Queering the Tarot, page 16
The Four instead suggests seeking connection, taking time for meditation, and reflecting on what led you to this point. Where should you have listened to your heart instead of your brain or another person? What can you do differently now? What will that mean for the rest of your life? Your mood, for whatever reason, isn't going to improve by sheer will. Time, consideration, and changes are needed if you want to find the piece that, right now, in this moment of the Four of Cups, feels like it's missing.
When we went through the Suit of Swords, we talked about the disproportionate levels of depression that LGBTQQIP2SA+ people live with, and certainly the reality of life is that countless people struggle with various forms of clinical depression. We're looking at a time in our lives when things are seemingly going right, but we are still struggling to feel connected. Depression and disassociation often come up with the Four, and that's even more true for queer seekers. Queer seekers also often live within a society that puts shame and judgment on our very existences, or makes us invisible altogether. Even with no mental illness at play, those external messages can push us into feeling unengaged with the world around us, or make us feel numb even when things are going well. We often can't and don't relate to mainstream television shows, movies, or even books. That's a lack of connection that has nothing to do with our mental state, and one that can slip into our subconscious and make us feel isolated without any hint to our conscious minds that it's happening.
Because queer seekers often feel isolated due to lack of representation in the art and media that drive much of our society, or because no one around them understands the struggle and confusion that purely being themselves has wrought, the fix is pretty straightforward. This card urges LGBTQQIP2SA+ querents to seek out queer media or branch out and find community where they are. Even in small towns, you usually aren't alone even when it feels like it. Look for ads for social groups, or get online and look for meet ups. I've even used dating apps and websites to find friends in my area (and that actually usually turns out much better than using them strictly for dating purposes).
Romantic loneliness shows up in this Four, too. This is a suit about interpersonal connections that does often promise romance. Even if we don't prioritize that area of our lives though, loneliness still sneaks up on us sometimes. Loneliness can cause a lot of sadness and heaviness that we associate with depression or pure ennui. If you're alone because of lack of options, it might be time to open yourself up to queer people in other cities, or find new community where you are. If you're not in a small town, it may be time to make some scary leaps. That means actually getting back out there and seeing what's in store, or being willing to put your heart on the line when do you meet another LGBTQQIP2SA+ person that you click with. I would absolutely advise you to be safe if you know that there is a lot of hostility toward queer people in your area. Letting your guard down does not mean behaving carelessly or refusing to listen to your gut. Make sure you are talking to someone who is LGBTQQIP2SA+ themselves or you're in a safer space. Once you are, though, this is a time to drop your guard. Your long-term emotional health is far more important than the (slight) risk of a brutal rejection.
THE FIVE THROUGH SEVEN OF CUPS
This might seem like an odd grouping of cards to write as one, but the way these three play together has always felt very intertwined to me. We have the Five of Cups, a card of heartache and despair that follows the Four. Often this card comes because we didn't take the advice of the Four, and now we are feeling totally alone and we are devastated about it. Other times, we think we're living large in this Three of Cups joy, and now, all of a sudden we come crashing back to Earth with no warning. Still other times, we are somewhere else entirely. We are trying to follow our heart's desire and we get burned—badly. It's a card that sees us eating large amounts of ice cream in bed while our cats stare at our crying faces, bewildered. This card can be what leads to the Six of Cups, a card of nostalgia that can help or hinder us. Childhood memories often resurface, which means the sadness of the Five can leave us looking backward for answers. How could we have let this happen? Where did it all go wrong?
We can get stuck in the Six, craving reunion (or giving in to very bad ideas like meeting up with old exes), or we can progress to the Seven. This is a card where we are overwhelmed and bombarded with choices. This is made more complicated when we consider the Cups' drive to live in states of illusion and indulge in fantasies. How many of these choices are even real? How many choices are we creating with our mind, when, in reality, they were never possible to begin with? Ultimately this is a card where too many choices can be deafening—real or not. It's easy to say, “Let the dust settle,” when you're not the one staring down an uncertain future. Ultimately, this card is a waiting game. Our heart may not know what's real or not, and certainly if we let ourselves live in the nostalgia and craving of the past that marks the Six, it will create options it shouldn't as we approach the Seven. Our intuition knows what's real, though, and so does our logical mind. Our friends, our families, our deities; they all know what's real too. The Seven is a time to listen to other people and other parts of ourselves to figure out how to recover from that Five, move on from that Six, and make the right decisions now.
Queer people nurture unhealthy relationships at about the same rate as the rest of the population, and that's so much of what we see in the Five through Seven of Cups; unhealthy relationships with lovers, friends, or employers creating additional problems in our lives and toying with our emotional health. It's important to note the special and specific reasons LGBTQQIP2SA+ querents might cling to unhealthy things or people compared to the rest of the population. For starters, if it's romantic relationships we are looking at, that scarcity mind-set is real. We are arguably less than 5 percent of the population, and depending on what gender you are and what gender or genders you are looking for, it's likely to be an even smaller percentage therein. So yes, we sometimes hold tightly to relationships that are unhealthy or even totally over, terrified that we're now destined to die alone. If it's an unhealthy employment situation showing up in any of these cards, please consider how often queer people live in poverty before advising a client (or yourself) to simply cut through the clouds and move on. It isn't always that easy or even possible for marginalized people. Apply this message across the board to friendships, housing, and so on.
