Five of Cups.
Three down, two standing, no count taken.
Upright, then reversed, as Waite gave them in 1910.
A figure in a long black cloak, head down, seen from behind. Three cups lie spilled in the grass, two red and one green. Two more stand upright behind him. Beyond, a river, a bridge, a small keep on the far side.
Three are gone and the loss is real, and nothing here asks you to reframe it. The number he is feeling, though, is five. Two are behind him, upright, outside his eyeline, and the crossing is already built. You have not turned round yet.
Four things people go to on this card
- the spilled cups
You went to the spill. Three cups down, and what came out of them is already in the ground.
This part is finished and the card lets you look at it. Most readings of this picture hurry past the grass to the two still standing, which is well meant and arrives early.
The colours are worth a second. Two of the spills ran red and one ran green, so this was not the same loss three times over. Some of what happened to you is simply loss. Calling it a lesson before you have finished being sad is its own avoidance, and you can usually feel yourself doing it.
What here is genuinely over, and have you let it be over without calling it a lesson?
- the two upright
You found the two. Upright, full, standing behind him and outside his eyeline.
Nothing here is hidden. They are in the open, at his back, and the only thing between him and them is a turn of the head that he has not made. Grief stills the body first and the thinking follows it down.
That is worth knowing, because it means the repair is also physical and stupidly small. Stand up, turn round, look at what is there. Name one thing still standing behind you that you have not looked at this week. The card wants a count, not cheerfulness.
What is still standing behind you that you have not turned round to look at?
- the bridge
The bridge is where your eye went. A river, a crossing already made, and a house on the other side.
He does not have to build anything. Somebody put that crossing there years before this bad day, and it is a walk rather than a swim. The water in this picture is not the obstacle people assume it is, and the keep on the far bank is somebody's actual house with a fire in it.
The card offers no opinion about when you should go. It removes one excuse and leaves all the others alone, which is about as much as a picture can honestly do for you.
The crossing is already built. What would make today the day?
- the cloak
You went to the cloak. He is covered from his head to the ground by it, and it is the largest shape in the card.
He is dressed so that anybody who passes knows. That is not weakness and it is not performance. It is a way of asking for room without having to make the request in words, which societies used to provide and mostly no longer do.
The people around you cannot see a cloak. They have to be told, in a sentence, by you, and the sentence is awkward every single time. Whether you want them to know at all is a separate question and the more useful one, because the answer is not always yes.
Can the people around you currently tell, and do you want them to?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Five of Cups 0° to 10° of Scorpio, ruled by Mars, and Book T calls it the Lord of Loss in Pleasure. The Sun is in it from 23 October to 2 November. Power draw Venus is on this card tonight. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Four of Swords, Jupiter in Libra, 13 October to 23 October. The one after is Six of Cups, the Sun in Scorpio, 2 November to 12 November. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Five of Cups on Geburah, severity, in Briah, the world of water: every five is Geburah, in its own suit's world. It is the fifth place in the Tree of Life spread.
Draw a card, and if this one turns, press whichever of these four you went to and the reading is written from there instead. Pulled it in a spread of your own? Read the whole spread here.
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