Seven of Cups (Rider Waite Tarot)
First Impressions
I have always liked this card and its unreal, fantasy aspect. A man faces away from the viewer, silhouetted against a blue sky dominated by a large puffy white-gray cloud. Seven large golden goblets are resting on the clouds like they say angels do in Heaven; a row of three above a row of four, each brimming with fantastical objects or images. The man has one hand extended out to his side, as though to steady himself (is he dazzled by this apparition?), or perhaps drawing back slightly as though he daren’t touch them.
Going clockwise from the top left: a shadowy or spectral disembodied head, presumably a woman but possibly not, with short curly hair, closed eyes and a small smile; a white-robed figure surrounded by a red glow, rising from the cup with arms slightly outstretched to the sides, draped from head to wrists and waist by a white veil or drape; a golden yellow snake; a shadowy blue dragon rising menacingly from the cup; a laurel wreath such as is used to crown victors (interestingly, the reflective surface of this cup shows a skull); sparkling jewels, chains and baubles heaped high; and a tall and slender tower shadowed to blue.
To me it always looks like the man was walking along, minding his own business, when BAM! This cloud appears, with seven cups, right smack in front of his nose, and startles the hell out of him. Or as though it’s the vision of God who appears to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A vision appears before him as suddenly as if the TV was turned on. Or, look at the Robin Wood version of this card, which makes it apparent that she views this card as one of daydreams: the seven cups rest not on clouds but on the voluminous blonde curls of her hair. It’s all in her head.
But in this case? It’s up to our own interpretation whether this is in his head or not. Whether it’s a vision, a daydream or something real.
Usually I view this card to be one of choice. There are seven cups here, each with its own prize, but I always get the impression that (a) there’s more to them than meets the eye, and (b) you only get to pick one, and no givesies-backsies. Do you go for the jewels, or the victory of the laurel wreath? Or do you hold out for what’s behind Door Number Three? And there are so many questions that arise here. Like that mysterious shrouded figure. What is that all about? And what does the skull mean? And if you chose the dragon, just what would you do with it anyway?
Creator’s Notes
In
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot Waite doesn’t go into any great in-depth analysis; he doesn’t appear to do so very much in the Minor Arcana anyway:
Waite said:
Strange chalices of vision, but the images are more especially those of the fantastic spirit.
So Waite seems to view them as apparitions, as objects of fantasy, is how I take that. And the things in the cups, he views as perhaps fancy or metaphorical. Fairy tale towers, treasure, dragons and what have you … otherworldly offerings; notice no pile of mundane old money, or bungalows in the suburbs!
Others’ Interpretations
Waite says:
Waite said:
Divinatory Meanings: Fairy favours, images of reflection, sentiment, imagination, things seen in the glass of contemplation; some attainment in these degrees, but nothing permanent or substantial is suggested. Reversed: Desire, will, determination, project.
See? The stuff of fantasy. Nothing tangible. All in the realm of fantasy, the spirit, the mind.
Wikipedia says of this card:
wikipedia.org said:
A young person sees seven cups among the clouds and visions therein. On one cup is the perfect lover or mate all people idealize. Another cup shows riches, another the cloaked soul of the querent about to be revealed, another castles. Other cups show a red dragon of inflamed passion and emotion, as well as a snake arising from another cup. The card is a caution against over idealizing your situation and getting your head lost among the clouds. Your dreams need a firm foundation in order to take root. Do not build castles in the air and fantasize without taking responsibility for your actions.
This interpretation focuses more on the advice, on the warnings inherent in this card.
Symbolism and Attributes
Astrologically the Seven of Cups is linked to Scorpio, specifically the dates from November 13-22. Scorpio is a Water sign, and seems specifically to apply to the mid-suit Cups cards of Five, Six and Seven. A fixed sign, Scorpio carries some of its stabilizing effect over to the Cups. After the Five of Cups, the mid-cards seems more stable than those of some of the other suits.
The title of this card, according to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is the Lord of Illusionary Success. This is, I think, quite aptly depicted by this card. the riches and treasures promised by the seven cups: are they real, or are they just an illusion?
Real or illusory, let’s look at the contents of the cups. I’ve seen them likened as a whole to the seven deadly sins, the seven chakras and the seven planets in traditional Western astrology. In terms of the latter, RChMI described them aptly, even including references to the Tarot’s Major Arcana:
How about the 7 figures relating to the 7 planets?
Womans Head = Empress = Venus
Serpent = Magician's ouroboros snake = Mercury
Veiled Figure = High Priestess = Moon
Castle = Tower = Mars
Jewels - Wheel of Fortune = Jupiter
Wreath/Skull = The World = Saturn
Winged Dragon = The Sun = Sun
Susan Levitt pointed out something else quite interesting about the arrangement, the order of the cups. In
Introduction to Tarot she pointed out that the upper three cups are more intangible, more spiritual or symbolic: mysteries, enigmas, virtues. Whereas the lower four are of the material world, lofty physical aspirations for which one might long: wealth, security, adventure, victory, what have you.
