Nine of Cups
Neuf de Coupe (Tarot de Marseille) · Nine of Chalices · Happiness (Thoth) · The wish card
A well-fed man sits contentedly before nine cups on a curved shelf: the Nine of Cups is the traditional wish card, read as satisfaction and pleasure.
Upright contentment · satisfaction · wishes fulfilled · pleasure · comfort · gratitude
Reversed smugness · overindulgence · dissatisfaction · unfulfilled wish · materialism
- Astrology
- Jupiter in Pisces
- Element
- Water
- Number
- 9
- Golden Dawn title
- Lord of Material Happiness
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
Popular tarot calls the Nine of Cups the wish card: if a question is asked with a wish in mind, the card is said to promise that wish fulfilled. In the Waite–Smith tradition it stands for contentment, physical well-being and pleasure in life's good things. Waite wrote of concord, contentment and physical bonhomie, also victory, success and advantage, and satisfaction for the querent.
Love and relationships: emotional satisfaction, enjoying one another's company, happiness with what one has; a hope granted.
Work and money: comfort, success, recognition of effort, a time to enjoy the fruits of work; financial ease if the neighbouring cards agree.
Advice: enjoy it. Allow yourself to feel satisfied, share your table, and let gratitude keep contentment from sliding into complacency.
Reversed
Reversed, satisfaction may tip into excess or feel hollow. Readers describe smugness, overindulgence, a fixation on material comfort, or a wish granted that turns out not to be what one really wanted. Waite's inverted meanings were unexpectedly positive — truth, loyalty and liberty — though he admitted that the readings vary and include mistakes and imperfections. Many readers do not use reversals and would read this card's shadow from heavier neighbours. When the reversal is read, it asks whether pleasure is being shared and savoured, or merely accumulated.
The image
A stout, prosperous man sits on a wooden bench in the middle of the card, arms folded across his chest, with a red cap on his head and a satisfied expression. Behind him a curved, arched shelf covered with a blue cloth holds nine golden cups in a neat row. The background is a plain yellow. Waite described him as a goodly personage who has feasted to his heart's content, with abundant refreshment of wine on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured.
History
In the Marseille decks the Nine of Cups is an array of cups in rows with no figures. Smith's well-fed host was new in 1909, and she drew him with an affectionate humour unusual among the more solemn cards. The name wish card comes from popular fortune-telling practice rather than from Waite, though his list of meanings pointed the same way. Many twentieth-century reading guides, following that popular tradition, treat the card's appearance in answer to a yes-or-no question as a firm yes.
Symbolism
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Material Happiness and placed it in Yesod, giving it Jupiter in Pisces, the great benefic in a sign that traditional astrology assigned to its rulership. Crowley's Thoth card is called Happiness. Nine is the near-completion of a cycle (see number 9), the point before ten takes things to their fullest; in the watery suit it is emotional and sensual fulfilment. The folded arms show both satisfaction and a certain self-containment, while the cups behind the host, on display rather than in use, show plenty secured. Some readers see in him a reminder that pleasure is good; others, a gentle satire of self-satisfaction.
In a reading
Readers often read it as a firm yes, especially with the Sun or the Wheel of Fortune. With the Ten of Cups personal contentment widens into family happiness; with the Four of Cups satisfaction risks boredom; with the Devil it warns of excess. In a future position it is among the most welcome minor cards.
In readings about a specific wish, practitioners sometimes ask the querent to name the wish silently before the cards are laid out, following the popular custom; if the Nine of Cups then appears, the wish is said to be favoured. Readers who work in the Waite–Smith tradition usually present this as folklore rather than prediction.
In readings about well-being, the card is a gentle reminder to enjoy simple comforts.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Book of Thoth — Aleister Crowley, 1944
- Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for Personal Transformation — Mary K. Greer, 1984
- The Encyclopedia of Tarot — Stuart R. Kaplan, 1978