The Nines
One numerological way to see the nines is to think of the number nine as equal to three multiplied by three. Given the sacredness and holiness of three, this tells us that across all four suits of the Minor Arcana, in the nines of the tarot we see a massive escalation of the symbolic themes and the energies for each of the cards of the threes, heightened to almost extremes in the nines. In fact, if you take the threes, sixes, and nines for any of the four suits, and array them in order from lowest to highest, it’s possible to see a rapid progression of intensity, where the themes and energies in the threes matures outward in the sixes, arriving at an inward culmination in the nines.
The common theme that I see for the Nines in the tarot is personal self-reflection; as we come close to the journey in each suit started all the way back with the Aces, we’re given the opportunity to be reflective on what insights we’ve learned, what experiences we’ve gained, and how we feel about it — for better or for worse.
First, we have the Nine of Cups: An incredible card to see in a reading, perhaps only eclipsed in its apparent goodness and positivity by the Ten of Cups, the Sun, and both the Nine and Ten of Pentacles.
Interestingly enough, there is a solitary male-presenting figure here, seemingly surrounded by all of their cups. But on second glance, their cups are actually all behind them. Their arms crossed is an interesting sign; it’s often taken to mean a sign of a distress, defensiveness, anxiousness and tension. It’s also often taken as a sign that someone is feeling attacked. It builds up a feeling of defensive aggression, of “standoffishness”. But here, their legs are wide apart and there is a smile on their face; not one of smugness that we have previously seen in the Five of Swords, nor is it the playful, impish grin on the Seven of Swords. Rather, it is smile of a job well done. They don’t need visual confirmation of their achievements by having their cups all within their sight. Their body language radiates the confidence and satisfaction taken in one’s work and efforts.
At this point, I am motivated to do one of my own gratitude exercises that I was talking about in my earlier discussion of the Eights. Here’s a list of nine things made in gratitude for things I think I’ve done well in the past week:
- Handling a set of microaggressions from my mother about the cleanliness level of the bathroom.
- Handing a microaggresssion from my mother about the act of putting up the Christmas tree.
- Vacuuming our shared living space.
- Working up the courage to have what I thought was going to be an awkward conversation with my bss about shifts in work scheduling (it wasn’t awkward at all).
- Having a healthy and honest conversation with my partner about frustrations I’d been experiencing recently with them in our conversations.
- Not blowing up and getting angry with them during said conversation.
- Not saying anything deliberately hurtful during said conversation.
- Being open to my partner saying that they were getting increasingly hurt more and more by things I’d said to them.
- Having a fascinating and informative discussion with them about a show they’d watched on TV.
I guess I’d might as well round that out with an extra two: (10) Having an equally fascinating and informative discussion about heated exchanges of posts I’d seen (but thankfully not participated in) on Twitter. (11) — Not participating in heated exchanges with transphobes on Twitter.
I say these things not out of a desire to brag or show off, but as a way of actually demonstrating what a self-reflective exercise, themed after the number nine in the tarot, might look like on a practical level in a day-to-day sense. And I admit, while thinking myself through the process it took to note and list all of those things down, I may not have been feeling necessarily down on myself today, on this dreary, wintery-grey and snowy November afternoon. But I did feel my mood lift several points.
Regardless of what you do, whether it be a gratitude list, or a quiet moment to yourself, or a Three of Cups-style celebration with others, it is a time to sit back and give yourself a well-earned round of self-congratulatory praise. God knows you deserve it.
The next of the Nines is the Nine of Pentacles, which is, again, a beautiful card that is among my most favourite out of all of the cards in the Smith-Waite tarot deck.
There’s a quiet and peaceful, yet confident serenity to this card. Apart from the Ten of Cups and the Sun, this is one of the few cards in the Minor Arcana featuring a lone solitary figure who truly appears to be actually enjoying their solitude. You could argue that the person in The Sun is a baby, so their sensation of solitude isn’t coloured by the perceptions and experiences of the maturity and adulthood. The person in the Nine of Cups is more focused on their achievements and the work they’ve done than on the condition of being alone. So this leaves the Nine of Pentacle as a scene showing a person for whom solitude is a blessing.
