He holds a short scepter in his left hand and a great cup in his right, his throne is set up on the sea, on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping. the implicit is that the sign of the cup naturally refers to water, which appears in all the court cards.
Divinatory meanings: fair man, man of business, law, or divinity, responsible, disposed to oblige the querent. also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art, creative intelligence. reversed: dishonest, double-dealing man, roguery, exaction, injustice, vice, scandal.
Beautiful, fair, dreamy woman (as one who sees visions in the cup).
Divinatory meanings: good, fair woman, honest, devoted, who will do service to the querent. Loving intelligence, and hence the gift of vision, success, happiness, pleasure. Also wisdom, virtue. Reversed: the accounts vary; good woman, otherwise, distinguished woman but one not to be trusted, perverse woman, vice, dishonor, depravity.
Graceful, not warlike, riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to the higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterize this card.
Divinatory meanings: arrival, approach – sometimes that of a messenger, advances, proposition, demeanor, invitation, incitement. Reversed: trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him.
Divinatory meanings: fair young man, one impelled to render service and with whom the querent will be connected, a studious youth, news, message, application, reflection, meditation – also these things directed to business. reversed: taste, inclination, attachment, seduction, deception, artifice.
Appearance of cups in a rainbow, it is contemplated in wonder and ecstasy by a man and a woman below, evidently husband and wife. his right arm is about her, his left raised upward as she raises her right arm. the two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy, but are happy after their own manner. there is a home scene beyond.
Divinatory meanings: contentment, response of the entire heart – the perfection of that state, if with several picture cards, a person who is taking charge of the querent’s interests. also the town, village or country inhabited by the querent. reversed: repose of false heart, indignation, violence.
The goodly personage is feasting to his heart’s content, and abundant refreshment of wine is on the arched counter behind him.
Divinatory meanings: concord, contentment, physical bien-etre; also victory, success, advantage, satisfaction for the querent or person for whom the consultation is made. reversed: truth, loyalty, liberty. but the readings vary and include mistakes, imperfections, etc.
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of this felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
Divinatory meanings: the card speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical – giving joy, mildness, timidity, honor, modesty. reversed: great joy, happiness, feasting.
Strange chalices of vision.
Divinatory meanings: fairy favors, images of reflection, imagination, sentiment, things seen in the glass of contemplation, some attainment in these degrees but nothing permanent or substantial in suggested.
reversed: desire, will, determination, project.
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Divinatory meanings: a card of memories and of the past. for example, reflecting on childhood, happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past, things that have vanished. another reading reverses this, suggesting new relations, new environment and new knowledge.
reversed: renewal, the future, that which will come to pass presently.
A dark, cloaked figure looks at three prone cups; two other cups stand upright behind him. a bridge is in the background.
Divinatory meanings: it is a card of loss, but something remains; three have been taken, but two are left. it is a card of inheritance, transmission, and patrimony. it may be a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.
reversed: new, alliances, affinity, ancestry, return, false projects.
A young man is seated under a tree and contemplates three cups set on the grass before him. he expresses discontent with his environment. an arm issuing from a cloud offers him another cup.
Divinatory meanings: weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations – as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only. another cup of wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered to him, but he sees no consolation therein. this is also a card of blended pleasure.
reversed: novelty, omen, new instructions, new relations.
Maidens in a garden celebrate with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
Divinatory Meanings: the conclusion of any matter. Plenty, Perfection, merriment, happiness, victory, fulfillment, solace, healing.
reversed: expedition, dispatch, achievement, end.
A youth and maiden are pledging to one another. Above their cups rises the caduceus of Hermes, between whose great wings there appears a lion’s head.
Divinatory meanings: love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sexual relations. That which nature has sanctified.
reversed: false love, folly, misunderstanding.
The waters are beneath, upon which are water lilies. The hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring. a dove, bearing in its beak a cross-marked host, descends to place the wafer in the cup – the dew of water is falling on all sides. it is an intimation of that which may lie behind the lesser arcana.
Divinatory meanings: true heart, joy, contentment, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility, holy table, felicity.
reversed: false heart, mutation, instability, revolution.