The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Seven of Cups

Cups, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

Strange chalices of vision, but the images are more especially those of the fantastic spirit.

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

In divination

Fairy favours, images of reflection, sentiment, imagination, things seen in the glass of contemplation; some attainment in these degrees, but nothing permanent or substantial is suggested.

Reversed: Desire, will, determination, project.

The library's note

Strange chalices appear before a dreaming figure, each holding an image rather than a drink, and Waite calls them frankly unreal, "images of reflection," "things seen in the glass of contemplation." Nothing here is called substantial or permanent; the suit's water has turned to vision without weight, wanting and imagining occupying the same cup. After the backward pull of the Six, the Seven turns cups' feeling forward again, toward fantasy rather than anything the suit can actually hold.

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/pktcu07.htm

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