Tarot card meanings · Cups
What does Ace of Cups mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Ace of Cups upright means “House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof”, and reversed “House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution”.
Upright
House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
The waters are beneath, and thereon are water-lilies; the hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Ace of Cups fall in a reading?
Ace of Cups belongs to the suit of Cups. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.
Ask one question. Draw three cards, and cast an I Ching hexagram beside them to see where East and West agree. Free.
Draw three cardsWaite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.