Two of Cups

The Plate

Above the two heads floats the oddest emblem in the minor arcana: a caduceus, two serpents twined up a winged staff, and between the wings the great red head of a lion. Waite (1911) spends more ink on that head than on the couple beneath it — a variant of a sign found in a few old examples of the card, he says, and leaves it standing there. Below, the picture is plainer and better. A man steps toward a woman; each holds a cup, and the two cups are at the same height. His hand reaches toward hers, but neither cup has tipped, and neither figure drinks. Behind them a house sits on a green rise. The pledge is the whole scene; the drinking happens off the card.

The Reading

Everything the card teaches is in that level line between the rims. This is exchange at eye height — not rescue, not tribute, but two full vessels traded by people who can each afford the gift. The toast is the honest moment of a bond: both parties visible, both cups accounted for, nothing yet consumed. Whatever the winged lion oversees, it hangs above the two of them equally, which is more than most emblems of passion can claim.

Reversed, watch the level line break. One cup rises, one drops; the pledge repeats itself nightly because the trade behind it has stopped. A toast can outlive its treaty by years, and the card reversed usually means it has.

In the School

Cups are Water, the suit of feeling in the elements table of Foundations of Astrology. In the twos the element meets an other for the first time, and Water's answer to that meeting is exchange.