On Nine of Cups + A Tarot Spread for Hope in Hopeless Times

Connecting to an Anchor Card that can really see us through the storm

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How do we stay tethered to hope in hopeless times, in seasons when things are so stacked against us that we believe we might never regroup, never recover, never come back from the depths?

So many folks are feeling this great sense of hopelessness and defeat right now, and it’s not a tremendous surprise, given the state of our world.

I have been hearing this expressed over and over again in my readings. The depth and level of violence, and the suffering of so many; the heartbreak and exhaustion as livelihoods, aspirations, and plans crumble to dust under the wake of economic uncertainty. How can we serve? What are we called to do? These are deep heart longings and wonderings, sparked by remarkably challenging times.

I also sit with this sense of wariness, grief, and fear as a part of the collective, and in my own personal life, too. My increasingly painful left knee, and my newfound mid back pain that has me experimenting with different ways to deliver readings and teach. Sitting has always been a refuge for me, and now it is more comfortable to stand than to sit, which is saying something, given how uncomfortable it is for me to stand for long periods of time.

As someone living with chronic pain conditions, I am no stranger to these experiences. As sad as this seems, I do not hope for a time that I am free of these pains — not because I am without hope. I am, of course, available for miracles, but prefer to live more in the realm of reality. I have multiple, incurable, autoimmune diseases and life long joint pain. I am in this with my body and all of their experiences, till death do we part.

I do, however, find myself in swells of despair when I wonder about my capacity to, as Tara Brach says, “love this life no matter what.” Those are the moments when I get swept under: when I begin to believe that my pain flares are forever, moments when I feel that life is God-less, when even the morning bird song and our patch or violets or a perfect autumn morning is not enough to remind me of what is true for me. In these moments, it’s all storm and no rainbows.

This aspect of despair and yearning is a universal part of life, a feeling state that we will all journey through in our lives. Whether we are moving through it on a personal level, a collective one, or both, there are Anchor Cards that can hold us and witness us inside of this experience, acting as a kind of steadfast lighthouse in the midst of the heaviness and fog of the season that we are moving through.

There are so many Tarot cards that could or might fit the bill for us, but the one that has been tugging at my heart, making its presence known to me again and again is Nine of Cups.

Nine of Cups is truly the card for our times, for this time on the planet. It is the lighthouse, a beacon of absurd hope. Nine of Cups can be found in the parts of us that (somehow?!) continue to build, flourish, learn and grow in spite of horrific and hard circumstances. It is the heart and guts inside of the evolutionary biology that compels baby turtles to make that treacherous journey from the sand to the waves. Why? Why would we hope? It’s far too expensive, too costly. Too vulnerable. And yet Nine of Cups doesn’t waver. It continues to shine like the unshakable Polaris that it is.

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The Cups suit really lives and calls us into spiral time, and in spiral time, we don’t have much proof for our hopes and faith. We often have to believe and keep a candle burning with little evidence.

We say no to that fourth cup in Four of Cups because we don’t have room for what it’s offering. We opt to follow our heart and digest our experiences, trusting that that fourth cup will come back around as and when it’s meant to, when we have room for it. But it’s not quite that linear.

Our next experience is Five of Cups — an energy of loss and grief, and often of regret. Why didn’t we take that fourth cup? Because our eyes and heart are only with the three spilled cups in front of us, we don’t yet see the two cups behind us, just out of reach. We find them in the Six of Cups, and our heart truly expands and we come more full circle with our experience.

And similarly, when we walk away from what no longer serves in Eight of Cups, it can be devastating, but the core of why we do it (and why we might be called to endure it) rooted in the hope of something better, something more advantageous, something that is a more appropriate fit for us.

The Nine of Cups is that call and response, the gestation of a brilliant, brighter, greater vision for our world and our lives. It is hope without reason, wishing against all odds, engaging with the kind of wild, brave, audacious longing that we might be avoiding with all of our might. It invites us to continue to dream, in spite of how stormy things might feel.

It is also a profoundly useful and responsive anchor for these times. It helps us to remember how important magic is, how liminal hope and growth can often be, and how so much can bloom and unfurl in the dark.

To root into the medicine of this card, I invite you to consider engaging with this spread I created below.

To start, you’ll want to remove Nine of Cups from your deck and place it in front of you. It will be the lighthouse and anchor for our reading, along with the current times. You can also opt to engage with this spread in a time when you need a reminder that, as Rainer Maria Rilke says, “no feeling is final,” that there will be happiness again when you’re in the thick.