Seven of Cups

Fixed water: hopes + fears, unknown pleasures, the void

SEVEN OF CUPS

The Seven of Cups is associated with fantasy, illusion, and overwhelm, as well as with abundance and opportunities. It all depends on how you look. 

This card offers you a chance to explore unknown pleasures and to practice discernment in taking what you need and leaving the rest. 

SCORPIO III + SEVEN OF CUPS

This card correlates with the third decan of Scorpio. You can learn more about the decans here.

This decan is ruled by the Moon and Venus; we are in the realm of fantasy, dreaming, and fairy tales.

T. Susan Chang connects this decan to the Parsifal myth and the obstacles used by the sorcerer Klingsor to prevent the knights attaining the grail. As in many other myth cycles (The Odyssey, the Bible) a dark projection of the characters’ inner desires is used against them. In this case, the knights are offered a magical garden full of temptations.

In the Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley describes the 7 of Cups as the "Palace of Klingsor". This is a reference to the Parsifal myth, in which the wicked sorcerer Klingsor attempts to waylay Grail-bound knights with a palace and temptress-filled magical garden. But when righteous Parsifal sees through Klingsor's magic, the garden withers and the palace crumbles. In Thoth's 7 of Cups, we see the curdled reality beneath the glamor conjured by the Waite-Smith image.

There are choices to be made, but there is also the opportunity to resist certain desires to turn to new ones.

Austin Coppock says of this decan that ‘if we were not capable of laying our desires to rest, returning them to pure energy, we would be enchained forever, prisoners of what we once held dear.’

Kira Ryberg describes this decan as one of passions.

Depending on what form these passions take, they can lead one down pathways that are either haunted or holy (or perhaps a bit of both).

The holy and haunted passions of Projections are a type of unknown pleasure – a world that is conjured into being through imagining something new.

The card is full of beautiful and frightening choices but they can open up new worlds.

PROJECTIONS + UNKNOWN PLEASURES

Writing isn’t just about finishing a significant project but unearthing your story about yourself. You might unearth a story in a frenzied week, or it might take a lifetime.

Whether you write journal entries, cosmic poetry, recipes, paranormal romance, or self-help books. You are inviting readers into your consciousness.

You dream new worlds into being.

By doing the work, you invite in patience, devotion, and curiosity.

You create community and build cosmic connections.

But most of all, you invite in unknown pleasures. 

There are so many options available in the Seven of Cups, and when you are faced with such a choice, it is possible that in choosing one alternative, you might lose out on something much better. Decision fatigue can lead to either fantasy or overwhelm. The equation is something like this: 

•  Fantasy: if I do x, y, z, I will make this happen.

• Overwhelm: If I don't do x, y, z, I will fail to make this happen.

Different gifts might offer you different outcomes, but this is where your discernment comes in. You don't need to keep a gift that isn't working for you. And you don't have to make all of your choices at once. Being open to multiple possibilities might mean taking a risk, but it also means expanding your capacity for pleasure. For living itself. 

Sobriety, for me, isn't just not drinking, but it is the experience of opening up to the exquisite pain of living. Love expands into everything. The risk is in feeling it at all, and in the not-knowing. 

A story can be like this too. Genre readers (like me, and perhaps like you) want recognisable genre tropes to feel pleasure, and even community with other fans, but not the same ones in the same order. 

The Seven of Cups is about working with a familiar container to make something fresh.

In life, as in storytelling, how can you be a curious reader of your own work? How can you create a curious draft? 

UNKNOWN PLEASURES + THE CURIOUS DRAFT

To a writer, the gifts of the Seven of Cups can be used in so many different ways. A snake isn't worse than a rose if you are looking for a way to kill a character. A jewel isn't better than a tornado if you want to move the action of your story somewhere else. A wreath might be the perfect image for your nonfiction book on mourning rituals, but it might augur badly for a book of nourishing recipes, or perhaps not!

However, there is something even more powerful that The Seven of Cups can do. 

Sometimes, the unexpected gift, the surprise image can offer you the key to unlock something that felt stuck, stale, or formulaic. What happens if you need to use a snake in your nourishing recipe book? It could lead to an investigation of poison cures. After all, a therapeutic dose can become a poison dose in anything from venom to water, and a poison dose can equally become a therapeutic dose if we treat it carefully, and with respect.

By including an unexpected connection, image, or treasure in your work, you will pique your own curiosity which in turn will offer a keen pleasure to your readers. 

In your writing projects how would it feel to use curiosity as a guiding principle? The curious draft offers a way to find out about the work through the writing. 

Curiosity allows you to go back to the river of the original idea, and to refill your cup, even when you wander away from your original purpose and vision.

The curious draft encourages you to take time away from it, to absorb its lessons, to nourish yourself with reading and learning, to have conversations, and to bring all this back to the draft when you are ready.