Tarot card meanings · Cups
What does Two of Cups mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Two of Cups upright means “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”.
Upright
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, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Waite gives no reversed meaning for this card that our rules let us quote.
What does the picture show?
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.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Two of Cups fall in a reading?
Two 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.