Illustrating Wishes: the Nine of Cups
The meaning of the Nine of Cups
When I was little, my mom would stop what we were doing if an opportunity presented itself to make a wish. These moments included everything from 11:11 on the clock, to seeing a car with one headlight, to breaking the wishbone from a roast chicken.
The nine of cups is commonly known as “the wish card.” It appears when a wish we made has come true, or more realistically, feel deep gratitude for what we have.
Personally, I read this card a little differently. I see this card as an opportunity to express our heart’s desire in the form of a wish or a want. This can be radical for those of us who are well-practiced in granting others their wishes, but are not yet capable of naming our own deepest desires.
I wanted to create a 9 of Cups card that increases the odds that your wish will come true - by including five different wish-making opportunities within it.
My concept for this card is a scene with multiple opportunities to make a wish: A shooting star, a clock tower showing the time 11:11, a field of dandelion fluffs, a fountain filled with coins, where the fountain itself a wishbone.
👇 Scroll to the end of this post to see my full card design!
Nine of Cups tarot card examples
This card is a bit of a wildcard, depending on who illustrates it. Often portrayed with a genie-like figure who is guarding nine cups, it’s commonly known as “the wish card.”
See footnotes for artist credits.
How I made this card
There’s a lot going on in this illustration, so to ensure it would be visible at a small tarot card scale, I wanted to incorporate contrast. The whole scene takes place at dusk, which helps provide a dark contrasting background to the shooting star, clock tower, coin fountain, and dandelion fluffs.
I used my usual multi-layer process to create this illustration, but this time I only have two layers: my painting layer and my drawing layer. The painting is done with liquid watercolor, scanned, then layered underneath my Procreate drawing using Photoshop.
The final illustration
What do you think? Leave me a comment below! I love to hear from you.
The Nine of Cups card illustration from my forthcoming Tarot of These Times deck, anticipated 2026.
© Registered copyright Molly Chidsey, all rights reserved.
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Footnotes
Materials and technique notes from this post
Blick Hot Press 100% cotton watercolor paper; EcoLine liquid watercolor paint and brush pens; Winsor & Newton masking fluid. This illustration also includes metallic watercolor paint by Fintec on the clock tower. I use an Epson Workforce Pro printer to print my drawings onto watercolor paper, using their water-resistant Durabrite ink.
Linework is drawn by hand with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro using Procreate app, and added as image layers on top of scanned painting using Photoshop.
Roman numerals, hand-drawn linework, and all calligraphy were drawn by hand using Procreate, Apple Pencil and iPad Pro.
Artists of other tarot cards featured in this post
Clockwise from top left: Rider-Waite Tarot, illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith; Modern Witch Tarot Deck by Lisa Sterle; The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans; The Gentle Tarot by Mari in the Sky; Rainbow Heart Tarot by Rachel Rosenkoetter; and The Reclaimed Tarot, ReClaim it! PDX, collage by various local artists.
Learn about tarot
Want to learn more about tarot? I highly recommend the book Modern Tarot: Connecting with Your Higher Self through the Wisdom of the Cards by Michelle Tea.
A note about Ai and this project
I do not use Ai (artificial intelligence) to write the content of this blog or to create illustrations. I also do not allow Ai training. See here for my copyright notice.
