Tarot Journal: Ten of Cups

Next World Tarot, Cristy C. Road

Ten of Cups is about coming home. It’s not the material side of home—some financial security, shelter, food in the fridge—but the emotional side of home.

It’s having your needs met and your boundaries respected. It’s being known and loved and cared for; knowing and loving and caring for your beloveds. It’s being connected and part of a web of intimate community. It’s being welcome as your whole self. It’s belonging.

I want so badly to come home. I don’t think I’ve ever been home, not fully. I can imagine home now, but I don’t know how to get there yet.

Today, when I was thinking about home, I thought about The World, and about change.

“The only lasting truth is Change.” Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

I’ve been thinking about the Ten of Cups as all or nothing. Like, either I’m there or I’m not, and once I get there I’ll get to stay forever. But I realized that can’t be right. Nothing is forever; nothing is that simple. Especially emotional experiences—they are always fluid and shifting.

I thought—what if there are already pieces of Ten of Cups in my life?

On Friday night I went dancing, and I had this quiet, gentle dance in which I felt so held and so cared for. My dance partner was someone I don’t know well and probably never will, but that dance was a piece of Ten of Cups. It’s a piece of Ten of Cups when I’m on a hike with my best friend and every meaningful and silly conversation we have is threaded through with love and affection and years of shared experiences. It’s a piece of Ten of Cups when I do experimental fat dance with my dance friends and we talk about our feelings, and when I connect with a new beloved and feel seen in a new way. It’s a piece of Ten of Cups when I hold my tiny nephew and we stare at each other in wonder.

There are so many pieces of Ten of Cups in my life already, and I’ve been missing out on them.

What I think might be true—what I hope is true—is that I am always surrounded by pieces of Ten of Cups. Sometimes they are few and far between, but they are real. With time and work and good luck, they may coalesce into something more substantial; something big enough to hold all of me.

I want that. I believe I am worthy of that. I believe that is possible.

And then the pieces will fall apart, and come back together again, and fall apart, endlessly.