september 2026: nine of cups // wishing well

hello, friends. all year long we've been exploring the suit of cups together (and if you're new here, you can catch up on the series right here). and today's essay on the nine of cups is one that i know a number of you have been anticipating. i am so grateful that you're here reading this, and would love to hear from you about what this card means to you and how you work with it!

if you'd like to join the conversation about the nine of cups, and so many other topics, remember that all paid subscribers as well as all hermitage members get access to my private discord server! we'd love to have you join us 🖤

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now, take a deep breath and let it out slowly. shake out your shoulders, your wrists, your ankles, your hips. release any tension from your jaw, if you can. let's dive into the nine of cups.

so many of us make wishes without thinking too much about it.

wishing on shooting stars or blazing comets, wishing on coins tossed into fountains or wells, wishing on eyelashes or dandelion seeds or birthday candles. wishing on lanterns, on wishbones, on 11:11. wishing for gifts, for opportunities, for something to change or for something to stay the same. wishing for ourselves, wishing for loved ones, wishing good things or safety or comfort or peace for people we’ve never met. wishing for a different kind of future, wishing for a better kind of world, wishing for a new kind of life.

sometimes the wishes are small, simple, temporal, while other times they're big and fervent, deeply rooted, long-lasting. some wishes are for something that is already within reach, while others feel astronomically far away or even like they could never possibly come true.

what's interesting to me is that so often, wishes get positioned as something separate than effort. have you prayed about it? but for the new age manifestation crowd: if you just wish for something hard enough, if you just say it to yourself enough times, if you just do the right kind of magic about it, you’ll get whatever you want. wishes and magic sometimes get treated like a cheat code: do x, and y is the result. and then when spells don’t work, or don’t have the intended result in our expected timeline, it becomes well, see? magic isn’t real anyway.

but i was raised in a faith without works is dead kind of theology, which in my current worldview looks more like this: magic is real, but so is the mundane. pairing them together is the most potent way to get what you want.

a dream is a wish your heart makes, something that you long for or desire or crave or yearn for, something that you deeply want. but without effort, without follow-through, without doing anything about it, a wish can stay just that: a dream. a hope. a fantasy. the magic happens when we work to make that wish come true.

and wishes coming true through magic and mundane, through desire made manifest via real life actions, through effort and trying and pushing and breathing and building and persisting, is what the nine of cups is all about.

the nine of cups is the penultimate card in the suit of water, the crossing of the finish line, the triumphant conclusion. in pythagorean numerology, nine is the final number in the narrative, carrying the possibility and anticipation from one all the way to the end. but in tarot, the final card is ten, putting nine in an interesting position: the ending, but one that has the awareness of something coming next. the conclusion, but one where we can start to consider the next horizon line.

nine is a number of service and wisdom, of philosophy and philanthropy, of pride in a finished job alongside a gentle detachment from what we’ve been doing. as my friend bee writes, “nine offers us the chance to end things on our terms, or meet unexpected endings with enough compassion and acceptance to begin again.” this is an energy of finishing, of releasing, of polishing, of emerging — it’s the last touches, the last push, the last straw. 

and in the suit of cups, of water, of the heart and the intuition and the emotions that we carry, nine is an energy that is often associated with wishes made and wishes fulfilled: the relationships we have built, the community we have devoted ourselves to, the feelings we have navigated, the intuition we have learned how to listen to. 

this is a card of gratitude, of satisfaction, of profound feelings of self-worth. this is loving ourselves deeply, believing that we deserve compassion and care and love and joy and pleasure and depth, recognizing the beauty and magic that we bring to the world through our presence and our gifts and our generosity.

and sometimes, this is a card of desire: of recognizing the wishes that we still carry, of acknowledging the wishes that are beginning to reveal themselves. when the nine of cups comes forward, i tend to consider not only the wishes i’ve made that have come true through effort and devotion, but also the wishes that still live within my heart, the wishes that i might soon start to pursue more fervently.

