life is a means to some other end. What actually satisfies a person is almost always the emotional experience, not the thing. As someone who is very earthy, I tend to forget that. Of course, I literally know it to be true, and I understand the rational argument, but I put a lot of stake in the material world, in tangible objects and quantifiable outputs. I infuse stuff with meaning, like a ritual fetish, when the meaning derives from somewhere else entirely.

I need to break out of that pattern. How about you?

Generally speaking, people are surprisingly resilient. I know it doesn’t always feel like that. But just being here to read this means that you’ve been through some things, and you’re still being. So go you! Give yourself credit for making it to where you are, wherever you are right now and wherever you want to be. Chances are good that you’re somewhere that you once wanted to be, but you’ve reset.

So when you’re feeling safe and possibly a little stuck, you might want to take some risks to shake things up. You may “win” and you may “lose.” But there’s a good chance that if you’re not tied in to your emotional needs, if you’re not doing what you feels aligned to your heart and soul, you’ll probably come back to neutral.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent too much of my life in neutral. It’s a Chariot year after all. Let’s ride.

For me, I plan to enjoy swimming in the sun soon. I could journal my gratitude, but I’ll do that later. I need a reset, and it’ll be nice to offset all the swimming in my shadows that I’ve been doing. Shadow work is important, but it’s just one part of using tarot to transform your life. You have to move beyond it to actually find your natural alignments. Then you can learn to channel those toward living a more meaningful and satisfying life. That doesn’t mean you won’t sometimes cling to what you have or fear what the future might bring (even the 9 of Cups goodness). But it does mean that you’ll know how to move in the right direction when it’s time to get out of neutral.