Card of the Week: Five of Cups

It is not the experience of today that drives a person mad; it is the remorse or bitterness of something which happened yesterday and the dread of what tomorrow may bring.

The Five of Cups signifies the failure to see good in a situation.  Seeing only regret, disappointment, pain and loss can lead to more counterproductive acts or even hostility.  With an obsession only on the bad, the good can be inadvertently overlooked or even deliberately ignored.  This card is sometimes called the Inheritance card, suggesting a legacy of tragedy perpetuated across generations.

Inverted, this card is more hopeful, suggesting an affinity away from pain and loss and toward recovery, reconnection, renewal and rebuilding.  Look for positive ways to aid healing.

In “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, a stolen shuttlecraft is recaptured bearing a two-colored alien identifying himself as Lokai from the unaligned planet Cheron.  Another similarly two-toned visitor arrives calling himself Commissioner Bele, and he attempts to claim Lokai as his prisoner.  The aliens both make multiple hate-filled accusations of slavery and genocide against each other.  Bele uses a personal energy power to gain steering control over the Enterprise.  He cedes control long enough to allow the Enterprise to finish its original mission to Arianus, then retakes control to force the ship to take them to Charon.  They arrive to find its entire population destroyed, with no indication by which political side.  Lokai and Bele continue to fight, even as they transport down to the ruined planet with nothing left but their hatred.