Knight of Cups

The Plate

The horse is walking. Set this knight beside his brothers and the gait becomes the card: the Wands charger rears, the Swords horse is at full gallop, and this gray moves at a processional walk, one foot lifted, head bowed. The rider matches it. He sits upright in full armor, wings fixed to his helmet and his heels, red fish worked into the cloth over his mail, and he carries a single cup before him in his right hand — level, steady, undrunk. A river crosses the flat country; bare cliffs stand beyond it. Nothing in the landscape hurries him, and he does not hurry.

The Reading

This is feeling turned into errand. The knight has taken the suit's cargo — an offer, an invitation, a declaration, a reconciliation — and made himself its bearer, and the walk is not laziness but care: you cannot gallop with a full cup. Upright, the card promises exactly what the plate shows, an approach in good order. Something felt is on its way to being said, and said beautifully. The wings at helmet and heel admit the risk that rides with him — this knight is the suit's dreamer as much as its courier, and a bearer can fall in love with bearing.

Reversed, look into the cup he offers. Sometimes it is empty and the grace is the entire cargo; sometimes it is full and the horse simply never arrives, the errand having become a way of life. Either way the river stays uncrossed.

In the School

Cups belong to Water, the suit of feeling in the astrology course's table of the elements. Among the court temperaments the knight rides the element — Water in motion, feeling given a direction and a horse.