the seven of cups in life, work, career & business ✨

themes: possibilities, imagination, fantasy, illusion, dreaminess, swirliness, wishful thinking, temptation, uncertainty, difficulty discerning what’s real and/or what’s worth pursuing, confusion

how this plays out:
note: the sevens of tarot feel external, but are often actually internal. the seven of cups could look and feel like there are too many options to choose from or commit to, but the actual experience is happening inside you.

• You know you don’t want to keep doing your current job, but when you try to imagine what’s next you can see a lot of possibilities (i.e. you could see yourself starting a business, going back to school, writing a book, consulting in your current industry, taking a year off, becoming a chef or a full-time traveling yoga teacher, etc.). Every option feels equally possible and impossible, also equally appealing.

• You have seven business ideas in your notes app at any given moment. Depending on the day, you’re convinced a different one is the thing to devote yourself to.

• You get offered a new job and you immediately start imagining the title, money, lifestyle, people you would meet and associate with, and person you might become. And your immediate imagination of these things starts before you actually know whether you want or would even like the job that’s on the table.

• You spend hours looking at job postings, but not because you are ready to leave. It’s more that imagining all the lives you could be living feels more compelling than committing to one (even your current one, despite already being in it).

• You finally admit that your career (or life or business or hobby, etc) doesn’t feel like your anymore. Rather than knowing that you truly want, every desire that you’ve suppressed for the last decade starts to bubble up at once.

• You keep saying you’re “waiting for clarity” before launching, quitting, applying, or committing. Yet every time one direction starts to get clear, another possibility appears and sends you back into questioning it all.

invitation: The seven of cups is about being in the swirliness, the dreaminess, the fantasy or the illusions we create. The seven of cups can often appear right after you realize,

“Holy shit. This isn’t me. I don’t actually want this life.”

And instead of the following moment being a beautifully articulated “Here’s what I do want instead..”, it’s usually

“Okay, then what the fuck do I actually want?”

And that wtf do I actually want moment, is the seven of cups. Most especially when there are a lot of possibilities (maybe even endless possibilities) on the table. That’s the swirl. And the kicker (er, I mean invitation) is:

The swirl is where desires that haven’t been allowed to exist finally get to surface. And the seven of cups asks us, invites us, calls us in to be with it all. The seven of cups asks us *NOT* to escape the swirl, the fantasy, the illusion, or even the confusion.

Sometimes when we aren’t sure what to do, or where we are going, or what exactly we want, it appears that there are too many options in front of us. The external story goes something like,

I could do this. Or this. Or THIS. Maybe this is the right job, move, choice, etc. Maybe I should start the business. Maybe I should leave. Maybe I should stay. Maybe this idea is the one that will save me.

But the seven of cups isn’t illumination that there actually are too many choices or possibilities in front of you. It’s showing that your psyche is generating possibilities, projections, fears, desires, fantasies, illusions, delusions, imagined futures and even imagined meanings.

It’s not a time to take anything (including yourself and most especially your internal stories) too seriously.

The seven of cups describes a moment where possibility needs to remain possibility for a bit. It’s like the beginning of a creative project — where before you take action, anything is possible. EXCEPT, that the seven of cups isn’t saying “take any action!”. It’s saying be with what’s possible.

Before discernment, comes imagination.
Before something becomes real, you have to be capable of imagining something that isn’t yet real.
Before committing to one future, you might need permission to encounter several possible futures.

So the medicine, the invitation is: don’t collapse possibility into decision.

Again, it might feel external. When you see the seven of cups, you might really, truly, deeply feel that you need to decide something today. But actually, it wants you to be with what isn’t yet.

The seven of cups wants you to dream. To fantasize. To imagine.

The seven of cups wants you to let yourself want ridiculous realities.

It invites you to notice what seduces you, what tempts you, what scares you, etc. And it wants you to notice what possibilities keep coming back — what possibilities keep swirling and circling around in your head?

And most importantly, with this invitation there is a warning: don’t confuse your imagination with knowing.

The seven of cups can look like:

• I don’t know what I want.

• I have imagined twelve different futures so vividly that I can’t discern which one I actually want.

• I’m responding emotionally to possibilities that actually haven’t happened yet (except for in my mind).

• I’m treating something I’ve imagined like it’s some sort of important information (it isn’t).

When we see the seven of cups, it is true, the possibilities do exist all around you. AND, what you’re experiencing is your own inner world reflected back at you.

about the cups: the cups are fundamentally about the journey of emotional awareness to emotional maturity (read more about the cups in the six of cups breakdown). I like to read each cup as an important stepping stone along that journey. The cups teach us how to feel, relate, desire, connect and ultimately act with emotional integrity.

I like to read them as such (note, this is extremely simplified).

Ace of cups = I feel.
Two of cups = I meet you aka reciprocity.
Three of cups = I belong.
Four of cups = I tend to and nourish myself.
Five of cups = I grieve.
Six of cups = I let myself be seen (a major expansion).
Seven of cups = I discover what I want (only if we allow ourselves to be in the swirliness without rushing to decide).
Eight of cups = I leave / completion.
Nine of Cups = I fulfill myself. Or, my emotional wellbeing is mine.
Ten of Cups = I build a life that holds everything (relationship, family, community, abundance, whole self, etc.).

And then I read the court cards as the embodiment of the lessons.

But back to the seven of cups. If you’ve ever read much of my work, or if you’ve listened to more than one episode of the podcast, you’ve heard me ask this (and invite you into it):

What’s the most loving thing I can do for myself, right now?

The seven of cups says, before you can answer that honestly, you have to know what you want. Here is where you find it.

And then the eight of cups says, once you do know, emotional integrity requires you to act accordingly.

Which is the threshold for this edition of our weekly newsletter.