A youth and maiden are pledging one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card. Some curious emblematical meanings are attached to it, but they do not concern us in this place.
the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time
In divination
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and—as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination—that desire which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is sanctified.
Waite's table gives no reversed meaning for this card; the gap is his, kept as found.
The library's note
A youth and a maiden pledge each other with raised cups, the caduceus of Hermes rising between them with a lion's head shown among its wings. Waite notes the emblem varies from most older printings of the card without dwelling on why, content to let the pairing itself carry the sense, "love, passion, friendship, affinity, union," "that desire which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is sanctified." Coming after the Ace's single source, the Two is cups' first pair, feeling exchanged now rather than solitary.
a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come
Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktcu02.htm
direct fetch failed repeatedly; retrieved via mirror https://spiritmaji.com/sacredtext/tarot/pkt/pktcu02.htm which reproduces the same public-domain 1911 text; Waite gives no reversed meaning for this card in the original text.
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