--By Hyperion Night
Reevaluation. Imaginary problems. Discontent. Cutting oneself off from opportunity.
I wanted my own Tarot room. I’d been dreaming about it for years. I’d found the perfect location. The perfect building (or so I’d thought). And then I discovered my realtor was a con-man, and had leased the building to someone else—a woman who’d planned on starting up a tearoom. Total disaster. I was furious—at the so-called realtor, at myself, even at poor Abigail, who’d been taken for even more money than I had. I was a grown man and wanted my own Tarot room, dammit.
It took me a while to realize I’d been offered something even better—a business partner who had a better head for (and interest in) numbers than I. Plus, a built-in market for walk-in trade, and the ability to serve food to customers. Abigail and I ended up going into business together, and Beanblossom’s Tea and Tarot was born. But I spent more time than I’d like to admit like that guy in the Four of Cups, arms crossed, refusing the offered gift.
In the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot card, a hand reaches from a cloud extending an offering—a cup—to a man. Three more cups sit by the man’s feet. Does he even notice the offered cup? Or is he too busy studying the cups on the ground before him? After all, these are good-looking cups. None of them have been overturned. They’re in excellent condition. Why not take the cups that are there? The cups that are, well, normal? Why take the oddball cup at the end of a disembodied hand?
Cups are about emotions, so it leads one to ask why this person is cutting himself off from what’s offered. Does he feel safe sticking with what he knows? Is he emotionally stuck with those three cups? This card not only asks what opportunities we might be ignoring, but why. And how can we open ourselves up, get out of our own way? Is negative thinking keeping us apart from opportunities (and others)? We’re being offered a gift. Now we just have to open ourselves to see it.