Ten of Cups (Satiety)

The ten of cups depicts what looks like a family. A man with his arm around the waist of a woman. Each of their free arms is uplifted towards a rainbow above them. Two children dance holding hands off to their side. There is a home or village in the background with trees and a nice stream. The rainbow is filled with ten cups.

I actually saw a really magnificent rainbow just a couple days ago, so this card seems very noteworthy for that reason, as well…

Aeclectic explains what ten cards mean, generally:

As the aces were the pure, elemental spark of the suit, the tens are the element of the suit complete. Not as in the nines, which are physical completion, but in a transcendent fashion. It is the ultimate good or bad of that element.

LearnTarot describes it as joy, peace and family, and “a symbol of what our emotional life could be at its best [since cups have to do with emotion]. The feelings represented here are an ideal that is within the reach of each of us.”

One other word this card calls to mind for me is pleroma, a term used in several gnostic gospels, I believe. It means essentially “fullness” and indicates the “totality of God’s power” which is pretty cool sounding.

The heavenly pleroma is the totality of all that is regarded in our understanding of “divine”, the Pleroma is often referred to as The Light existing “above” (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings who self-eminated from the Pleroma. These beings are described as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes as archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent, along with his counterpart Sophia, from the Pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity and in so doing be brought back into sync with the Pleroma.

And a few different news items I pulled from Google News using the term “satisfied” as my query:

1. Less than half of Americans satisfied with 9/11 investigations
2. Pujols thrives by never being satisfied: Cardinals star focuses on the negative to avoid complacency
3. Survey Finds Most Residents Very Satisfied With Chattanooga Life

And a quote from the Shelbyville Times-Gazette:

“I’m perfectly satisfied to let history judge me,” outgoing Sheriff Clay Parker said in the courthouse during the committee meeting which concluded with Commissioner John Brown’s comment to Parker; “God’s speed to you.”

[…] “You can look yourself in the mirror and can say you fought the fight and didn’t take yourself out. The people did.”

Parker replied; “One door closes; another opens.”

It seems then that satisfaction is something we judge ourselves about whether or not we have it. Maybe in being so critical with ourselves (like Pujols above) we are able to propel ourselves forward, but there’s a good chance that it also cuts us off from our own source, and the possible peace and joy which are near at hand at all times.