Ace of Cups - What's Love Got To Do With It?

When I see the Ace of Cups that I drew this morning I always get excited, because it means there is a raw
emotional energy abounding some where within the context of my life, depending on what I choose to do with it, and how it is directed and channeled.

We see here Aphrodite, the goddess of Love that is embodies the potential for compassion and intimacy.

This card is a representation that urges me to be compassionate toward myself and have an intimate knowledge of who I am, both the positive and negative aspects of my personality. It's really about accepting and loving myself as I am. This isn't an easy undertaking and often takes years of work and maybe therapy for many of us.

 I remember over 20 years ago before my own personal recovery, I was rightly told that, I had to learn how to re-parent and love myself. I was as mad a hell. I'd been care-taking most of my life, making sure others were happy, putting my own needs and wants on the back burner, letting people use and abuse me.

I felt like once again I was expected to, and was going to have to be the one to do this 'taking care' of myself, when what I really wanted and needed I thought, was for someone else to take care of me for a change. I figured this was only fair. This in fact was due to having grown up with unmet needs when I was a kid, and it carried over into my adult life, and I acted this out through my co-dependent relationships, until I finally understood how to really re-parent and love myself. It meant changing myself and changing my relationships.
Many of us, if not all human beings are a work in progress.

When it comes to love and intimate relationships, what's love got to do with it? If I don't have a healthy relationship with myself, being really happy and content with my life as it is, I can't expect someone else to either fix me or to make me happy. That's my responsibility.

 It's really a simple kind of equation and formula, but many of us get wrong, time and time again. We just have to look at the statistics and observe the high incidence of divorce.

Taking an inventory of how we define our relationships with ourselves and with others, is a very important factor to consider as we more forward in our lives, regardless of our status and whether we are single. married or other. Tina Turner figured this out. She is someone I greatly admire.

Ace of Cups - No Energy Versus Raw Energy

I have about as much energy today as a popcorn fart. Don't ask me what that is, I really don't know. But I think it just doesn't have much energy behind it.

Not enough sleep last night is what I attribute my laziness to today. Gray skies on a Saturday, feels more like a Sunday, and so drawing the Ace of Cups is just what I need to see to encourage some needed oomph . A very encouraging card, that indicates having a cup that is overflowing with raw creative energy, and an abundance of love.

The beginning of this year presented some challenges, but no sooner did they arrive...

I had to stop this post mid sentence because another Santa arrived with more fire wood! Wow talk about having a full cup! I've needed wood but didn't have the money to get any and so some one so very kind has given this to me, making sure I'm warm this Winter, not once, but four times this kind of thing has happened to me this New Year!

As I was saying, things have had a miraculous way of turning around 180 degrees for me and this New Year of 2016 is off to a stellar start. I found out yesterday I have the opportunity to facilitate some art programming to kids and actually get paid for it too! I am feeling very blessed!

It's 8:00 o'clock here, and I've worked straight out for over three hours stacking wood to make room for another load that's coming! I'm so exhausted. And here I thought I was being lazy with no energy. Nope. Now I really have no energy, but managed to make myself a couple of homemade pizzas for a late supper.

You know it's a wonderful feeling, knowing that we're cared for, loved by others, and by the God of our own understanding when we can't seem to love ourselves. It's truly just as important that we really know what it means to love ourselves, because we can't give, what we don't have.

I'll very gratefully sleep well tonight, feeling very loved and blessed.

Oh, and according to the online urban dictionary, it has a number of descriptive sentences, using the adjective, popcorn fart. The one I like most is, a faint, non-smelly fart, hardly worth the effort. I was feeling that not much was hardly worth the effort today, at the beginning of this post, but that sure changed in a hurry! And now I just feel like a very big ole happy fart.

Ace of Cups - How Full Is Your Cup?

Today was the perfect day to draw this Ace of Cups. With Christmas coming on I'm feeling good about a lot of things and enjoying having gotten my Christmas decorating done, with my little Charlie Brown tree.

My Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

I've continued on my cleaning and reorganizing in my house. I've come to realize that taking care of your home is taking care of yourself. Actually I think I've become addicted to how all this is making me feel, in spite of my back being sore. I'll take it easy tomorrow.

