Ace of Cups
new love · an open heart · joy · overflow
Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, for A. E. Waite. Public domain.
The suit of Cups
In a few words
- new love
- an open heart
- joy
- overflow
A cup overflowing. New feeling, an open heart, joy that has not been rationed.
Upright
- Everything
- A cup overflowing. New feeling, an open heart, joy that has not been rationed.
- Love
- Love beginning, or returning in full. Let yourself feel it without checking the bill.
- Work
- Work that feeds the heart. A creative start, or a team you genuinely like.
- Money
- Abundance that arrives through goodwill. A gift, a kind deal, a fair share.
- Myself
- Compassion for yourself. The cup fills when you stop holding it upside down.
House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 224
Reversed
- Everything
- A cup spilled or held back. Feelings blocked, or given where they are not received.
- Love
- Unreturned feeling, or a heart shut after a hurt. Let a little in.
- Work
- Emotionally empty work. Something creative is being suppressed.
- Money
- Giving too freely, or being drained by someone's need. Set a limit.
- Myself
- Numbness. Feel the small things first: tea, sunlight, a friend's voice.
House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution.The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 224
The card, as Waite described it
The waters are beneath, and thereon are water-lilies; the hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides. It is an intimation of that which may lie behind the Lesser ArcanaThe Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), p. 224
The plain-word meanings on this page were written for ShreeJyoti and are still under review.