The Nines

The Nines are the ninth card of each suit of the Minor Arcana, one step short of the Ten that completes it. A Nine is the suit very nearly fulfilled and felt at full strength. In the gentler suits that is satisfaction — wishes met, comfort earned. In the harder ones it is the strain of the last stretch: the wariness of someone who has come a long way, the sleepless worry before a resolution.

What the number means

Nine is the highest single digit, and most readers take the Nines as the peak of the suit's experience, for good or ill:

• The Nine of Wands is resilience: a bandaged figure leaning on a staff, wary, still standing guard over what they have built.
• The Nine of Cups is contentment: a well-fed man before a row of cups — often called the wish card.
• The Nine of Swords is anguish: someone sitting up in bed, face in hands, under nine swords. It is read as worry and sleepless thoughts, often worse in the mind than in the world.
• The Nine of Pentacles is self-sufficiency: a woman at ease in her own garden, enjoying what she has made.

Two Nines are among the most welcome cards in the deck and one is among the most feared, which shows how strongly the number amplifies its suit. (The Nine of Swords is a symbol of worry, not a statement about anyone's state of mind; if anxiety is real and heavy, a doctor or counsellor is the right person to talk to.)

In the Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn placed the Nines in Yesod, Foundation, the ninth sephirah of the Tree of Life, the sphere of the Moon. Book T says the Nines "generally show very great fundamental force. Executive power, because they rest on a firm basis, powerful for good or evil" — strength that has a foundation under it, whichever way it turns.

Each Nine takes the middle ten degrees (10°–20°) of the mutable sign of its element, its second decan.

Crowley's Thoth deck calls them Strength, Happiness, Cruelty and Gain.

The Major Arcana of the same number

By number the Nines echo IX, The Hermit — solitude, experience, the lamp carried at the end of a long road. Readers who add the digits of larger numbers also pair them with XVIII, The Moon, whose night of uncertainty and imagination fits the Nine of Swords especially well. This is a modern numerological link rather than a Golden Dawn attribution.

Several Nines in one spread

The traditions gave each count its own meaning:

• Waite: four Nines mean "a good friend", three "success", two "receipt". Reversed, four mean "usury", three "imprudence", two "a small profit".
• The Golden Dawn's Book T: four Nines are "added responsibility", three "much correspondence".

The lists disagree, but they share a sense of matters at full stretch. In broad modern terms, several Nines tend to describe things nearing their conclusion — much achieved, much still being carried — and a moment to notice what is almost finished before the Tens close the cycle.

In a reading here

When a spread is interpreted here, two, three or four numbered cards of the same rank are picked out as a pattern and given Waite's meaning for that number and count. A pair is noted only in a spread of seven cards or fewer, where it is rarer and says more.

Related

• Numbered cards (pips)
• The Eights
• The Tens
• The Hermit
• Nine of Cups
• Tree of Life