Again, moving from the top left in a clockwise direction, we come first to the woman’s disembodied head. This might refer to the self, or an idealized self or other. The unattainable soul mate, perhaps? The almost transparent aspect of this head is what leads me to believe it is something unreal or intangible rather than a literal person who is exactly as imagined. A spectre, a ghost, a figure who only exists in the onlooker’s mind or heart. The idea of the idealized mate, the dream girl, is reinforced by the above notion of the head relating to the planet Venus and the Empress. Ruled by the heart, the emotions, it might not be the most realistic of the images or likely to see the figure exactly as is, warts and all. With this in mind I would say that this cup promises the onlooker his heart’s desire, his one true love, his missing half.
The draped figure in the centre of the top row is shrouded in mystery, much like the Moon and the High Priestess as RChMI suggested. Being hidden it could just be the unknown, mystery. But the red glow about the figure suggests something more than that. Eden Gray theorized in her
Mastering the Tarot that it might be the shadowed figure’s spiritual self, “his own divinity waiting to be uncovered.” So this would represent to the onlooker the aspiration to higher things. To greater understanding. The reason we go on quests in the first place. White is for spirituality, true enough. But why red? Red is the colour of passion, of desires. So it could indicate the highly desirable nature of this spirituality. Note how the serpent in the next cup extends far out of his cup, stretching toward the figure as if trying to touch it, to taste it.
This brings us to the snake. Yes, as the Bible and even the Lovers card in this same deck tell us, the serpent represents temptation. But it has long been an emblem of wisdom as well. Wisdom, prudence, knowledge. Remember the Prudence card in the Minchiate decks’ Virtues? She holds a hand mirror in one hand and a snake by the neck or tail in the other. Snakes are sly and unlikeable, typically, but they are also wise. Linked to the serpentine lemniscate over the Magician’s head, and the quick planet Mercury, it is connected to craftiness and hence wisdom. Perhaps this cup means that the onlooker, like Solomon, is asking for the wisdom to rule wisely.
Now the dragon. There are several theories about the contents of this cup. There are various colourations of the Rider Waite deck (Universal, Albano, etc.), and some of them show the dragon as being red rather than the shadowed blue of my deck. If red, it would liken to temptation. Other theories are that the dragon represents fear, or adventure. Like Miniver Cheevy, the dragon may represent to the staid modern-day figure a fairy tale, knightly adventure, chivalry, damsels to rescue and dragons to slay. You’ve got to admit, that’d be pretty tempting. If we continue with the theory of the links to planets, the dragon is connected to the Sun both astrologically and Tarotically. Dazzling and exciting like the adventure, the daydream of slaying dragons.
Perhaps the most has been made of the next cup, the laurel wreath. Now that on the surface is pretty obvious: it represents offered victory, triumph, glory and accolades. But the really tricky part lies in the cup itself, in the death’s-head skull evident in the shiny reflective surface. It’s not really evident, you either stumble across it or know it’s there and look for it. But once you do notice it, it changes the meaning of that cup significantly. Then it carries a warning. Perhaps the cost of victory, perhaps the bitterness, the hollowness of victory when bought at the price of human life. And perhaps it does represent a warning label of sorts, like on a bottle of poison. Because think of it: power corrupts, so maybe it cautions the onlooker that one’s mind can become poisoned by victory, drunk on victory, power going to his head. And it is connected to Saturn and the World (see the wreath as a visual clue): victory, success, the end of an era.
In the next cup, the jewels are pretty self-explanatory. They offer wealth, fortune, pretty things, material possessions. It is linked to the Wheel of Fortune and Jupiter.
The castle, tall and slender yet stable, is connected to security, safety, shelter and power in the world. It is linked to masculine and aggressive Mars and the Tower.
So overall, the vision of cups floating on a cloud (because isn’t that how all visions appear?) is offering a full buffet of choices to the onlooker: perfect love, spirituality and access to the divine, wisdom, excitement and adventure and really wild things (to quote Douglas Adams), victory, riches and safety. With such an array, no wonder he’s not reaching for any one cup just yet. Rather he’s drawing back, trying to choose, trying to take it all in.
My Interpretation
I see this card as the ultimate choice card, where everything looks so good at first that your mind is just blown and you can’t decide. But as they say, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. What if you chose the laurel wreath? Yes, you’d be a winner, and they can carve that on your tombstone: Here Lies Jackdaw, She Was A Winner. Whee. You can choose the dragon. But what are you going to do with a dragon? Remember Hagrid’s dragon, and all the trouble that came from it? And the mysterious shrouded figure? Beware of buying a pig in a poke. This card makes me think of “The Monkey’s Paw”. The couple wished for money, and they got it. As settlement over the death of their only son. There are pitfalls and drawbacks everywhere. Perhaps that’s the background behind the title of the card, Lord of Illusory Success.
So if I drew this card in a reading, I would take it as a caution to step back and really look carefully at the options. First of all, are they real? And if they are, make sure to examine all facets of each of the options. Make sure to examine the negatives and not just concentrate on the positives.