7 of Cups: Scorpio III
Decan ruler (Chaldean): Venus
Hermetic title: Debauch / Illusionary Success
Corresponding majors: The Empress [Venus] + Death [Scorpio]
Dates: November 10- November 20
The mysterious 7 of Cups! Sometimes dreamy, sometimes squalid, always enigmatic. What happens when you introduce the Empress (Venus) to Death (Scorpio)? What transpires in the encounter between Eros and Thanatos, dove and serpent - what Freud called the 'sex-drive' and the 'death-drive'?
The ending hinted at in the 6 of Cups is now here. That which we consider beautiful is beautiful not despite its mortality but because of it. The perfection of a rose (or a ripe avocado for that matter) evaporates in a moment. How does one pursue beauty in its dying hour? Do you seek to transform it into something new? Do you try to preserve it as it was? How you react in the face of that terrible, mortal beauty is the subject of this card.
Venus Fallen
The Hermetic title of the 7 of Cups is the "Lord of Debauch" or "Illusory Success". In English the term we hear more often is "debauchery," which suggests pleasure pursued to the point of compulsion: lusts slaked, beauty despoiled, perfection corrupted. This decan belongs to Venus, but it's in the Mars-ruled sign of Scorpio. In the signs of Mars, Venus is "in detriment" (and vice versa). Her powers to charm and beguile may fail, or project an air of desperation, or take on a self-destructive cast. If you've ever seen how the office Christmas party ends - drunken stumbling, smeared mascara, regrettable hookups - you've seen the 7 of Cups.
"Debauch," then, is a misguided effort to cling to a glamor whose moment has passed; blowsy, overblown roses, cosmetic surgery. In that fantasy world, a seeker can fall into addiction's endless seeking, the trap of fetishizing the sensation of the high, rather than its rise and fall through time. From this you can derive the negative interpretation set of this card: escapism, obsession, hangovers, promiscuity.
The Living Dead
Historically, the decan signified not just clinging to jaded beauty but also seizing reluctant beauty; Picatrix specifically mentions "fornication" and "sex with unwilling women". The Astrolabium Planum points to "drunkenness and violence".
But perhaps a better metaphor for the disturbingly charismatic world of debilitated Venus in Scorpio's dark palace is the legend of the vampire. Scorpio is the sign of fixed water, thus having perhaps a particular connection with the blood charting its one-way course through our arteries and veins. The vampire's bite, like a syringe or hypodermic, a tattoo needle, or indeed, the scorpion's venomous sting, calls to mind the Martial specialty of piercing, to inject or extract life-transforming fluids.
Surely the dangerous allure of vampires was at one level a Victorian confrontation with the real fear of death. It was an age that fetishized mourning: apparel, comportment, prescribed accessories, degrees and periods of mourning. Perhaps we see the shadow of that obsession, darkly mirrored, in the Dracula archetype.
In the 6 of Cups, we spoke of life itself as the "golden hour". To embrace the transitory nature of the golden hour is to embrace rites of nostalgia and mourning. But in the 7 of Cups, perhaps we deny death his due. Vampires, who walk the night and shun the day, offer an unnatural extension; an artificial closure whose crowning act is a kiss of death. Perhaps in Scorpio Venus lends her romance and glamor to the death-drive, giving birth not to beautiful children of the day, but ghastly children of the night!
Fairy Gold & Dark Sorcery
If any card has something to say about illusion, it's the 7 of Cups. The backlit, bedazzled figure in the foreground stares at an array of beguiling choices. What might they symbolize? beauty, sex, faith, power, wealth, fame, danger ...? Part of the genius of the card is that these "strange chalices of vision" (Waite's terminology) might mean something different to each person viewing it. And what of the shrouded mystery at the center? Is it the one true savior? is it our soulmate? Does it mean the truth is hidden from view?
While we all associate the sign of Scorpio with the scorpion, it takes "lower" and "higher" forms as well - specifically the forms of snake and eagle. It is in the nature of Scorpio to evolve and transform, shedding its baser instincts as a snake sheds it skin, attaining at length the eagle's keen, big-picture powers of perception.
