Since I am beginning to dive into tarot with yall, I wanted to go over the suit of cups. Cups usually symbolize emotion and the element water. It can also symbolize spirituality or a sensitive individual. Cups are also associated with love, relationships, connections and feelings.
A way to think about emotions when reading the cups is to compare it to water. Water ebbs and flows. It can be gentle or it can be powerful enough to cut through a canyon. Emotions are the same way. Although an emotion may not literally create the grand canyon it is real to you. Think about a time you were furious at someone. How real did it feel? What did you want to do to them? Probably something messed up. Then think about when the emotion passed. Everything seems way smaller now. Like water, emotions are fluid. So with the cups pay attention to the vibe of the overall reading as the client could be going through something huge in their life… or not.
The cups harbor a more feminine energy because of what they symbolize. All of the cup’s values such as intuition and emotion are aspects of the divine feminine. So if you are reading a male, he could be more emotional or in touch with his inner divine feminine. If you are reading a female this points to heightened emotion or intuition. For women, it also represents a subtle power as water creates subtle change over time.
When applied to a reading, the cups show that the client is thinking with their heart rather than their head. The cups are the suit of romanticism and imagination so this person is only seeing the sides of a situation that they want to see. This brings out the negative aspects of the cups. The cups can also point to extreme emotions and a toxic imagination. By only seeing the positive aspects of something, you are bound to hurt yourself when things go south. Also having extreme and unbalanced emotions is never healthy. So when you read watch out for this. Especially if you are reading yourself. If you get the cups reversed it can also mean that you are emotionless and just going through life not feeling. This can point to repressed emotions or a lack of creativity.
When reading any tarot card, the meaning is usually pretty simple on the surface. On the surface level, the cups just mean emotion but in reality there is so much more to analyze here. In the beginning of your tarot journey it’s okay to just use the surface level meanings because from here you start to add your own nuances. As you find out more through your intuition you will eventually have an arsenal of meanings for each card.
Venusian VVitches 