Five of Cups

The Plate

Black is rare in this deck, and this figure wears it head to foot. The cloak hides the hands, hides most of the face, turns a person into a posture — head bowed toward the three cups lying overturned at his feet, their contents run out across the ground. The plate is exact about the arithmetic. Three spilled in front of him, in his line of sight; two standing behind him, full, outside it. A river crosses the middle distance, a bridge crosses the river, and a small keep waits on the far side. Waite (1911) gives the scene in almost those words — a dark, cloaked personage, three prone cups, two upright behind — and ventures that the card is one of loss, but loss with something left over.

The Reading

Grief does its own arithmetic, and this card shows the sum: three counted, two omitted. The picture never mocks him for it. The three cups really are spilled; what ran out will not go back; the black is earned. What the plate quietly holds against him is the direction he faces, because the two standing cups ask nothing except that he turn around, and the bridge asks only to be walked. Mourning is a stage of feeling, not a residence — the keep across the river is where the rest of his life is being kept.

Reversed, the turn has begun, or is overdue. Read it as the count corrected and the bridge taken; or, in a hard spread, as the cloak worn so long it no longer comes off.

In the School

Cups are Water, the suit of feeling in the elements table of the astrology course. The fives put each element through its trial, and Water's trial is loss — what it holds can be spilled.