ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STUDY GROUP - 9 Cups

rwcarter

A family enjoys an outing on the sandy beach of the Nile. The beach represents a time for joyfulness.

Food and drink are set out before them, including figs, apples, grapes, wine, fish and some type of flat bread. Apples represent health, long life, fertility, love and joyousness. Offering an apple is a declaration of love. "To be the apple of one's eye" is to be one's greatest treasure.

Bread represents sustenance. It also suggests that which is needed or used for one's physical, mental or spiritual well-being, development or success. Bread is the food of the body and the soul. "To break bread" is to come together, especially for a meal.

Figs represent being fruitful and also represent prosperity.

Grapes are associated with fruitfulness. They also represent something that may undergo transformation and become even more desirable.

Wine corresponds to relaxation or the need for it. It's associated with celebration and represents vitality.

Wine and bread together form a balance. Both are products of man's agricultural work and skills. Masculine wine and feminine bread represent the union of solid and liquid, man and divinity. Wine is divine ecstasy and bread is the visible manifestation of the spirit that dies and rises again.

The two fish are arranged in the symbol for the astrological sign Pisces.

Three pyramids are outlined against the sky in the background of the card. Pyramids represent the afterlife. Since they're in the background, the suggestion is that the focus is on this life and the present.

There are nine cups and nine people in the card, so the assumption is that all of the people in the card are together. The man holding the child looks fairly old, especially in contrast to the woman seated near him. The woman could be his wife or his daughter and the child could be his son or grandson. The figures on the beach would then be his grown children, another younger child of his or a second grandchild and possibly his wife if the seated woman isn't his wife.

Rodney
 

Ptolemy

Favorite Card

I'm afraid I don't have much to add to your post, Rodney, but I just wanted to share my deep love of this card. If I ever had to pick my favorite Tarot card from any deck I've ever seen, this would be it. It's a card that has always filled me with such a sense of peace and happiness. I have spent many meditations upon it and the image has forever been burned into my mind. It's one of the many reasons that this continues to be my favorite deck after a decade of use.