Things are really financially difficult for me right now, but truthfully my worry really is almost none existent, which is a little unusual for me, and I'm feeling I have all I need. In many ways my cup is full and over flowing with blessings. The Ace of Cups on a divinatory level heralds this outpouring of feeling, which can be overwhelming. It isn't all happy feelings, but many different emotions that rise to the surface at this time of year, when thoughts are full of Christmas reflections.

On Sunday I went to a meeting with a large group of local residents to discuss the progress of having a refugee family come to our village. In three weeks our community has raised a total of 9,000 dollars in just three weeks. Two people have very generously donated two houses for the refugee families, in case we get more than one family. Amazing!

Aphrodite being the goddess of love, I am deeply reminded what life is all about, giving to others, and I am feeling very grateful, happy and content. Perhaps I've caught the Hanukkah pre-Christmas Spirit.

Happy Hanukkah everyone.

Ace of Cups - Shlemiel or Shlimazel?

Hands down this card for me today is my very favourite, and it's perfect timing with the Blue Moon and because I am getting together with some life long women friends. We've been gathering for these women's weekends together for many years, and saw one another go through those pivotal life altering events like marriage, divorce, death, those soul draining things that can make you feel like a shlimazl, or shlemiel, both two hard cases. The shlimazl usually gets the worst of it. The shlemiel falls off the ladder, and the shlimazl breaks her fall. These Yiddish words accurately describe the unluckiness I am talking about. Yes, and I found out that luck has nothing to do with happiness.


Things that make you say, " Why is this happening? " or " What is wrong with me? " You may be left feeling like you are simply an unlucky sop, who has a dark cloud over your head.  I used to feel this way. I thought every one else was destined to be happy. Happiness was something that seemed to elude me, and I didn't know how to be responsible for my own happiness. I felt this way for many years, though it may not  have been apparent to anyone else other than me.

 I had been attempting to fill a spiritual void with a material reality. It really wasn't until I was about 40 years old, when I fully came to believe that happiness was to be found within myself. I learned that happiness comes from being grateful and reaching out for help. Today I focus on what I have, not on what I don't have.

In the Ace of Cups we see Aphrodite rising out of the frothy ocean in all her glory and power. She is the goddess of Love and called the Mother of All. This card is about feeling a deep love for yourself, for others and for Spirit, that fortifies and strengthens your own ability to keep that veil of unhappiness away.

When we truly are our own best friend, this enables us to really appreciate deep friendships with those who know us, love and accept us as we are. These friendships are some of the most affirming and loving blessings we can have in our lives.

If the Great Spirit loves and accepts us as we are, then why wouldn't we, or why shouldn't we love, and accept ourselves as we are? Being mindful and maintaining a daily conscious contact with Spirit, has been paramount in my own happiness.

I am grateful to my fellow sisters and brothers who have shared in the falling, and in the breaking of falls. I am grateful as well, that they taught me how to no longer be a shlemiel or a shlimazl!

Ace of Cups - Pleasure-Pride-Empowerment

The Ace of Cups I've drawn, speaks to me today of the culmination of thoughts, and my ongoing exploration of how women reclaim their bodies in every way, in the realm of the sacred.

Slowly and steadily I've been making a conscious effort to address healths issues, making doctors appointments etc. I am feeling very positive about this and nervous at the same time, making visits to my dentist and my family doctor, and having routine tests. Not much fun needless to say, but necessary.

Reclaiming that sacredness of the female body has become my focus as of late. This is very different than being preoccupied  with superficial concerns about what I wear or "putting on my face" for reasons that have little to do with health or sacredness. The ancient philosophy of referring to the body as a temple immediately comes to my mind.

Historically as women we carry pain, shame, and dis-empowerment of the past and present. If we can look within ourselves, we find there exists the exact opposite, pleasure, pride and empowerment. It has been there all along. It's time we all remove the historical cultural shroud placed upon us, embrace and love our fertile, feral, sexual and creative selves, reclaiming our wild woman nature, that culture has long feared.

 “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.” - Isadora Duncan

Ace of Cups - I Don't Want To Be Steven Seagal

Getting on an emotional merry-go-round can wear a person out, or may alienate others. It can be very superficial in that emotion that is not tempered with wisdom and insight, can not be sustained and can make for feelings that escalate into despair, and hopelessness. At some point there has to be action taken in order to bring about positive change.

