Ace of Cups
Secret whisperThe dove descends, the cup overflows — love is offered; drink.
Upright meaning
Upright keywordsnew love, emotional renewal, compassion, intuition
A new emotional beginning: love, friendship or a creative feeling welling up. Open your heart and let yourself receive.
Reversed meaning
Reversed keywordsblocked feelings, emptiness, repression, self-love needed
Your feelings are blocked or turned inward. Begin by offering yourself the kindness you would give a friend.
About the suit of Cups
Cups belong to Water: feelings, love, friendship, intuition and the imagination. They show what is happening in the heart and in your relationships.
Reading the Aces of the tarot
Aces are seeds: the pure, undivided gift of the suit, a new beginning that still has to be planted.
In Waite’s own words (1910)
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, public domain. Original English text.
Divinatory meaning: House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.
Reversed: House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution.
The picture
The waters are beneath, and thereon 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 bill 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.