the nine of cups wants us to remember that wishing for more does not mean that we are not grateful for what we have. it’s permission and celebration, dwelling together in our still-beating hearts. it’s satisfaction and desire tangled up and twisted, intermingled, existing simultaneously.

and it’s beautiful. it’s a reminder that you’re allowed to want, to wish — yes, even you.

these days when i think about wishing, i think about d&d. i generally prefer to play melee characters like fighters and monks and rogues, the types of people who may have a little magic at their fingertips but generally have to rely on technique, stamina, agility, strength, cunning, and creativity to survive the challenges of adventuring. but even as someone who tends to not utilize magic in games, even i know that there are some pretty incredible spells available — and it's worth noting that the wish spell, available to only the most powerful sorcerers and wizards (and certain kinds of advanced bards and clerics), can accomplish basically anything — for a price. 

d&d isn’t necessarily a system where magic has a high cost — some spells require expensive or hard-to-get components, but most spells don’t exact a price on the caster. it’s not like the magicians or shadow and bone, where some spells require major sacrifice and if gone wrong can damage or even destroy the caster. in d&d, you get a certain number of spells based on your level and casting type, and as long as you have a slot available and the necessary components, you can do what you want. 

wish is unique in that while there are some ways to use it that are essentially guaranteed to work, there is also space for the character to experiment, and hope they get lucky. per the 5e handbook, “the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong.” the DM has a lot of leeway and power with this spell, and if the character makes a wish using imprecise language or wishes for something with unforeseen consequences, it can alter the entire trajectory of the game, or permanently injure the caster. a wish gone wrong can even result in the magic user never being able to use the spell again.

it’s the ultimate be careful what you wish for, a spell that can be both a blessing and a curse, a poison and a cure.

all of this raises questions, especially in our world with its own kinds of magic: how seriously do you take your own wishes? what price would you be willing to pay to ensure that a wish came true? how much thought, intention, precision do you put into the wishes that you make? and how often do you follow that wish up with effort, works, the blood and sweat and tears that actually make something tangible?

are you throwing a coin in a well and hoping something extraordinary happens to you? or is the tossing of the coin just the first step in a long road toward your biggest and brightest dreams, a part of the story that you yourself are actively writing?

i’ve talked a lot in this space about building queer community over time and effort, about going to queer summer camp for adults and meeting lifetime friends and feeling like i belonged somewhere, about getting divorced and falling in love and getting married again, about navigating grief and depression and not knowing if i wanted to be alive or not, about playing d&d and reading tarot and volunteering and taking chances, about putting myself out there and being honest and asking for what i need. emotional things, relational things, intuitive things, compassionate things. cups things.

and let me tell you, and tell you, and tell you again: this shit is hard. it’s scary, and awkward, and so fucking vulnerable. it can feel so embarrassing and so tender to need, to want, to wish. 

yet we all do need, and want, and wish. every single one of us craves people, community, care, gentleness, places to express our emotions, ways to be loved, opportunities to care and to let ourselves be cared for. and it takes time to build these things, to make them real. sometimes it’s a whole cycle, a whole story, a whole adventure, before we find ourselves satisfied with what we’ve discovered, what we’ve pursued, what we’ve established and shored up and fortified. 

the nine of cups is the recognition that the things we wished for, we have managed to make real. it’s the pride in not only having tossed a coin into a well and made a wish, but the realization that we loved ourselves enough to be vulnerable and brave and go after what we wanted.

this isn’t just “wanting to fall in love” without ever trying to meet anyone, or being willing to have awkward dates, or navigating conflict with someone new — it’s taking the time to get to know yourself, to pursue connections that reflect your desires and your values, to invest in people who are worthy of you.

this isn’t just “wanting community” without showing up in humility, without letting yourself be relied on, without acknowledging your own shortcomings — it’s returning to a group again and again, taking responsibility for what you know and what you don’t know, being willing to learn and grow and change and be challenged and be uncomfortable.

