Nine of Hearts: disappointment in love, and a label borrowed from fortune-tellers

Meaning

Richmond's Nines are a disappointing obstacle in the centre of the path, and the Nine of Hearts is his card of disappointed love under every one of the seven planets: “Disappointment in love”, “A heart longing unsatisfied”. There is not a wish in the whole entry.

We read the card as endings in love and what they teach. The tradition sees its people as generous and quick to feel another's pain, as knowing the ache of unmet hopes, and as finding their deepest contentment in letting go gracefully rather than holding on.

In the spreads

The Nine of Hearts and the Seven of Diamonds exchange places at every pass of Richmond's rule: one is ninth and the other 33rd in the natural order, and the Life Spread reverses them. So in the Life Spread the Nine sits in the Saturn row, under the Saturn column, a double Saturn card; each card of the pair is the other's karma card both ways, and neither has Environment or Displacement cards.

Its Moon card is the Three of Spades and its path runs on through the Seven of Clubs and the Five of Diamonds. Its birthdays fall from Virgo to Capricorn, and 22 December is a cusp date, with the Jack of Clubs for Sagittarius and the Nine of Diamonds for Capricorn.

Where the wish came from

Many sites call the Nine of Hearts a card of wishes. The label comes from English fortune-telling with ordinary cards, not from Richmond: P. R. S. Foli's Fortune-Telling by Cards, of about 1915, ties the nine of hearts to wishes, an early printed use of an idea that cartomancy had already. Our own card text carried the label until October 2026; it is gone, and Richmond's reading stands in its place.

Life path and karma cards

Read from the Life Spread: the card before the Nine of Hearts, then the ten after it, the order running on from the crown line back to the top right. The names of the places are Camp's, used descriptively.

Birthdays and ruling cards

The ruling card is the card of the life path in the place of the Sun sign's ruling planet; Leo takes the birth card itself and Scorpio two cards. On a date marked cusp the Sun changes sign during the day in some years, so without a birth time both cards apply.

For every sign, as the tradition's modern rulers give them: Aries (Mars): Queen of Spades; Taurus (Venus): Five of Diamonds; Gemini (Mercury): Seven of Clubs; Cancer (the Moon): Three of Spades; Leo (the Sun): Nine of Hearts; Virgo (Mercury): Seven of Clubs; Libra (Venus): Five of Diamonds; Scorpio (Mars and Pluto): Queen of Spades and King of Clubs; Sagittarius (Jupiter): Jack of Clubs; Capricorn (Saturn): Nine of Diamonds; Aquarius (Uranus): Seven of Spades; Pisces (Neptune): Two of Clubs.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Suit in Richmond (1893, p. 28)

The emblem of spring and of the first quarter of life, when “love is the master passion” sourced

The suit's season and planets in Richmond (pp. 27 to 28, 41)

Spring; Venus, ruling “from a point of friendship and love”, and Mercury, “from a point of passion”. Facts about his book, not about anyone born under the card sourced

Number in Richmond (pp. 42 to 45)

Nines: a disappointing obstacle in the centre of the path (p. 45) sourced

Richmond's table for the card (p. 92)

Disappointment in love and friendship under every planet: “Disappointment in love”, “A heart longing unsatisfied”; there is nothing in it about wishes sourced

Our keyword line (2026)

Endings in love, and what they teach. our construction

Our theme for the suit

Love, Feeling, Friendship, Family our construction

A suit element or a single planet

None in Richmond or any founding text; the sets other sites give disagree, and ours was dropped in October 2026 disputed

How the schools read it

Olney H. Richmond (1893)

An emblem of solar value 9 and spirit value 01, read through its suit, love and friendship, and its number, disappointment: one meaning under each of the seven planets, most of them events (p. 92).

Randall and Campbell, Lein, Camp (1947 onward)

Read the birth card as character rather than events. Camp's line adds the life path, the karma cards and the yearly spreads used on this page, and gives the card a nickname, which we do not use. Camp counts it among the Family of Seven, with no Environment or Displacement cards.

Card Blueprints and Seven Reflections

On 22 December Card Blueprints gives two ruling cards from a fixed table of cusp dates, and Seven Reflections asks for the sign. We compute the Sun and give both cards only when no birth time is known.

EsoTerrier

Read here as endings in love and what they teach: generosity that grows through loss, and the ease of letting go.

Claims about it

• The Nine of Hearts is the card of wishes.

  disputed

  What the record shows: A fortune-teller's label: P. R. S. Foli's Fortune-Telling by Cards (about 1915), which ties the nine of hearts to wishes, is an early printed use. In Richmond's table the Nine of Hearts is disappointment in love.

• The Sevens are spiritual tests, the Sixes fate and return, the Nines universal giving.

  disputed

  What the record shows: Richmond reads the Sevens as obstacles, the Sixes as monotony and settlement and the Nines as disappointment (1893, pp. 42 to 45). The modern readings are the tradition's later development.

• Each suit has an element and a ruling planet.

  disputed

  What the record shows: No founding text gives the suits elements, and the sources that do disagree with each other. Richmond gives each suit a season and two planets (pp. 27 to 28, 41), which we report as his. We dropped the attributes in October 2026.

• Each card has a traditional nickname.

  disputed

  What the record shows: The nicknames are Camp's coinages, or Randall and Campbell's, not Richmond's; taken as a set they mark a text as derived from his. We use none of them.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Seven of Diamonds its partner: the two swap places in every spread, and each is the other's karma card
• Three of Spades its Moon card, the card before it in the Life Spread
• Seven of Clubs its Mercury card, the card after it in the Life Spread
• Natal Chart where the Sun sign that picks the ruling card is worked out