Water · 14 cards
Cups
Cups are the suit of water: emotion, relationships, intuition and the heart. They are how you feel, and who you feel it with. The cup is a vessel, and the suit is about what fills it and what spills from it: love, friendship, grief, longing, contentment and the dreams you would not say out loud.
Cups are the suit people hope for in a love reading, and it is generous there, but it is also the suit of disappointment and of feelings that swamp judgement. Water finds its level: these cards ask you to feel things fully and then let them move.
- Element
- Water
- Signs
- Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces
- Temper
- Receptive, deep, changeable, tender
- Speaks of
- Love, friendship, feelings, intuition, family
Reading the Cups
When Cups dominate
The heart of the question is a feeling, whatever it seems to be about. Ask what you feel before you ask what to do.
Reversed Cups
Feeling blocked, soured or overflowing: numbness, sentimentality, moodiness or giving too much. Ask what the heart is being asked to hold back or let go.
In timing
Cups keep the heart's time. Many readers count them in weeks, or months, and never by the clock.
Ace to Ten
The court
Spreads for the Cups
6 cards
RelationshipTwo people, two rows: how each of you shows up, what each needs, and the space between you.7 cards
ChakraThe heart centre sits in the middle of the chakra spread; Cups read here show what you are holding.1 card
One cardOne card for how you really feel about it, drawn before you talk yourself out of it.