Not every one is comfortable showing emotion or seeing any one else emote. I heard it said many years ago, feelings are just that, feelings not good or bad. Why so many feel compelled to make a judgement about feelings seems a strange thing to do, but I think we all do it at some point. Mostly I think we place this judgement on ourselves.  Why do I feel that way?  I shouldn't feel like that. I wished I felt differently. I'm stupid for feeling this way.  Sound familiar?

The Ace of Cups (Aphrodite) is a force of nature, it's about having your cup overflowing with emotion, and having an outpouring of feelings that well up within, and can't be contained.

It was once explained to me by a therapist that emotions are not something we should get into the habit of suppressing. If we knowingly, and continually suppress our emotion, they eventually become repressed, and we are unaware they even exist in our subconsciousness. She compared this to a old mattress with springs that pop up. We keep pressing them down with our hands and feet. Very quickly we run out of appendages to push them back down, and this repression is what leads to mental health problems or issues with our physical health. This made so much sense to me, and I knew I had to make changes within myself, and in my life.

I learned as a young child, that showing emotion was not acceptable, and so I shut down. I continued on that way into my adolescence and adulthood, until my emotions became deeply repressed. Eventually could no longer control my emotion. This is when I had to seek help and I am grateful everyday of my life that I did.
I heard it said once, ' if you do not deal with your emotions they will deal with you.' As much as a do like Steven Seagal, I don't want to be like him.

Ace of Cups - Why Emotion Beats No Emotion

   ' My cup runneth over ', from the Hebrew Bible is what comes to mind when I see the Ace of Cups appear. It is also a card that can symbolize the individual who is almost possessed by frenzied passion, and visceral emotion, an experience where the heart overrules the head. We can be swept away in a sea of emotion that is a force of nature, causing humans to display behaviour they wouldn't usually exhibit, such as jealousy, spite, and deceit etc. These are the more negative aspects of the Ace of Cups.

Here we see Aphrodite, the goddess who initiates the powerful upsurge of raw energy toward relationship, and the love between Psyche and Eros.

I was once described as being ' a ball of emotion ', and ' a bleeding heart '. I don't agree with these derogatory descriptions. I actually learned how to stuff my emotion from the age of 6 years of age. I remember exactly the day this happened. I was in the Toronto Sick Children's Hospital with my parents, and my brother Ralph who was in the hospital bed, because he was unable to walk. He been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at this time.

Understandably I was very emotionally distraught, and when I began to express my emotion, I was told by my mother, not to cry. The statement that resonated was, " don't cry you'll make yourself sick ". I saw no tears from my parents, nor from my brother who was then, 16 years old. I got the message loud and clear as I'm sure my brother did as well, that it was not acceptable to express my emotion, and so I followed suite from there on in.

This emotional shut down continued all though my life, until I began to get serious about my recovery from alcoholism, which is often described as being a ' disease of the emotion. ' Alcoholism was all through my family on both sides, and my family had been greatly affected by the disease. Looking back, I can say I went into survival mode, and I kind of disappeared as the family's focus was completely on my brother and his illness.

Today, I understand how suppressing emotions eventually in time, become repressed, in that we are unaware we even have these emotions, and it becomes very unhealthy. If we do not deal with our emotions, they will deal with us.

 It is much better thing to be able to feel, than to not feel. The disconnection from our emotion makes us less human and we are unable to experience love, or life in a holistic way and directly affects our relationships with ourselves and with others.

Having a high intelligence quotient is valued in our society, but it is my experience that having emotional intelligence is just as valuable, if not more so. If we can manage to temper and balance our emotion with our intellect, then the Ace of Cups in our lives will serve us better, leading to a healthier, happier life, where we can thrive, instead of simply trying to survive.

Ace of Cups - Aphrodite and The Realm of The Heart

Oh well, once more it is, the Ace of Cups. I've drawn this card again today. I had a very recent discussion with some fellow Tarot readers regarding cards that we regularly choose in our own daily draws, and what this means. We were all in agreement that it provides an opportunity to dig in deeper and see the card from different a perspective. We may be avoiding certain aspects or issues that the card brings our immediate attention to.
I do believe the reason this happens is because there is a message there that needs addressing. And so, I am going to do this today, as much as it is uncomfortable, and it makes me feel very vulnerable. So be it, I really don't care as I feel ready now to address what it is I have honestly been avoiding.

The message of this card directly points to the issue of love and we meet head on the complex force of nature, the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In Greek myth she is really the mother of all, having created all beings.

