Margarete Petersen - Five of Cups

firemaiden

My translation of Margarete Petersen's German text on this card

Grieving-- Parting. Saying goodbye to an endlessly appearing succession of disappointments. Ceasing to look and feel only in one direction, and accepting the flow of the present. Leave old wounds behind, feel the sadness. When you can cry, all the heart's bitterness flows out. Through tears, the body will be purified, and you will be open for new sources to yourself. Grieving frees you from the grip of negative repressed feelings, releases you from isolation. Like a little drop of water, you will fall into the Ocean and experience the release of your ego's restrictive walls.​

Link to image: Five of Cups

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galadrial

I'm looking at the card and seeing three distinct drops in the center. An individual's pain that they are centered on. I see the drops about to enter the pool of collective emotion; to become aware of being a part of the greater whole of humanity's experience of all emotion, including pain. To see, as she says, that you are not in isolation and that when your tears are being shed they are also being shared. Others who have felt similarly can offer their consolation, you can accept, gain solace and begin to see that you can go on as they have gone on.
 

firemaiden

Oh, thanks Galadrial! I like that spin on it. (are there only three drops? I was hoping there were five)
 

galadrial

I used the adjective distinct for the three because I'm also hoping there are two perhaps more blurry ones, one right under the center of the three, and one to the right and slightly above the right one.
 

galadrial

Still thinking about those five drops, I just imagined a parallel to the RWS Five of Cups in that the three distinct drops could be seen as the spilled cups- the pain that is still sharp and in focus- and the two less distinct drops could be the upright cups; the disappointments and sadness that are already blurring and fading into the pool of experience leaving one free to shift one's focus past the pain.
 

Hedera

Hey, I missed this thread.

To further confuse you: I tend to see 6 drops, 3 clear ones and 3 vague ones.....;)

But I tend to think of the clear ones as pain in the present, the tears you are shedding now, and the 3 vague ones as the same 3 tears, only in the past.
In other words: you've been sad for a while.

The big pool of water would, to me, be the '2 cups standing'. Not sure I can put this into words..... Sort of a sense of a bigger picture, our sadness being part of something that is bigger, what we thought were tears were actually just part of the sea, that has all kinds of life in it.

I'm not making much sense, I'm afraid.

The water turns golden towards the edge of the card, so instead of an pool of tears, it turns out to be this rich, golden ocean....

Here's comparing cucumbers to cornflakes: in some ways, I tend to see this deck as doing the same thing the Fey does. Instead of representing the exact number of suit items, it conveys the meaning by using the suit in a more abstract way.

Mmm, I think I'll shut up now... the heat must have melted my brain.
 

Mimers

The backround is wooden. You can see the grain running through the entire picture.
In the center lies a sheet of sheer paper. it is darker and contained or isolated from the wood yet the image expands out and blends with the wood. On the top is water dropping from a very saturated sky. It falls to the ground causing ripples. These ripples expand outside of the box and seem to become part of the grain of the wood. Somewhat obscuring or hiding them. Below, on the paper, the wood is stained darker, like it is thicker or trying to stop the ripples.

I would interpret this card as mixed feelings. Holding feelings in and fighting a reaction. The wood kind of petrifies the natural ripples that the water would naturally make. I see this as us trying to keep our feelings in check, or holding them in. The center looks so condensed that it looks like everything is in there trying to be contained. It is let out slowly to the wood which appears smooth and even in color. The drops keep coming and eventually the ripples with over come and expand out.
 

tmgrl2

Since I just did Four of Cups...this Five of Cups has meaning to me in relation to the Four of Cups...

In the Four, the outer frame appears more dense (to me the body) and the inner part seems murkier, as though feelings are too "contained" and in need of rising to the surface.

Here it is as if the process is more ongoing....harmony and discord are alternately emerging and "cleansing" the outer frame, which here appears to be more clear and clean.

The interior box here is not all dark with white...it has some passionate orange which could be creativity or intense emotions, but there is also a dark blue near the top, which could be some deeper, not yet clear emotions.

The white looks to me like an inner whirlpool, ever churning to mix up the harmony and disharmony, purifying it as it mixes the colors of the feelings,

If I gaze at the center of the whirlpool, it is white spirit doing its work of mixing and blending and, then, if I let my eyes wander to the perimeter of the whirlpool, the colors eventually become ONE and escape into the physical plane.

I see the outer frame as the body being healed when we acknowledge both discord and harmony and allow them to be healed through the white....then, our physical being becomes more whole, more healed, more in balance.

So this card to me is the step beyond the four....not just acknowledging what is within, but allowing ALL that is within to be treated with equal respect so that we can heal and move forward.

Back to read the previous posts...

terri
 

Gardener

Mimers,

I am particularly struck by the way the pool of water expands past the interior frame into the wood. Reading together what you and Hedera wrote, I wonder if it suggests that to the extent we make grief personal, it stays contained and tight and angry and unresolved within our limited ego/self. To the extent we can dissolve our ego, let the grief wash out into the greater world, share it with the universe, we perhaps find peace.

Interesting that for Hedera, the golden section implies a greater ocean, something in which the individual pain is dissolved, but for you it suggests wood and a rigid structure. I see the wood grain, but I'm fond of the idea of an embracing ocean surrounding our personal ego pool. Choices, choices.

I wonder if the colors have symbolic meaning. Margarete so rarely uses a combination of all the primaries like that, so bold. Usually her palette has colors that are close to one another, like a symphony of golds and oranges, or a wash of blue and white. Red, gold, blue, it's somehow less harmonious. Does it suggest grief to you? Or maybe the blue is grief, the red is anger? I'm not up on color symbolism, just going by feel here.
 

Mimers

Going by feel of the colors I just saw them as very contrasting. No, that is not what I am trying to say. More like they are muddied. That is until they are released from the boundries. Then they are a soft gold. Even if the frame is wood, it looks calm and beautiful.

Gardener said:
Mimers,

I am particularly struck by the way the pool of water expands past the interior frame into the wood. Reading together what you and Hedera wrote, I wonder if it suggests that to the extent we make grief personal, it stays contained and tight and angry and unresolved within our limited ego/self. To the extent we can dissolve our ego, let the grief wash out into the greater world, share it with the universe, we perhaps find peace

I like that idea and agree with it. Yes, that clicks. It is very true.

Mimi