That also means even after a heartbreak in the Five that we should have learned from, fantasizing about the past in the Six and realizing it's better to move on in the Seven, those choices aren't real in a different way than other people might see them. Choices where your morals, identity, and or allyship to other marginalized groups are put on the line so that you can have basic things like a decent apartment or job that pays well are not real choices. This is the effect of a society built for a wealthy few on the backs of so many others. We have to do what we have to do, which means staring at a Seven of Cups, knowing these choices are just an illusion of choice, and deciding what is best for us in that moment. It's exhausting to even think about all of the times I was faced with an insurmountable number of options, especially when I knew that some of them were really not, or should not be, options at all.
At the last day job I ever had, I worked in the box office at a well-known theatre company. That company's season was released, and it was incredibly exclusionary to POC and women. Keeping quiet about the erasure my POC friends felt in that theatre company's season was never a real option for me. So I spoke out (publicly, a couple of times) and ended up being watched like a hawk by managers. That left me with a plethora of emotions, obstacles, and choices, none of which were real. I could stay and fight for change, which probably wouldn't work. I could leave and be strapped for cash but making great art elsewhere. I could stay, keep my head low during the workday, and ignore the stares and whispers. None of those were fair to me or to the POC members of my arts community. Eventually my heart healed from the Five of Cups. In my case this was the hurt and pain I felt knowing that it wasn't actually safe to speak out at this organization. Then came the Six, a dreamy period where I wished I hadn't left the job prior to this one, which was super queer friendly and had a POC-oriented mission, but where I really wasn't making ends meet. Finally, here I was at the Seven, looking at all of the choices I could make, and realizing that almost every single Cup was filled with half-truths and more heartbreak.
I am a reader who is always tempted to spin the cards into something positive, and there is artistic evidence for that in this run of cards. Sometimes having a lot of choices is incredibly freeing. Sometimes nostalgia and memories are fun and wonderful and warm. In the Five, most often, three cups are knocked over but two are still standing. “Look at the things that are working out,” I've told countless clients. All of these things are true. Sometimes, though, when we're looking at the tarot as a whole, especially from a queer or otherwise marginalized perspective, things are just going to be crappy for a while. It is your job as a person to dig deep and find the positive emotions and safe heart space in spite of that. It is your job to look at that Seven of Cups and find a cup where you get to live your truth and live in love, even if there isn't one yet. It's not fair. That's a lot of extra work for us. It is work that will ultimately lead to fulfillment, though, and sometimes that's the best we can hope for.
THE EIGHT OF CUPS
Luckily the Eight of Cups turns things around for us pretty quickly. This card denotes a bittersweet ending. You loved this relationship, town, or job, but they're over now. That's really sad. However, the promise of this card is that you are moving on beautifully to bigger, brighter things. This is a decision that isn't made lightly. There are a lot of pieces of your heart still swimming around that last phase of your life. There probably always will be, but the time has come to make the hard decision and move on. This is one my least favorite cards in the deck to receive personally. I actually really love Death and The Tower. I can end things I do not want to look back on like nobody's business. I can burn down a truly toxic, crappy situation with the best of them. I can throw Swords at problems and just end them like it's going out of style. Yet when my own heart is on the line and I know I will always partially regret this decision, I struggle. I am likely to stay for way too long, causing more heartache than necessary when I inevitably do make the right decision. I try to find ways around making this decision until I just can't anymore.
Much of that is because of my own queerness. I have been so deeply, unbelievably hurt by so many people in various stages of my life. There was the friendship I ended because she kept going after women I was dating or interested in. There was the friend I fell for who cut me out of her life with no warning for reasons I still don't understand. There was the person who was like a parent to me who said they shouldn't even show lesbians holding hands on TV. That's just for starters. The last thing on Earth I want to do, ever, is cause anyone any fraction of the pain I've been through. Yet when my ex had clearly fallen under the throes of alcoholism, I knew she wouldn't get help if I didn't leave. When a different ex wanted me back but I had realized our relationship was really unhealthy, I had to decline in spite of my feelings for her. Those latter two examples are classic Eight of Cups decisions, especially for LGBTQQIP2SA+ people who are struggling to find their own truth as it is.
Not every Eight of Cups moment is completely selfless, though, especially not for queer seekers. I fell in love for the first time in a tiny town run by the Baptist college I attended. I had never planned to stay in the Bible Belt, and I had enough trauma in those years to make me run screaming to the Midwest with no plans on looking back. I did, however, lose the girl in making that decision. It took me literal years to get over her, knowing that had I not had big city dreams and had she not been totally enamored with small town life in spite of it all, things could have been different. I also moved away from the very small town in Iowa where I finished college as an Eight of Cups maneuver. I was totally smitten with this quiet, artsy, invisible life I had maintained as I finished school and probably could have maintained a little bit longer. But that would have meant living in Iowa with a theatre degree and a shelf full of tarot cards. I doubt I could have supported myself, and besides, I had fantasized about actual real cities since I was like, ten. I now had my college degree, and it was stupid to not head somewhere larger. So I did, and moving to Minneapolis is probably the second best decision I've ever made in my life. At the time though, it broke my heart, even though I knew it was right.
