The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Five of Cups

Cups, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups; two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.

the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time

In divination

It is a card of loss, but something remains over; three have been taken, but two are left; it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.

Reversed: News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.

The library's note

A dark, cloaked figure looks sideways at three fallen cups without turning toward the two still standing upright behind him, a bridge leading off to a small keep in the distance. Waite is explicit that loss here is partial, not total, "three have been taken, but two are left," though the figure's attention stays fixed on what spilled. The suit's feeling, so far a story of pairing, gathering, and satiety, turns here toward grief that overstates itself, measuring loss by what it refuses to see rather than what remains.

a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come

Doors Onward

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
  2. Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktcu05.htm

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