Minor Arcana, the Cups
Nine of Cups
The Nine of Cups, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909, shows a stout, smiling man in a red cap sitting on a low wooden bench with his arms folded across his chest. Behind him nine gold cups stand in a curved row on a high shelf hung with blue cloth, against a plain, warm yellow background.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Concord, contentment, physical bien-être; also victory, success, advantage; satisfaction for the Querent or person for whom the consultation is made.
- Reversed
Truth, loyalty, liberty; but the readings vary and include mistakes, imperfections, etc.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 208. Read it in the chapter
A goodly personage has feasted to his heart's content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured. The picture offers the material side only, but there are other aspects.
What's in the picture
- The smile. His round face looks straight at us with a small, satisfied smile, his cheeks full. Waite pictured him as a man who "has feasted to his heart's content".
- The red cap. A soft red cap sits tilted on his head, with a red plume falling from it over his ear.
- The folded arms. His arms are crossed in front of his chest, each hand resting on the other forearm.
- The arc of cups. The nine cups stand in an arch along the shelf behind him, highest in the middle and lower toward the sides. The ones at the ends are partly hidden by the edges of the card.
- The blue cloth. A heavy blue cloth covers the shelf and hangs almost to the floor in long folds, like a curtain, closing off whatever lies behind.
- The robe. His long white robe is striped all over with thick black lines and spreads wide over his knees. Two thin lines cross on his lap in an X, perhaps a cord.
- The bench. He sits on a plain wooden bench, its ends showing on both sides of his robe, set right in front of the blue cloth.
- The red stockings. Red stockings and soft grey shoes show under the robe. His feet are planted well apart on the yellow floor.
- The yellow wall. Above the cups there is nothing but flat yellow, with no window, door or sky. Whatever room this is ends at the shelf.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 45 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Cups
- Number
- Nine
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Water
- Astrology (Golden Dawn)
- Jupiter in Pisces
- Title in Book T
- Lord of Material Happiness
- Drawn by
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Planned by
- Arthur Edward Waite
- Published
- London, William Rider & Son, 1909
- Scan
- Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons
In the old books
Book T (1912)
A White Radiant Angelic Hand, issuing from a cloud holding lotus or water-lilies, one flower of which overhangs each cup; from it a white water pours. Cups are arranged in three rows of 3. ♃ and ♓︎ above and below.
Complete and perfect realization of pleasure and happiness, almost perfect; self-praise, vanity, conceit, much talking of self, yet kind and lovable, and may be self-denying therewith. High-minded, not easily satisfied with small and limited ideas. Apt to be maligned through too much self-assumption. A good and generous, but sometimes foolish nature.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 193. See the source Papus (1892)
Motherhood.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 313. See the source
Before 1909
The older cards and pictures behind this one will be shown here once their licences are checked.
The film
No film for this card yet.
Around this card
Before and after it in the deck
The same number in the other suits
All the cards of the Cups, or the whole deck.