A Week to Make Wishes

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It’s windier than I ever remember it being here in Durham. Humid puffs of air billow down through the construction site across the street from my usual coffee shop; warm, full of life, almost like a sea breeze. One of the gusts, in fact, just whisked a card out of my travel-size tarot deck, flinging it under the picnic table next to me where it landed face-up: The Ten of Cups. Never one to ignore a “jumper card,” I picked it up from the ground and tucked it under my laptop, our first card for the week ahead.

Wanting to build on the theme of chance, I started shuffling the rest of the deck lazily, so that cards began to poke out at more precarious angles, eventually falling onto the table. That’s how we got our final two cards for our reading: The Ace of Cups and The Star.

Now this is a reading that’s so lovely, it’s hard to form a narrative. This scenario can feel like the classic conundrum - it’s so much easier to complain than it is to celebrate - and it also feels like this reading is all about potential: the potential to feel good, to do good things, and to realign with a sense of promise and well-being.

What are the dreams we’ve been holding for our lives, especially our relationships? The Ten of Cups is all about the places where we come together in loving collaboration with others: families, romantic & creative partnerships, communities. That this card jumped out of the deck tells me we’re especially connected with this part of our lives at the moment, and that we have a great deal to celebrate and be proud of. What questions, experiences, growth edges, or successes have been coming up for you lately? Can you look around and see how so many dreams have come true for you?

What’s most beautiful about this reading, in my opinion, is that it directs our attention towards growth, for even if we’re utterly satisfied with our love lives (in a holistic sense - what, who, where, and how do we love?) - something new is on the horizon. The Ace of Cups indicates a natural change, a gift, a connection arriving on our doorstep. If you’ve been feeling fulfilled in your connections, this is a wonderful instance of abundance inviting in more abundance. And, inviting in just the thing you’ve been wanting, needing, looking for, but can’t quite articulate.

Or, if you’ve been feeling dissatisfied or uneasy about what you have (maybe reaching your rainbow hasn’t been what you expected it to be), something new is emerging just the same. Aces are gifts, yes, but they’re also the most general expression of their group. With this in mind, your Ace of Cups moment could be related to love in its broadest sense: creativity, spirituality, intuition. Whatever form it takes, it’ll be resplendent, soothing, and welcome. It’s our job to open the door and let it into our lives. And, I think, it’ll be especially important to admit to ourselves that we want it: to wish for something even (especially) if it feels outlandishly lovely.

Doing so is, to put it simply, deeply healing. The Star is a beautiful card of coming home to who you truly are. You may need more time to integrate all the motion around these cups cards towards the end of the week. Use this as an opportunity to re-up your self-care rituals, prioritize reflection, and be gentle with yourself. Moving from a social space (Ten of Cups) to a new energy (Ace of Cups) to our inner world (The Star) is a beautiful path to walk. Center your focus around this part of your life and some wonderful things are likely to happen.

Despite the beauty of this reading, there is another option on the table. It’s possible that, for some of us, the idea of what we want isn’t matching up with reality. The Ten of Cups as lovely as it seems, can touch on themes of idealization and fantasy - times when we only want to see the warm and fuzzy and do so at the expense of ignoring reality, both the helpful and humanizing flaws in others and, more insidiously, the ways in which our needs are not being met or injustice is seeping into our relationships.

So, wherever you find yourself on this spectrum, take some time to explore what the Ten of Cups means to you. How satisfied do you feel? Are your dreams serving you or have you outgrown them?

Because, regardless of how this is unfolding, the rest of the reading is incredibly supportive, so this would be a wonderful time to make changes, shifts, and tend to our hearts.