this isn’t just “wanting to heal” without exploring your own narratives, without learning about trauma and triggers, without looking for language you can weaponize to avoid accountability — it’s adjusting your patterns and perspectives, doing the hard work of understanding and unpacking baggage, figuring out what cocktail of therapies and medications and behaviors and supports actually empower you to change. 

the nine of cups is the result of all that work, all that consistency, all that trying. sometimes it all takes longer than we wished, or costs more than we thought it would. but the nine of cups is an invitation to celebrate how far we’ve come, and what we’ve learned how to do, and how we've fallen more in love with ourselves through that process.

this card isn’t just a celebration of how loved you are (although it can be!). it’s an encouragement to honor how the relationships in your life have grown, how you have grown as a person through your communities, how your relationship with yourself has shifted and expanded over time, how you’ve changed the ways that you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself with compassion or firmness in appropriate moments, how you trust your intuition and allow your intuition to be a major part of your decision making process, how you've learned to be in relationship with your own emotions.

which patterns have you broken? which kinds of vulnerability are you more comfortable expressing? which needs are you willing to admit to? which emotions are easier for you to share? which relationships are you proud to be investing in? which community connections have you built and sustained?

to put another way: what would it mean to recognize your emotional milestones, fully and without apology? what would it mean to really appreciate the ways that your heart is fulfilled? what would it look like to consider the kinds of nourishment or satisfaction that you still find yourself craving, that you’re still wishing for?

and what might it do if you recognized the ways that making your own wishes come true also has a ripple effect on everyone around you?

throwing a coin into a fountain, into a wishing well, can be a beautiful declaration: of intent, or of celebration. i want this, or i wanted this so badly and now i have it. sharing our desires with the water, letting the depths hold our deepest longings and carry them into reality — and also, letting the water help us feel deep gratitude, recognize our growth, sink into the moment.

a wishing well as a nine of cups place feels right to me, as does the act of wishing someone well: of giving them the gift of hope, of offering them a reminder that change and expansion and release and connection are all possible.

throwing a coin into water isn't just about the wish we make — it's also about the ripples of water, the others who might hear our quiet prayer, the impact that our desire to bring more love or companionship or community or beauty or art or magic or care into this world has on everyone around us.

within the context of this card, nine as a number can feel like it's just about us: our private little wishes and dreams and hopes and prayers that we hold close or whisper in the dark or secretly yearn for. but nine is also about the impact that we have on everyone around us — nine of cups not just as us feeling fulfilled, but us about granting wishes for other people, being the miracle that others might have prayed for, creating communities or spaces or containers or opportunities for people to trust their intuition, to be kinder to themselves, to meet people who become their dearly beloveds, to connect and caretake and extend and expand together.

what have you wished for, that goes beyond you? how have your wishes shaped the ways you've shown up in this world, the ways that you've given back, the ways that you've worked to make real change or stability or beauty or magic?

the nine of cups isn't just about your wishes being fulfilled — it's about our wishes being fulfilled. it's about the collective wishes we carry, tangling and mingling and becoming something bigger than all of us.

it's about daring to keep dreaming, even as our wishes are actively coming true. and it's about allowing our wishes to ripple through the collective, offering hope and inspiration and anticipation to everyone around us, everyone who sees us, everyone who interacts with our magic.

this month, consider your wishes past, present, and future. consider how often you’re careful about what you wish for, how often you put some heat and effort and intention behind your wishes, and how many of your own wishes over the years have come true. how did that happen? what did it take, and what did it cost? how aware were you at the time of your wish coming true, or did you even notice it was happening as it happened?

have you ever gotten exactly what you wished for, and regretted it? have you ever not gotten something you wished for, and been grateful for it?

what does it mean to wish well? what are you currently wishing for? what is the water carrying for you? and how could the relationship that you have with your own wishes, your own desires, and the wishes that you have for the collective bring you into a deeper trust in your own magic?

wishing you a month of wishes, those fulfilled and those still revealing themselves. let's have a generous september, friends.