Tarot card meanings · Cups
What does Five of Cups mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Five of Cups upright means “patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration”, and reversed “News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects”.
Upright
Patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups; two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Five of Cups fall in a reading?
Five 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.