Seven of Cups, Four of Cups, The Star
This week’s tarot readings relate to domestic life and the home.
Quick read: The sheer number of options has been really confusing, so much so that you didn’t act, and now you’re dissatisfied with yourself, and the options that are still available to you. The ones that seem to be coming your way aren’t very appealing. You want to say ‘no’ to these things that don’t suit you, but you’re concerned that you’re being too picky. However, there’s hope for you yet.
Long read: The mood of today’s reading is one of infinite choice and the paralysis we have when we feel like any decision we make is do or die. The Seven of Cups sees all these options floating in our minds, and the temptation is to believe that you can only pick one, that there’s only one route to happiness and it all rests on whatever you decide, right now. This is, of course, not true. Life has a tendency of continuing after the crunch moment. Most things that seem like major decisions now, will seem completely irrelevant in a year’s time. When you realise that life doesn’t actually end at graduation, your 25th, 30th, or 40th birthday, you realise you’ve got plenty of time to correct your course, if whatever you chose didn’t work out.
As the card shows, there are a whole lot of goals to follow: riches, popularity, stability, success, love, adventure, so on and so forth. It feels like if you choose one, you might affect your chances at the others. What if you want them all? Well, in that case, you have to go for spiritual truth (the shining Christ-like figure hidden beneath a veil). When you orient yourself towards your own spiritual growth, you cannot fail to find it. And if you are oriented towards your own spiritual growth, the other goals (the perfect partner, a mansion, Instagram followers) will either come to you, or fall away like scales from your eyes. Focus on what feels right, rather than what sounds right. This being the Suit of Cups (and not Swords), it’s about what your heart (rather than your head) tells you.
Committing to your own spiritual growth doesn’t look like one specific path. It’s going to be different for everyone. For people who like their comfort zone, it might be about letting down their defences and opening their hearts to new experiences. It might be about trying something new for dinner, or suggesting a new weekend activity. If it’s terrible, you can always go back to your tried-and-tested favourites. What’s the worst that could happen? You have to eat takeaway pizza after you burned the casserole? It’s not that big a deal. You can turn it into a funny anecdote.
For others, it might be about saying no to new things that threaten to throw you off course. It might be that you’re spread too thinly, trying to be too much for too many people. Crossing the unwanted extras off your to-do list frees you up to commit more deeply to the things you do want. This is where the Four of Cups comes in, as it signals disinterest in what’s in front of you. Sometimes when you focus on what you really want, you realise that hardly any of your life could be considered edifying: one of the more awful kinds of epiphany. ‘God,’ you think, ‘what have I been doing all this time?’ Your daily routine becomes horrific.
When you start to ask yourself what you really want, you experience an initial phase of dissatisfaction with everything. No, you don’t want to go and see the Andy Warhol exhibition. Why? You just don’t. No, you don’t want to hang out with that group of friends because they always talk about the same gripes. No, no, no. You may even be offered loads of new opportunities. Would you like to become a social media manager? No. What about writing about cars? No. Would you like to visit your parents? No. Would you like to talk about it? No. It can feel really odd saying no to things. Remember it’s ok to say, ‘No, thank you.’ Saying no doesn’t have to be rude.
It’s here that we have to think about a scarcity mindset. You might be out of work, and get a few opportunities come your way that aren’t ideal. Half of you wants to say ‘No, that’s not for me,’ and the other half says, ‘Stop being so picky. Who do you think you are?’ Obviously when times are tough, then you might need to take the money even though it’s not the dream job. Sometimes, you might not even be in that situation, but you still feel like you can’t say no to work that’s offered to you. Money is valuable, of course, but so is your time. If you factor in the crushing resentment of having to do something you hate, are they offering you enough money to make it worth it?
Yancey Strickler, a business guru and co-founder of Kickstarter, has developed a really useful system for decision-making, which he calls ‘bentoism’, after the Japanese bento (a divided lunch box). To use a ‘bento’ for decision-making, you draw a big square, then divide it into square quarters. You label the sections: Present Me, Future Me, Present Us, and Future Us. In each section, you write how your present and future individual and collective selves feel about making that choice. This gives you a more well-rounded way of approaching a tricky decision. Some things are unappealing in the short-term, but beneficial in the long-term e.g. going for a run, and vice versa e.g. continuing to smoke. Equally, thinking about both yourself as an individual, and yourself as part of a community can also illuminate what’s important. You might like smoking for yourself, but when taking your friends and family into account, it has negative consequences for them e.g. secondhand smoke, likelihood of disease etc.
The Star indicates that the waiting for inspiration, the apathy, the inertia of the Four of Cups will break to reveal hope. When you are committed to spiritual growth, both your own and other people’s, you know what to do. bell hooks, in her incredible book All About Love: New Visions, writes that the true definition of love is: 'the will to extend one's self for the the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.' Make your decisions along these lines, and you cannot fail.
