Welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice. I'm Amelia Hruby, and on this podcast, I share my tiny tarot practice as I explore the cards of the tarot, beginning with the Suits of the Minor Arcana.

Today's card is the Ten of Cups.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot, this card features 10 cups floating

in front of a rainbow in the sky.

Beneath them, we see a field and a house and a river, and we see a family, a kind of traditional interpretation

of the nuclear family, standing.

The adults, two adults, have their arms aloft looking at the rainbow,

and two children are spinning and playing.

And this image is often interpreted as the happily ever after card,

the card of getting everything that you want.

It reminds me of a Richard Syken poem that I love where he says something like,

I had a dream about you.

We were in the golden room where everyone finally gets what they want.

And this card does feel to me like the card where everyone finally gets what they want.

But that may be true only if we take a superficial reading of the card.

Because the card depicts what I called before a traditional nuclear family.

I think that while I try not to gender the people or figures that appear in the Rider-Waite-Smith

edition of the tarot, I do think it's suggested here

that this family is made up of a father, a mother, an elder son and a younger daughter.

And I think in that sense, it's suggested as the card of happily ever after

for the capital N normal, capital N nuclear family.

And for so many of us, That normal nuclear family is not what we desire.

The Ten of Cups is the final card in this cup's journey from Ace to Ten.

I've talked about before on this podcast the way that I see the suits of the Minor Arcana

as organized in a progression where we have the Ace as the beginning but also encapsulating the whole suit.

We have the journey from Two to Ten, and then we have the court cards as embodiments of

of different stages yet again of this suit.

But with this 10, we come to the final moment of our emotional and spiritual journey in the cards.

And as much as this card's imagery suggests that that final moment of emotional and spiritual maturity

is an exalted rainbow above a nuclear family, I just opt out of that interpretation.

The utmost expression of my emotional and spiritual journey is family,

but my own family, my chosen family, my soul family, the people that I can feel and express my emotions with,

and who join me on a spiritual journey toward discovering ourselves and each other

and our relationship to the planet and to the solar system and to our cosmos.

I do think throughout The Suit of Cups, we see this dance between the fact that we are

the only one who can feel our feelings, which is something I said for The Nine of Cups,

to celebrating those feelings with others, which is something we're reminded with The

Three of Cups, to this moment of having finally found the people we can really feel and grow with.

And while the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot depicts that as perhaps a traditional

nuclear family, I think it can mean so many things for each of us.

I selected the Ten of Cups as one of the tarot cards that was shared during my wedding ceremony.

And my partner and I selected this card even though we have no intention of creating a traditional nuclear family together.

We believe in deep interdependence, in the joy in interconnection, in community that spans generations and locations and ways of being.

And I still see that for myself. I choose to see that for myself in the ten of cups.

This card can represent my happily ever after, even if my happily ever after may not look like the one depicted in this card.

And even if my happily ever after is not just about happiness, but is in fact about all of the emotions that need to come together to feel joy.

If we think of simple math, the ten of cups is the five of cups twice.

The five of cups is a card of grief. Doubling the grief can yield joy, can yield the rainbow.

The five of cups can be the storm, while the ten of cups ushers the rainbow into the sky afterwards.

We have to journey between them. It's not instantaneous. And we have to do that on our own and with others.

But it's so fulfilling to reach this moment of fulfillment. That's what I feel in the Ten of Cups.

Thank you for listening to my tiny tarot practice and journeying through the suit of the cups with me.

As always, if you are interested in the books or resources that I mention on this show,

you can head to the show notes where you'll find a link to my bookshop page.

I've curated a shelf of tarot books and decks and other magical resources that can support

your journey exploring these archetypes. If you make a purchase through that link,

I'll receive a small affiliate payment that can help me keep this podcast going.

And if you're not in the market for any tarot books or decks right now, I'd greatly appreciate

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you love it. As always, I invite you deeper into your tarot practice, even in the tiniest ways. Be well.