Nine of Cups
The nine of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a well-fed man seated before nine cups on an arched counter. A. E. Waite read it as contentment, victory and success.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A goodly personage has feasted to his heart's content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him, seeming to indicate that the future is also assured. The picture offers the material side only, but there are other aspects."
What does the Nine of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "concord, contentment, physical bien-étre; also victory, success, advantage; satisfaction for the Querent or person for whom the consultation is made"; reversed, "truth, loyalty, liberty; but the readings vary and include mistakes, imperfections, etc". His list of additional meanings adds "of good augury for military men", and reversed, "good business".
In older decks
In Italian packs the suit is coppe, cups: the earliest suit marks, the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 records, were coppe, danari, bastoni and spade, "cups, money, clubs, and swords". Papus reads it as "motherhood".
See also
The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Lesser Arcana; Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Divining Tarot, second lesson: the minor arcana
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history: the marks of the suits
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research