The Seven of Cups

Today's card of the day is 7 of Cups.

Sevens correspond Qabalistically to Netzach. Netzach is a place of emotion and everything that entails. On the high side, it can have all of the positive aspects of emotion--love, creativity, empathy and so forth--but on the low side, it can have all of the negative aspects of emotion, such as anger, sadness, envy, and so forth.

Cups rule water, which also corresponds to the emotions. That means, when you get an already emotional suit in the place of Netzach, you get an emotional overdose. This brings forth a lot of those negative emotions, to the point where the person is completely mired in them. The excess corrupts the higher emotional qualities, and the person makes a mess of things by virtue of having taken the feeling too far.

For those of you who are interested in the enneagram, I always consider this card the point of the passion. Lust, envy, wrath, debauchery, all of these are in its purview. When this card comes up, they've been completely indulged. In a reading, I take it to mean that the passion of the type is now firmly in the driver's seat of the personality.

And yet, in spite of all of that, I don't mind this card coming up. I think it's because I have such a soft spot for Netzach. After all, it's from Netzach that we make art that can speak to some sort of collective experience, and it's Netzach that gives us the emotional push we need for our magickal work to be effective. Its neighbor, Hod, is the realm of intellect and language but if we get stuck in Hod, then we'll say a lot of empty words in our rites and daily practices that do nothing because they lack any driving sentiment, and the next point up on the tree is Tiphareth, a place of beauty, harmony and illumination. The card simply serves as a reminder to not get too excessive with our emotional excess.