VIIII de Coupes-- help! [Héron Conver]

[Myrrha]

In my Tarot de Marseilles (Heron Conver) this card gives me trouble. The vegetation looks like it is droopy and wilting, like my peace lily when it needs water badly. This is the only card in the deck where the leaves look like this to me. I understand that "reading" the vegetation is more a matter of how the card strikes you at the time, in the context of the reading, but these leaves look wilted to me all the time.

This doesn't seem to fit with the meanining of the card. Nine is related to the nurturing imaginative moon, and inward hermit-journeys, and a sense of culmination and completion. Cups are emotions and spirituality and feelings. Nine should be very at home in the suit of Cups. It should be a very positive card with healthy leaves.

Do the leaves look droopy to anyone else? Maybe I am just inventing that they look this way.

Are my ideas of what the card means wrong? Maybe Nine in the suit of Cups is not so good for reasons I don't know.

Any ideas on this would be appreciated.
--Myrrha

[shaveling]

I'm pretty sure the Nine of Cups is an auspicious card in most people's interpretations. Maybe it's better to look at the entire plants (one connected with the lower center cup, the other with the cup in the very middle of the card) rather than just at their leaves.

Each of the plants has three sorts of leaves: the little sprouting leaflets the other leaves grow from; old, mature leaves that are fading away; and the vital, upturned leaves that look so healthy. You can look at these two plants as specimens that live a long time, and continue to grow as long as they live. And as they grow, they outgrow some of their earlier leaves and produce new ones. So the leaves at various stages of maturity bespeak the longevity of the plants.

This goes with the idea of the Nine of Cups as long-term success in the area of life the card speaks of in a particular reading: love, spirituality, family relations, whatever. It's not just something that's good for now. Its goodness continues to grow and mature. You can even see one of the plants as the parent of the other, so that the success symbolized by the plants continues over more than one generation.

[jmd]

In our Australian springtime (now), numerous local plants sprout new growth. Something that is at times astounding to the eyes of northern hemisphere visitors is that many of these, having a brownish red quality, are perceived as though autumnal, as though decaying, whereas in fact quite the opposite is taking place.

The twisting of the leaves may be viewed as though unfurling with vigor and vibrant growth, as new leaves do, and the red as rich sap feeding such growth.

The downwards pointing leaves may also be viewed as abundance, being forced to grow downwards as there is simply no room left upwards due to the vigour of the growth.

I am not suggesting that this is the manner in which it 'ought' to be read, but rather simply suggesting an alternative way to reflect on the depiction, and permit both possibilities to have their manner of coming to light.

[lark]

I think they look wilty too.
But being a gardener they look to me like plants that have been water to much, or fertilized to much, or had a little too much sun.
So I always think of that cards as the " a little to much of a good thing card."

[Myrrha]

Thank you all for answering. I knew it would help to just have some other people tell me what they see in this card. No, it isn't about finding the way the card ought to be read but just different ways to look at it, especially since I seemed to be a bit stuck on this one!


thanks,
--Myrrha