The Suit of the Cups

The Suit of Cups is associated with the element of water. Water is fluid, agile and ‘in flow’ but it’s also very powerful and formative. It can be soft and gentle, like waves lapping against the sandy shore, or it can be powerful and even forceful, like a raging river.

The Water element is about matters of love, romance, joy, happiness and creativity. As well as emotion, intuition and psychism we also see Art, literature, design, poetry, music and most crafts.

The Cups like the Water also represent the qualities of passivity, dependency and receptivity, typical for emotion, passion and desire, because those feelings are always dependent on outside influences, they need a goal or an impulse to come alive.

In the field of the Elemental Dignities Cups don’t go all too well with Wands since Water and Fire weaken each other. They do go well with Disks and Swords where the Disks are a bit more familiar to the Cups due to their earthy passivity.