Cups

Origin

The Cup suit, called coppe in Italian and coupes in French, descended from the Mamluk suit of cups, which itself recalls the chalices of the Islamic court banquets. In Italian and Spanish playing decks the cup became a tall stemmed goblet, often elaborately wrought. The English Hearts of modern playing cards is derived from this same suit, the cup heart-shaped because the chalice itself was an emblem of love. In the Tarot of Marseille the Cups are arranged symmetrically in heraldic patterns, sometimes adorned with floral motifs.

Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 illustrations transformed the Cups into a deeply emotional pictorial vocabulary. Her Ace of Cups shows a hand offering a flowing chalice from which five streams pour, surmounted by a dove bearing a Eucharistic wafer. The Two of Cups depicts two lovers raising their cups in mutual pledge under the caduceus of Hermes. The Three shows three women dancing in celebration, the Four a melancholy figure refusing the offered cup, and so on through to the Ten, the rainbow of fulfilled family. This narrative cycle is preserved in the modern Rider-Waite deck and across most contemporary decks.

Meaning and function

Cups speak the language of feeling. They are the suit of love, friendship, family, intuition, dream, art, and devotion. The Ace is the heart's pure offer; the Two the moment of mutual pledge; the Three the celebration of community; the Four a saturated boredom that hides depression; the Five a grief that leaves two cups still standing; the Six a return to childhood and innocence; the Seven the lure of fantasy; the Eight a deliberate departure from what no longer nourishes; the Nine the wish granted; the Ten the rainbow of family fulfilment. No suit is more obviously a journey of the inner life.

When Cups dominate a reading, you are in a season ruled by feeling. Decisions cannot be made by spreadsheet alone. Cups paired with Wands often describe passion and creative intoxication; with Swords, the painful collision of feeling and thought; with Pentacles, the integration of love and the practical. Their shadow is over-immersion, sentimentality, escapism, drowning. Cups remind you that water nourishes but also seeps, floods, and carries away.

In practice

In love readings Cups are the suit you most want to see. The Ace, Two, Nine and Ten of Cups are the classical heart cards. But Cups also describe friendship, mother-child bonds, devotional life, and creative inspiration. In Rider-Waite readings, attend to whether the cups in the image are upright, tilted, or fallen: a fallen cup is a feeling spilled. The mood of Cup cards is often quiet, indoors, by water; their dominant colours are blue, silver, and green.

In a Celtic Cross a cluster of Cups in the heart-of-the-matter and crowning positions tells you that the deeper question is emotional, even when the asker thinks they are asking about work or money. A daily Card of the Day in Cups invites you to slow down, to listen, to call someone you love, or to record your dreams. In a Relationship Spread Cups in the central "us" position confirm that the bond is real, even when the surrounding cards predict difficulty.

Symbolic depth

In the Hermetic system Cups belong to the world of Briah, the creative world, and to the first Heh of the divine name. Their astrological signs are the water trigon: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. In the Golden Dawn's decanate system, each numbered Cup card is assigned to a ten-degree segment and a planet: the Two of Cups is Venus in Cancer (Love in the Thoth deck), the Eight of Cups is Saturn in Pisces (Indolence). These attributions explain why some Cup cards feel celebratory and others deeply melancholic, even though all share the watery essence.

Mythologically the Cup is the Holy Grail, the cauldron of Cerridwen, the krater of Plato, the chalice of the Eucharist, the lotus-cup of the Buddha. It is the receptive, feminine, contemplative principle of the four elements, the vessel that contains and transforms what it holds. To work with the Cup suit is to learn how to hold feeling without spilling and without freezing. Carl Jung used the alchemical vessel as an image for the work of individuation, and the Cups of the tarot speak in exactly this register. Visit the glossary to follow the elemental cycle into Swords.

Also known as

• Coupes
• Coppe
• Chalices
• Hearts
• Cauldrons