In other situations, queer people find that these Eight of Cups decisions are rooted in not wanting to trigger anyone else's trauma response, abandonment issues, or mental health but knowing that our own are at stake. Your number one job as a marginalized or traumatized person is to take care of yourself. Which means if you are in sobriety or are overcoming codependent tendencies and your partner is still struggling, you might have to bow out. If your partner is, in your mind, a really good, wonderful person but is having a hard time respecting new names and pronouns as you transition genders, it is probably not the relationship for you. If your entire group of friends once held you up and made you feel great but has gotten mean and catty lately, maybe it's time to move on. I bring up these examples because they are ones I've seen with clients over and over again. Ultimately what the Eight of Cups does is remind us that as LGBTQQIP2SA+ people we have overcome being assumed straight and cisgender in our upbringing, learned to listen to our inner voice, and somehow against all odds reached a place of power and autonomy in our lives. We have to keep that, and we have to still use our voice no matter what.
Because the Cups are so much about emotional healing and fulfillment, there are times when the lessons of this Eight require hard work but are fairly simple. Queer clients of mine with PTSD or other related mental health concerns often pull this card as a sign to start trauma therapy. There are times when the Eight of Cups shows up earlier in our process of coming out and coming into our own as a card that urges you to keep leaving your old life (and identity) behind. What these things have in common is that they force us to do a deep dive into our emotional abyss. This is hard work, and you will feel weird in all of your relationships and across every area of your life. What you are leaving, though, is a time of buried emotions and unhealthy processing. What you'll come to is something so fulfilling and brilliant, you won't be able to believe you ever wanted to live in the pain for longer.
THE NINE AND TEN OF CUPS
The most common question I get asked in tarot classes is “What is the difference between the Nine and Ten of Cups?” There are a million different ways to answer this question, but I usually emphasize that Nines are about completion and Tens are about transformation. They both bring us happy, joyful conclusions regarding our love lives, families, and friendships. They're both excellent signs of substantial emotional healing. Those of us who are creative will see a lot of artistic success with either of these cards. The differences are subtle but they are important. The Nine merely completes our quest to find contentment, joy, or healing. Often called the Wish card, this card promises that whatever our watery heart wants, it can have right now. The Ten is more difficult but causes even more joy; this is a card of how love, friendship, and healing journeys change us. The Nine is about what's in our life at the end of these journeys, but the Ten is about who we are after going through the rest of the Cups cards.
Queering the Nine and Ten of Cups is really easy and really difficult because I see these cards as so innately queer as it is. The Ten even often features a giant rainbow! Furthermore, if both of these cards are about following your heart until you reach a place of fulfillment and love, well, I don't know what's more queer than that. They show up for LGBTQQIP2SA+ seekers as promises, then. The Nine says that if we can endure countless Fives of Cups in our lives, learn to connect when we enter a Four of Cups phase, and cut through the crap in the Seven of Cups, we will be led here, to the Wish card. Whether we want a romantic partner or partners to grow old with, to find a polyamorous family enclave to slip right into happily, or just to find a career and group of friends that makes all of the hell we go through as marginalized people worth it, we will get there. This card promises that our needs are not too much, and that who we are is enough to be loved and supported. This card promises emotional healing no matter what you've been through. It's a card of completion, so one thing I've really found comforting from a healing perspective over the years is that the cycle of emotional healing does complete. I'm not going to be digging deep and overcoming myself for my entire life. At some point, this chapter will close, and I will move on to the next. In the next chapter, I will be happier, healthier, and even safer as a queer person.
The Ten ends our run of the Cups cards, though, reminding us that even when we're done, we're not. We have all of the information and tools we need, and it's up to us to use them regularly and transform ourselves and our lives into something beautiful. As LGBTQQIP2SA+ people, that can be something as straightforward as having figured out what makes us tick sexually and knowing how to embrace that for a happier life. It can mean enduring and working through enough therapy to have successful relationships with other radical LGBTQQIP2SA+ people, regardless of what we've been through.
Often, though, the Ten of Cups has us looking toward the future. We are basically promised relationships that transform us. We are certainly promised a period where we have healed enough to be a totally different person. How then, as empowered and supported queer people, do we carry that love into the world? How do we share it? What do we do with it? To me this card comes screaming as a reminder that my chosen family is for good. They have done the work of making me feel safe and secure in our familial love, and it is up to me to use that change in my life for the better. Often I get this card when what I need is time with these people that have helped me transform into someone trusting. This card also touches on the longevity we saw with the Ten of Pentacles. One of my greatest unfulfilled desires is to foster or house LGBTQQIP2SA+ children and teens who need that type of support. I'll know when the time is right, because the tarot will use the Ten of Cups to assure me that I have everything I need, and my life has evolved into one where I have plenty of love and resources to share.
