ten of cups // creative prompts

hello, friends. all month long we've been talking about the ten of cups and relationships — and like i do every month, today i want to share some creative prompts and reflection questions that you can use to deepen your own personal relationship with this card.

standardized meanings are a wonderful place to start, and can be a really potent foundation to build your tarot practice on. but after awhile, those standardized meanings can start to feel general or generic, flattened out, overly simplistic. and the more you work with your cards intentionally outside of readings to understand how they might connect to you as an individual, the more you'll find that inside your readings, you can make more powerful, intuitive connections to your cards, and to the answers they share with you.

these prompts are a great way to practice, and to start thinking differently about cards that you might already be very familiar with. grab your tarot journal or your tarot deck, open to a fresh page, find your ten of cups card, and let's dig in.

when you look at the ten of cups card, what comes to mind first? what emotions, insights, observations, sensations emerge right away? the longer you look at these cards, what else reveals itself? how do you feel when you look at this card, when you think about this card, when you hold this card? is this a card that makes you glad to see, or does it incite any other responses or emotions?

which meanings do you associate with this card, and where did they come from? whose definitions or interpretations of this card do you lean on, and why? are there correspondences or phrases that feel particularly relevant when it comes to the ten of cups? how do those meanings feel in your body, and what do they mean to you personally?

is the ten of cups a card that comes up for you a lot in your tarot readings, or is it one that you don't tend to see as often? what is a time that this card came up in a significant moment that had a lot of meaning for you? is there a time this card emerged and you were not particularly happy to see it, or found its presence disappointing?

if the ten of cups was a person, would you like them? would you want to be friends with them, spend time with them, help them out if they called you in a crisis? do you think the ten of cups is a good neighbor, a good partner, a good strategist, a good businessperson? what skills does this ten of cups person possess, and where might they have weaknesses or blind spots? when would you seek this person out, and when might you avoid them?

if the ten of cups was a place or an environment, how often would you want to visit it? do you imagine this as a space of comfort, a space of transition, or perhaps something else? do you think it would be comfortable for you to be there, and how long do you think that comfort would last?

what do you think about the ten of cups as a transitional period, rather than the ending of a story? does one interpretation resonate more with you than another? what does it mean for this card to be liminal, rather than static? how does that impact your relationship with this card, if at all?

and — what medicine might the ten of cups have for you right now, today, in this moment? what are you trusting in, and what are you beginning to anticipate? which webs have you firmly established, and which ones are you dreaming of? how does support show up for you in tangible ways, and what kinds of support might you be ready to pursue next? and how can the ten of cups help you more clearly see where you are, and imagine where you want to go next?

i'll be back in a few days with a brand new essay! in the meantime, wishing you magic, support, care, and courage, friends.