The Suit of Cups — Heart, Emotion, and Intuition

Cups is the suit of feeling. Its element is water — and water is the language of the heart, the unconscious, the dream, the tide. Wherever Cups appear in a reading, something is being felt: longing, love, loyalty, grief, hope, the slow ache of a wish, the bright clean surge of joy. Cups will not tell you what to do; they will tell you what is true beneath the part of you that thinks it knows.

The numbered cards trace the arc of an emotional life — from the overflowing chalice of the Ace, through the meeting of the Two of Cups, the celebration of the Three, the boredom of the Four, the regret of the Five, the nostalgia of the Six, the temptation of the Seven, the walking-away of the Eight, the satisfaction of the Nine and the family bliss of the Ten. The court cards — Page, Knight, Queen, and King of Cups — describe four ways of holding emotion: with curiosity, with romance, with deep empathy, and with mature stewardship of the inner world.