To me one of the coolest cards in the Waite-Smith tradition is the 4 of Cups (4C). A guy is sitting under a tree, drinking wine and having a good time. Some take that card as stagnation, becoming complacent.
It is possible the card can have these darker tones if the context of the reading and intuition support it, but it can mean much more. There isn’t a bad suit and there isn’t a bad number, so why should there be a bad number card?
What is my theme and/or advice for today? 4C – be content, enjoy, recuperate, give yourself a break, spoil yourself, chill, have a drink. Anything you do today – make it satisfying, fun. Pumper yourself. Meditate. You have enough. Learn to focus on “enough”, and you’ll create more and more of what you love. Allow things to unfold.
What is his strength? 4C – perhaps he is stable in his feelings. He is comfortable in his skin. He likes what he got and knows how to value the current situation and build upon it. His feelings are steady. Perhaps he doesn’t let small disagreements grow into larger than life drama. He is easy that way.
I know this can be read in 100s other ways, let our intuition reign. But making 4C be exclusively about stagnation, depression, indifference is not wide enough for me. Somehow I don’t think that is what Tarot creators meant.
Sometimes I hear Pamela Coleman Smith say “give the poor guy a break for god’s sake, he’s just chilling under a tree”.
