Card of the Week: Nine of Coins

Prosperity begins with a state of mind.  Believe in yourself, and in your expectations.  Expect to expand your wealth, your knowledge, your relationships, your income, and your wisdom.  And you will.

The Nine of Coins represents prosperity.  Desired goals will be reached, and benefits will flow from their rewards.  This could come in the form of material gain, financial affluence, emotional security, or simply the ability to afford and enjoy hobbies, leisure and free time.  Despite the potential protections of these comforts, take care that they do not become walls of isolation.  Keep your doors open.

Inverted, this card warns of the dangers of believing in artifice.  Property could be damaged, a business deal could be a swindle, or seeming safety could become an entrapment.  Trust, but verify.

In “A Piece of the Action”, the Enterprise visit Sigma Iotia II.  A hundred years earlier, as the planet’s culture was just beginning to enter industrialization, it had been visited by the Horizon, which had inadvertently left behind a history textbook on Earth’s early twentieth century Chicago crime mobs.  The Iotians, apparently viewing the book as a guide, proceeded to pattern their society after its examples.  The Enterprise landing party finds itself caught between several mob-style “bosses,” each attempting to take over as full leader of the Iotian society.  Captain Kirk sees the Federation as responsible for the cultural contamination, and must find a way to address it.  His solution is to become the top “boss” himself and force all the Iotian bosses to answer to the Federation, which would then gradually guide the Iotians into a more ethical system.