The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Four of Cups

Cups, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

A young man is seated under a tree and contemplates three cups set on the grass before him; an arm issuing from a cloud offers him another cup. His expression notwithstanding is one of discontent with his environment.

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

In divination

Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel, but he sees no consolation therein. This is also a card of blended pleasure.

Reversed: Novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations.

The library's note

A young man sits under a tree contemplating three cups already set before him, while an arm from a cloud offers a fourth he does not appear to want. Waite names the mood precisely, "weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations," satiety mistaken for genuine want, a wine already had making a new gift look worthless. It is the suit's first turn toward discontent, cups' feeling curdling not from loss but from a fullness the figure can no longer taste.

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/pktcu04.htm

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