I’ll admit a bit of bias here: When I say the Nine of Pentacles is one of my favourite cards, I really mean it. I love this card. I love the idea of it, what it shows and what it represents, ever since I first read about its meaning in Eden Grey’s 1971 book Mastering the Tarot, and later still in The New Tarot Handbook, written by her student, the famed Rachel Pollack. For me personally, on an emotional level The Nine of Pentacles is what the joy of the ace experience is all about: It means being happy to be who and what we are, separate from the dating and relationship pressures so often foisted on us by others. Having worked so hard (on ourselves, on our emotions, our inner beliefs and on our thought processes and relationships) for so long, we can now genuinely enjoy the fruits of our labor. We can spend time to connect with both nature and ourselves. We can spend time in a place of safety, protected from whatever or whoever is out there in the world that makes us unsafe. If the Nine of Cups communicates to us that we should enjoy the emotional satisfaction of a job well done, the Nine of Pentacles invites us to have that satisfaction in a more material, tangible way. It could be as grandiose as making that indulgent, expensive purchase you’ve been eyeing, or a wonderful solo dinner with all of the food and drink you’d wanted, but couldn’t have for a variety of reasons (like being shamed at supper time by family). It could be as low key as a big long nap or a much needed meditative walk. The point is to enjoy it as a well deserved reward. And to enjoy it in the company of the most important person of your life: yourself.
The Nine of Wands makes sense as a heightened and more intense version of the Three of Wands. Much like its triune predecessor, the the Nine of Wands is about being out on your own. It’s about being propelled forward, wall of wands at your back. The big difference here is that the Nine of Wands features someone who isn’t just at the start of their journey; it features someone who is deep in the thick of it–or perhaps nearing its end, since we are at the end of the one-to-ten sequence of the suit of Wands in the Minor Arcana. Their bandaged, beaten, and battered look is the look of someone who has endured much, and fought hard over a long, long time. In the Three of Wands, we have the look and stance of someone brimming with persistence and a desire to press forth towards their goal. Here, in the Nine of Wands, we are someone who has had their endurance, perseverance, and will to keep fighting put to the test, pushed to their absolute limits and beyond. As with the other Nines, we face this test to our persistence alone. Nevertheless, I see a quiet confidence and satisfaction in this person’s face: They have weathered the worst of battles (and even seen their fair share of success in the Six of Wands), but they are more than capable of taking on and surviving whatever else is going to come their way.
While we are alone, we are still not beaten: For behind us is a veritable palisade of wands, a wall to shield us against the threats we have encountered on our journey, and a defence against what may come in the future. Standing at the ready with the ninth wand in our hands, we are ready, willing and able to give whoever or whatever comes at us the same ferocious energy seen in the Seven of Wands, combined with the confidence of someone coming out of the Six of Wands. In the Three of Wands, we are new, fresh, and relatively inexperienced; here in the Nine of Wands, we are brimming with hard earned experience and wisdom, which has taught us much along our journey.
Self-reflection, persistence and perseverance are the key words I think of when I see this person standing tall and defiant on the card. It is a reminder that when we are taking our bruises and our lumps for being queer, disabled or racialized–whether they be from random strangers on social media, our own family members, or a valued lover or a trusted friend–the only thing we can do (in lieu of damaging our relationships by aggressively lashing out) is to keep on going. The only way out of some damaging social situations and interactions, is to go through that messy hairball of verbal jousting, bruised egos and triggered feelings. Eventually, this too will pass and we will find the peace we want, or the acceptance we need. Eventually, but not now.
