jmd
If there is any doubt as to the contents of the Ace of Cups, this next one is clear: the content is of a red substance.
In a reading, I tend to at times see this card as depicting two separate parts of what is really one. Even the card itself shows that though we may each have two main parts to our name, we are one... I mention this as this card often also has the name of the artist/maker on its bottom panel: the personal first or given name, and the familial or 'clan' name.
Similarly, there is then a joining into one from the two disparate parts between two individuals: their unity brings back together that which is otherwise in search of the other. The card may at times therefore indicate coming together of two lovers.
The twos I often see as balance, and hence may also consider or see that what is here called for is a balancing of either emotions (if Cups are perceived as denoting emotions), or balancing what may at first display itself as separation of two complementary orientations.
The cup is itself but a vessel... and without its content (the red liquid) it but dead matter. Its own balancing must also be such that only in its upright position may its liquid be preserved... yet even this is useless, for it is in its tipping and imbibing that it serves its purpose.
The two Cups thus need to not only show a balancing each with their own liquid, but also a willingness to let go and spill into an appropriate living recepticle (the drinker) its contents.
Very much, then, also a card which may signify sacrifice for another.
Attached are versions of the Conver and the Dodal Marseilles, and the Blanche (a Besançon deck).
In a reading, I tend to at times see this card as depicting two separate parts of what is really one. Even the card itself shows that though we may each have two main parts to our name, we are one... I mention this as this card often also has the name of the artist/maker on its bottom panel: the personal first or given name, and the familial or 'clan' name.
Similarly, there is then a joining into one from the two disparate parts between two individuals: their unity brings back together that which is otherwise in search of the other. The card may at times therefore indicate coming together of two lovers.
The twos I often see as balance, and hence may also consider or see that what is here called for is a balancing of either emotions (if Cups are perceived as denoting emotions), or balancing what may at first display itself as separation of two complementary orientations.
The cup is itself but a vessel... and without its content (the red liquid) it but dead matter. Its own balancing must also be such that only in its upright position may its liquid be preserved... yet even this is useless, for it is in its tipping and imbibing that it serves its purpose.
The two Cups thus need to not only show a balancing each with their own liquid, but also a willingness to let go and spill into an appropriate living recepticle (the drinker) its contents.
Very much, then, also a card which may signify sacrifice for another.
Attached are versions of the Conver and the Dodal Marseilles, and the Blanche (a Besançon deck).
. They are still together, with no plans to separate, but as opposed as two might be. And so that is the II de Coupes as well, for me: opposition, disagreement, but inability to separate, to become two "ones" again. "Can't live together, can't live apart". The red in the cups then becomes bad blood, growing resentment, blame, heavy emotion, pain - and to take up jean-michel's idea, an inability to sacrifice anything of value for the other, while thinking all the time that life is one big sacrifice for the other. 