I’ve been considering the Cups suit, and here is what I managed to put together (Marseilles decks, obviously):
In Tarot, Cups are the only symbol of a receptacle were something is “hidden”, and there is even a depiction of a closed one, if we look to the big cup hold by the suit Queen. Even jugs (like those from Temperance or The Star) are spilling their content, and, if we do not take into account the Mat’s sack, whose content seems obvious (every day’s objects, a traveller’s equipment), the Cups suit is by definition the symbol of something “secret”, even a treasure, hidden in a protective container. That is, if something is hidden, whatever that thing is, it is in itself a mystery – or The Mystery. It is interesting to notice that the word “Arcane” means precisely “secret”, “hidden”, and “mysterious”. The fact that it is hidden is, at the same time, an allusion to its eventual revelation – and, in this sense, a cup can be compared to a book, which holds in his closed pages a secret it reveals when open – if you can read it, of course. That is the case with the book hold by the Papess, which is opened, thought that doesn’t mean you can understand what it says.
In common to all spiritual revelations, we have the fact that it cannot by obtained by force, nor before the right time, nor by someone who is not up to the task; this obviously reminds us of the chevaliers in the Grail’s quest, having to make proof of their pureness of heart and their courage, amongst other virtues. So, when we pull a Cups arcane, we should maybe consider the relation between this image and our need to make proof (usually, I believe, to ourselves) of our righteousness regarding the subject we asked about. After all, it is an image that immediately relates to our hearts, as everyone knows.
And the hidden treasure that will eventually reveal itself refers also to a birth – the cup is the symbolic image of a uterus, an egg, a cradle, even the round shape of the earth, as the primordial mother. This way, the cup (a feminine archetype) protects the greatest mystery of Life; but the fact that this is a liquid container in most depictions (though not in the Ace or the Queen’s card) makes it a vessel for the most symbolic of liquids, that is, wine, water, milk or blood. Wine is “firewater”, or a “water of life”, as in the French Eau-de-Vie, referring to an alcoholic beverage; it is also a Christian symbol for Christ’s blood, as in the Eucharistic mystery. Milk is traditionally (in western traditions, since the subject becomes more complex in Hebrew and Arab legends) a beverage of knowledge and wisdom, like the Virgin’s milk, that nourished saints like Saint Bernard. The relation between, the white milk and the red blood was also very explored in medieval allegories, and was deeply related to the idea of courtly love and the veneration of a lady; amongst the feminine mysteries are the menstrual bleeding, and the production of milk when, due to a pregnancy and birth, there is no production of menstrual blood… this sounded like a sort of alchemy, the red blood (the water of life) being transmuted into a white and nourishing milk. So, the liquid possibly contained in the cup could be related to Wisdom and knowledge, according to the idea of Revelation as access to a mystery, or to Life, according to the birth symbology, and also to the idea of a “water of eternal life” – the Grail’s quest was about this, too.
After all, and whatever the “secret” could be, it is certainly related to the first interdict man ever faced: the access to the fruit of the paradisiacal trees of Knowledge, and of Eternal Life. And it is surely an initiatic quest, since the image of the cup is also an image of death and rebirth – the uterus and the coffin, death to a life and rebirth to another, etc.
A cup, and most of all the closed and round cup that the Queen of Cups presents, is also a cosmic symbol, an image of totality – but with a very important particularity: it is not intact, on the contrary, was severed in two halves… this makes it a symbol of the primordial fracture that divided the Unity in two parts, which again refers to the notion of “paradise lost”, where man faced his separation from God; it also resembles the figure of the Hermaphrodite in Plato’s Symposium; he stated that the original form of humanity was hermaphrodite, till Zeus decided to split them in half, causing the now-separate sexes to spend all their time trying to join back together. In the Genesis narrative Eve was taken from Adam’s rib, and this was sometimes interpreted as meaning that Adam was a hermaphrodite, whose separation into male and female is an evidence of the Fall.
No other image is better to convey this notion of a container hiding the mystery of the primordial, paradisiacal “wholeness” and unity, that the Eucharistic cup: a half sphere revealing the full circumference of the Eucharistic particle. That is probably why the Ace of Cups shows a rich monstrance, a special display to guard and exhibit the Eucharist, an image of totality… it is also interesting to notice the French words coupe (cup) and coupé (severed) are precisely the same. So, the Cup can be seen as the symbol of Man, cut off from his primordial, whole nature, and longing to return to it, as if to the Garden of Eden.
Silvia
