The Mechanics of Tarot

I had the honour of being the tarot reader for this year’s Anime North Moonlight Ball. I met many kind and friendly souls that night. One of them was a beautiful young woman with blue hair. I greeted her by asking ‘How are you?’ and her response was, ‘I’m amazing!’

My first thought was What a fabulous response! This thought was quickly followed by the awareness that in all my years of asking this common greeting, I have never received such a genuinely positive response. I told her so and she said to me, “Confidence is the key to happiness.”

I’ve been thinking about this conversation a lot since that evening. I see so much truth to her words and agree that lasting happiness must be founded upon confidence. Without the fundamental believe that we are capable of achieving happiness, we will never seek it out in the first place.

Unfortunately, along with this realization is the awareness of how few people have this confidence and fewer still who are able to express this freely. The woman told me that she’s been called a narcissist for daring to believe in her own amazingness but, from where I was sitting, I saw no conceit in her – just pure joy.

This reminds me of the 9 of Cups. Generally, this card represents possessing the joys of life but some readers also see a warning of conceit in its message. They see the man’s posture as a sign of arrogance and interpret the fact that he is sitting alone to mean that he has no one with whom to share his joy and wealth.

While wealth can lead to greed and confidence taken too far produces arrogance, there is another way to interpret this aspect of the card. I see this as a person who has earned his happiness through the experiences of the eight cups that proceeded it. To reach this stage, he had to first experience loss and regret, grief and disappointment as well as frightening spiritual journeys that took him away from his comfort zone. Through this process, he gained faith and emotional strength.

The fact that he is sitting alone can also mean that happiness must come from within ourselves. Money can buy us comfort and, while love from others is the most precious gift we can receive, without inner strength and confidence, we cannot appreciate this gift. Things and people cannot make us happy unless we are ready to be happy.

To achieve happiness, we must consciously work towards it and this work begins with the believe in our own ability to attain it and that we are worthy of it. Believing in this without shame or guilt is not the same as conceit and arrogance.

Everyone wants to be amazing but we will never transition from wanting to being without believing that we are.