The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Three of Cups

Cups, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.

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

In divination

The conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.

Reversed: Expedition, dispatch, achievement, end. It signifies also the side of excess in physical enjoyment, and the pleasures of the senses.

The library's note

Three maidens stand in a garden, cups lifted as if toasting one another, the suit's private pairing in the Two now grown into company. Waite reads it as arrival rather than beginning, "the conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment," fulfilment and solace named outright among its meanings. Where wands mark this same numeral with settled trade, cups mark it with celebration, the suit's water finding, this early in its run, a register of uncomplicated joy it will not keep for long.

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/pktcu03.htm

Free, and kept that way by readers. If this page served you, keep a lamp lit.