Two of Cups.
Agreed, and nothing built on it yet.
As Waite gave them in 1910.
Two people, one step apart, each holding a cup out to the other. Above them two snakes climb a staff, and over that a red lion's head with wings. Neither has looked up.
Union is the old word for this, and the picture is more exact. This is the moment of agreement, held still, with nothing built on it yet. The lion overhead is what agreements turn into, and it has teeth, and it is not there yet. Whatever you settled this week is still only settled, and that is not a small thing.
Four things people go to on this card
- the winged head
The lion took you first. A red head with wings, hung above the pair like weather neither of them has noticed.
Every real pairing grows a third thing: a household, a business, a story the two of you tell about yourselves. It is drawn above them because it is larger than either of them now, and it has a face and a mouth.
That is not a warning, it is a running cost. The question is whether you are still feeding yours on purpose, or whether it started at some point to feed on the two of you, quietly, without anybody deciding that it should.
What have the two of you built that now has its own appetite, and are you still feeding it on purpose?
- the snakes
You went to the staff. Two snakes wind up it in opposite directions and meet at the top.
The two are equal and opposite, and that is the only reason the staff stands up straight. Take one away and it falls. The card is not sentimental about exchange: it draws it as a structure, with loads on both sides, which means it can be measured.
So measure it. Not in principle, and not across the whole of the years you have known each other. What did each of you actually put in this week, and would the other one give the same answer?
What did each of you actually put in this week?
- his hand
The reaching hand is where you stopped. He is moving towards her cup and she is holding hers steady.
Somebody moves first in every exchange and here it is him. This is the moment before agreement, which is the exposed part of it. Once both cups are touching it is a partnership. Until then it is one person out on their own with an arm extended, and the picture has drawn the arm and not the answer.
If you are the one reaching at the moment, nothing in the card tells you to stop. It notices that you are, and that being that person costs something that the other one is not paying.
Are you the one reaching at the moment, and what is it costing you to be?
- the house
You went past them to the house. Tiny, red-roofed, on the green rise behind, and most people never see it.
The romance is at the front of the picture and the arrangements are at the back, in the same frame, at the same time. A house is where an agreement ends up if it lasts: a lease, a shared account, a long run of ordinary evenings. The card is not cynical about any of that. It only puts the building where you have to go looking for it.
Ask whether the thing between you is heading towards that house or away from it. Both are real answers, and only one of them is what you have been telling people.
Is the thing between you heading towards that house or away from it?
Its ten degrees
The Golden Dawn gave the Two of Cups 0° to 10° of Cancer, ruled by Venus, and Book T calls it the Lord of Love. The Sun is in it from 21 June to 2 July. The decan page for this card.
The wheel runs on from here. The decan before this one is Ten of Swords, the Sun in Gemini, 11 June to 21 June. The one after is Three of Cups, Mercury in Cancer, 2 July to 12 July. All thirty-six, in order.
On the Tree of Life, Book T puts the Two of Cups on Chokmah, wisdom, in Briah, the world of water: every two is Chokmah, in its own suit's world. It is the second 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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