Cups
The suit of water: feeling, attachment, and whatever moves you. Fourteen cards about what a person undergoes rather than what they do.
What this suit is about
Cups govern the inner life - love, friendship, memory, what pulls at you and what hurts. It is the one suit that speaks about your relation to events rather than the events: the same week reads as a celebration with the Three and as a loss with the Five. Reversed Cups almost never mean there is no feeling; far more often the feeling is suppressed, overplayed, or pointed at the wrong person.
When the suit dominates
A reading full of Cups is about a relationship, whatever the question said. Take it as an instruction to shift the reading: this will be decided on feeling, not on arithmetic. Cups beside Swords is usually a conversation that is overdue; beside Pentacles, something material has been put into the relationship.
How the numbers run
Ace - a beginning, nothing said aloud yet. Two - the pair. Three - shared gladness, a circle of people. Four - fullness, and boredom with it. Five - loss, and three cups of five spilt. Six - the past, childhood, somebody out of it. Seven - too much choice. Eight - leaving, by your own decision. Nine - contentment, the wish granted. Ten - a peace with enough in it for everyone.
The court cards
Page of Cups - an offer, a confession, news of a feeling. Knight - the one bringing it: a romantic, not always reliable. Queen - the one who feels on everybody's behalf and keeps it in. King - the one who can hold a feeling without putting it out; in a question about work he is more often a person than a quality.
Every card
- Ace of Cups The heart opens without being asked to · reversed: Feeling held back until it curdles
- Two of Cups Two people meeting as equals · reversed: The balance tips and one begins to keep score
- Three of Cups Gladness shared, and better for the sharing · reversed: The company is loud and you are still alone in it
- Four of Cups Offered something good while looking the other way · reversed: The dullness breaks and the cup is noticed at last
- Five of Cups Grieving the three spilled, not the two still standing · reversed: Turning around; what remains becomes visible
- Six of Cups Sweetness from far back, offered simply · reversed: Living in a past that memory has improved
- Seven of Cups Many shining options, most of them vapour · reversed: The fog clears and one real choice is left
- Eight of Cups Walking away from what is good but finished · reversed: Staying, so that leaving would not mean it was wasted
- Nine of Cups Contentment, plainly and without apology · reversed: Getting the wish and finding it smaller than imagined
- Ten of Cups The whole cup, shared with everyone in the house · reversed: The picture of happiness kept up for others
- Page of Cups Feeling something new and saying so · reversed: Tenderness that has not learned its own weight
- Knight of Cups Coming with an offer made of real feeling · reversed: Romance told beautifully and not meant
- Queen of Cups Feeling deeply without drowning · reversed: Carrying the whole room's weather until you lose your own
- King of Cups Mastery of feeling: warm, and never ruled by it · reversed: Calm on the surface, undertow beneath