In the Mythic Tarot the Ace of Cups signifies new bright beginnings, prompting us to have an open heart and strong faith that implies the law of attraction so to speak.

Okay, I am going to do this, keep my heart open, and have faith. There is a certain someone I am most fond of, who will for personal reasons, remain anonymous. I am quite certain if he ever does read this post, he will quickly realize I am talking about him as being the object of my great affection. We went to University several years ago, and have reconnected over social media after all this time. We haven't seen each other face to face  for almost fourty years! That's a hell of a long time! SO as you can imagine I have all sorts of thoughts, wanderings, maybe a few fantasies. hope, and longings,whirling around in my head, like dancing twirling dervishes!

So that's it, done, and I've put it out with open heart, and faith into the Universe, and I must say I do feel better, and I am ready for a great journey of the realm of the heart.

Ace of Cups - Overwhelm

What am drawn to about the Ace of Cups is all that foaming water, which signifies emotion and turbulent upheaval. As well, that over sized Cup contains all that emotion. It is easy to get carried away in a frenzy of passionate emotion whether they be positive or negative.

 It's a good card for me today, as a clarifying reminder, and confirmation of the state I can get myself into if I don't use the tools I have, to remain in a state of balance. The calm in the midst of the stormy sea of worry, regret, panic and all the rest that we are be confronted within life.

 This card is about relationships and the realms of the heart, but certainly not at the exclusion of the relationship with myself. This relationship I know, needs to be one of real self-care, and self-awareness, in order to have the best relationship I can have with others.

We can have all those tools at our disposal. Thing is, we need to remember to use and apply them. If we can just stay still long enough to listen to that still quiet voice, that is our intuition, if we can just give ourselves a chance, and even permission to take a break, and find that quiet inner core of our being. This is where the source of the calm springs from, and can give solace to the soul, quell that storm of the day, and help us to be ready for that force of nature.

If I don't use these tools to deal with my emotion, my emotion will deal with me. I have learned this lesson the hard way over my life. I still have much to learn.

Ace of Cups - Athene's Owl

Well I don't think there is a card that seems more positive in meaning, upon first impression, as the Ace of Cups. Don't get me wrong there are many positives about this card, but don't be deceived, Athene can have her character defects, and a dark side.

The beautiful goddess is full of complexities, is the essence of feminine beauty, she can also be, just as treacherous, vindictive, jealous, vain, and lazy. She is truly a force of nature, and raw energy.
Athene is the initiating power behind the love story between Eros and Psyche. 


In this card the realm of the heart is apparent, and greatly indicated. This cup is overflowing, causing one to take the plunge into the beginnings of a relationship. The individual is ready to embark on the journey of love, which can be very overwhelming, and in all likelihood, very risky.

Athene rises from the turbulent waves of sea foam, holding the extremely big cup, indicating an upheaval of emotion, in one hand, toward the heavens. The other hand, she holds close to her chest in hesitation, and perhaps resistant caution.


All that said, allowing emotion to rule over our decisions and actions, can be dangerous, leading to hurt, and heart break. Even if the object of your affection is making efforts to initiate interest, this does not mean it's a sure thing. Taking and making, time for relationship over a period of time is prudent, and wise, otherwise love is blind and fool hearty.

 It is best to be like the little wise owl that represents or accompanies Athene on her shoulder, as a symbol of knowledge, wisdom, and discernment.

Ace of Cups - Abundance and Creativity

When I look at the Ace of Cups, I get such a good feeling from this card, the reason being is, that it symbolizes abundance and creativity that is overflowing.
 Cups symbolize emotion and Aces are the spark or seed of raw growth and overwhelming awakening of passion. Aphrodite the Goddess of love rises up out of the foamy ocean.

There now exists an opportunity to accept what is being offered in the cup she holds, in the form of a spiritual gift of creativity, and the beginning of a great journey of the heart. The individual is ready to embark on the journey of love, after a renewed found faith, in a God of your understanding, and in having a belief in the self and in that inner voice we all have.

It could be the bright and heady beginnings of a relationship with another, or with the psyche or soul. You are being given the choice to accept the offer of abundance. Remember it is not without work, commitment, sacrifice, and with a continued faith and belief.

May of us are more comfortable giving to others rather than to ourselves. This card augers a time of faith in one self, knowing and realizing you deserve good things in this life, and in love. It is a matter of acceptance and faith and saying yes to ourselves.