But where there is transformation, there is also no single reality, and that's where illusion comes in. In the Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley describes the 7 of Cups as the "Palace of Klingsor". This is a reference to the Parsifal myth, in which the wicked sorcerer Klingsor attempts to waylay Grail-bound knights with a palace and temptress-filled magical garden. But when righteous Parsifal sees through Klingsor's magic, the garden withers and the palace crumbles. In Thoth's 7 of Cups, we see the curdled reality beneath the glamor conjured by the Waite-Smith image.
A similarly Scorpionic myth is that of Nectanebo, the Egyptian conjuror who was said to have fathered Alexander the Great by seducing his mother in serpent-form. Interestingly, the Sola Busca deck (1491) associates Nectanebo with the Knight of Cups, who would centuries later be considered a Scorpionic figure in his own right when the Golden Dawn assigned him two Scorpio decans.
The Card of the Artist
Every decan ruler has a skill in its decan, and Venus has a particularly powerful secret here in Scorpio III. Seeing what is not really there is also the work of the imagination, and that is where the brilliant side of the 7 of Cups comes in - the work of the genius and the virtuoso, the answer to the shining presence of the Muse. I often call the 7 of Cups the "card of the artist". The painter who captures the fleeting vision of her inner eye metabolizes her inspiration into art. As Pat Valenza, creator of the Deviant Moon deck (and my favorite 7 of Cups), says, for the artist "the duality of his subconscious and conscious minds...act together to conceive an altered version of reality. The artists depicts not what he sees, but what he 'sees'." In short, it is an act of magic - a crystallization of desire, an ensigilization.
Also here lurk dangers well known to artists of every time and place: escapism, substance abuse, sometimes addiction. Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Amy Winehouse, the "27 Club" of musical culture - these are just a few examples from the modern age, but it is an old story...sometimes it seems difficult to find a musician, actor, or artist who didn't die too young. The Knight of Cups drinks deep from the well of story, and sometimes he drowns.
The Gift of Putrefaction
In alchemy, nigredo or blackening is the process wherein the outer shell of matter rots, burns or decomposes, allowing an inner light to become visible. This is the ultimate message of Death/Scorpio: the purpose of death is life. Every seed, every new life form takes root in the spent husk of its parent. Those of us who garden know this for a fact: the most potent fertilizers are the fermented wastes of organic life forms, whether that is in the form of compost, cow manure, or the rotting fish traditionally planted by indigenous farmers beneath each planted mound of corn.
The 7 of Cups shows metabolism at the micro and macro level - whether you want to call it putrefaction or fertilization is little more than a matter of preference. As Austin Coppock notes in his Scorpio II chapter of 36 Faces, "when desire's hungry ghosts have finally been laid to rest, the compost is complete, and a rich loam results." Deep in the mycelium, the liver of the earth transforms toxins into fruitful substrate; the only way out is through. These are transactions between worlds, deals brokered between decay and fruition, illusions that nourish and destroy.
The Takeaway
When you draw the 7 of Cups, take a deep breath and prepare yourself for powerful warnings and promises. You may find yourself in an emotionally ungrounded state, in which good judgement seems to have absented itself and imagination has taken the reins. Enjoy the fairy gold! but don't mistake it for the real thing.
Procrastination, escaping into fantasy worlds, seeking out altered states of consciousness - these are some of the temptations of 7 of Cups, and there is probably no harm in indulging them a little. However, bear in mind the potential cost: the hangover, the walk of shame, the amends for something you did when you were out of your head.
If, despite your best efforts, you wake up floundering in the debris of choices that glittered like gold the night before, remember that the ultimate power of the 7 of Cups is to transform what is broken, spent, and corrupted into something new and beautiful. Have a strong coffee and pick up the paintbrush, the pen, the guitar. The way to reap the 7 of Cups' treasure is to pay your tribute in the form of art: paint, write songs, make music, poetry, dance. Pay attention to your dreams and fashion them into art, for reality is only what we make of it.