Cup
The Cup is one of the four suits of the Minor Arcana in tarot, traditionally associated with the element Water and with the realm of emotions, feelings and bonds. It includes fourteen cards: ten pip cards and four court cards.
Origin and etymology
The cup motif descends directly from the Italian coppe and the Spanish copas, themselves descended from the 14th-century Mamluk cards. The word comes from the Latin cuppa, meaning a vessel. In the first Italian tarots of the 15th century, such as the Visconti-Sforza around 1450, the cups take the form of finely worked chalices. Identification with water is ancient, attested in the first French esotericists, and systematized in the 19th century by the occultist schools: Eliphas Levi in 1854 in Dogme et rituel, and then the Golden Dawn in 1888. The chalice also evokes the medieval Grail.
Evolution and tradition
The 18th-century Tarot de Marseille, in the Nicolas Conver edition of 1760, shows decorative cups without narrative scenes. The 1909 Rider-Waite turns each pip card into a figurative image: the Two of Cups depicts a couple exchanging chalices, the Three of Cups three women lifting their cups together, the Five of Cups a mourning figure before overturned cups. This visual grammar remains dominant in contemporary tarots. The Anglo-Saxon tradition uses Cups, and the Golden Dawn associates the suit with the letter Heh of the Tetragrammaton and with the element water.
Practical use
In a reading, Cups describe the emotional and sentimental life: love, friendship, family, intuition, sensitivity, daydreams. A dominance of Cups generally indicates an active emotional terrain, sometimes overwhelming. The Ace of Cups announces an opening of the heart or an emotional gift; the Ten of Cups family fulfillment. The court cards of Cups embody sensitive, empathetic, sometimes evasive personalities. On Tarotoui, each card of the Cup suit has a detailed entry. Many querents intuitively associate Cups with questions of love, which aligns with the classical reading.
Going further
Reducing Cups to love is an approximation: they cover all the liquid psychic life, including the unconscious and the imagination. Note also that in some traditions, such as Aleister Crowley's Thoth, the chalice specifically symbolizes the feminine vessel, which colors the interpretation in a gendered way — a reading that many contemporary tarot readers qualify or reject.