Card of the Week: Nine of Cups

You can grow to your fullest potential if you plant the seeds of joy, love, fulfillment, hope, and success.  Nature can only return to you what you plant.

The Nine of Cups represents the happiness and joy that comes from personal fulfillment.  Sometimes wishes can come true, but more often such feelings of achievement and accomplishment come from work that one has put with the community, one’s family, or toward a personal goal.  Don’t overdo it, but if you’ve earned it, you should be allowed to enjoy it a little.

Inverted, this card underscores the sincerity of one’s personal feelings or viewpoint.  But don’t be too smug, as underlying facts or assumptions might be in error.  Weigh others’ sincerity as well.

In “The Mark of Gideon”, the secretive planet Gideon wants Captain Kirk to be the first delegate to visit their planet.  Upon beaming down, instead of arriving in the Gideon council chambers, Kirk finds himself apparently onboard an empty Enterprise.  The only other person aboard is  Odona, a Gideon girl who claims to have no memory of how she got there.  It is a ruse, to allow her to become infected with a disease that Kirk carries dormantly.  Her people’s long lifespans have led to planetwide overcrowding, and introducing a new disease to the planet is being considered as a counter influence.  Meanwhile, Spock’s efforts to locate Kirk are repeatedly thwarted by the Gideons.  Eventually, Spock transports himself down, quickly locates Kirk and Odona, and returns with them to the real Enterprise.