For many ace and aro people, dealing with allosexual society, allosexual culture, and allosexual expectations as someone who is out — to any degree — can feel akin to painting a giant target on one’s back. Like our comrades in the bi, pan, and Trans community, ace and aro people face a whole litany of microaggressions, including invalidation, gaslighting, prejudice, and discrimination. All of these things, over a long enough timescale and with enough people making poor comments, can be withering and grinding on even the most steadfast of people. And yet, in the face of this (and the high social and mental cost usually paid when trying to react to such people) the only thing left to do is to simply keep fighting. To keep up the struggle. To continue being. To continue moving forward. There will be a time for rest and a time for congratulating oneself later. For now, we have to keep on going; giving up simply isn’t an option.
Giving up is what leads us into the last of the Nines: The Nine of Swords. As a magnification and escalation of a card from the threes, this themes seen here flow from the thematic and numerological origin of this arc, the Three of Swords. A card seen as a harrowing and panic inducing card in its own right. Sure the Six of Swords tells us that leaving our fears and anxieties behind is very possible. But unless we actually face up to and work on their source, they will always remain with us, and come back with an even greater ferocity.
At first glance, this card is another example of a scene that potentially doesn’t need a long discussion, because it’s pretty much laid out what this card is all about. It is about panic, and nightmares, insomnia, and the possibility of our worst, most dreaded fears actually being made manifest and coming to pass. But this can happen when we find ourselves in a never ending spiral of overthinkng and overanalyzing. As Aeclectic Tarot says about this card:
“It can be a good thing to find what you seek, except when it comes to ideas, words or problems. Find too many of them and they will overwhelm you especially, as with all the nines, you focus them on yourself.”
I find myself really resonating with this, as someone who almost made it a regular habit to stress out about having a Plan B, should Plan A fail. But along with that stress, I put in a huge amount of time and effort into also having a Plan C, D, E and F too — whether I was planning to buying groceries or making lesson plans for my ESL classes, or dealing with my family, I always had my brain turned on, gas pedal continually floored into full fight or flight overdrive, trying to analyze as best it could the fastest way to get to a safe outcome. Obviously this was neither healthy nor sustainable. Clearly, there were some things (or rather, a lot of things) that I could have afforded to let go in all of that overplanning and overanalyzing.
The Nine of Swords basically tells us to get out of our heads and get over ourselves. So maybe we decided to out ourselves as ace or aro to a friend, and they didn’t quite give us the reaction we would have wanted. Maybe they didn’t even give us a reaction or a reply at all. This is one of those moments where some may launch into a spiral of agonizing over what their response (or non-response) meant; instead, in a case like this, we are invited to let that go. Maybe we’re trying to join a new queer or ace or aro-focused activity group or social group, but are once again stuck in fears and anxieties that we are actually not “queer enough”, or “ace enough”, or “aro enough” to join. Maybe we’re afraid of sticking out in a room full of white or able-bodied people. Such fears–as completely and totally valid as they are–may leave us detached and aloof from such settings, or it may be enough to deter us from joining altogether. Or perhaps we are faced with the decision of outing ourselves to a potential dating or activity or social partner. The fear and panic of rejection and aphobic bigotry, on top of racism and ableism is palpable, and real.
And yet, despite its validity, it is a mental space we cannot dwell in forever. Like a dream, we must eventually wake up.
This brings us to the flip side of the imagery of the Nine of Swords: having just woken from out nightmares, we are left cupping our faces in our hands out of the sheer intensity of our dreams. But, at least we have awoken out of the nightmare. In our dreams and in our nightmares, the things which cause us fear and dread — an important or difficult conversation with a partner or family member — are all too-often not nearly as foreboding or as we think they are. Once we get out head out of our hands, we can see these situations for what they really are, and move forward with our lives: Maybe that new queer group or ace group isn’t as exclusionary, or gatekeeping, or aphobic as it once seemed; all it took was for you to put yourself out there socially with the others in the group. Maybe a friend’s aphobia is more borne out of their misunderstanding of your asexuality or aromanticness, and once you have that difficult conversation about your identity, their attitudes and beliefs will come around to be more accepting. Maybe these things could happen — but again, we have to get out of our heads and take action to move forward first.
We have left the dream. Now we have to put what we have learned into our waking life. Time to get out of bed and face the world.
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Next: The Tens — The Apex
