TAROTAce of Cups
Upright
The potential for new beginnings based on emotion, intuition, or a creative outlet.
A new energy in your life that promotes new emotional bonds or a deeper understanding of yourself.
New feelings for an existing person in your life or a new love interest.
A deeply fulfilling creative project
Intuition
As with all the Ace cards in this deck, the image represents the birth of something.
In this case we see the birth of the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite.
Reversed
A lack of fulfillment in relationships. Repressed emotions or failure to connect with others.
Not emotionally ready to move forward.
A need to resolve or break free of whatever is causing your emotions to be subdued.
Being held back emotionally. Loneliness, anxiety, coldness or lack of confidence in expressing yourself. Unresolved emotional scars.
Astrologia
Deep emotional awareness and understanding of others. Intuitive and sensitive. A deep empathy that can heal others. Can be emotionally expressive, making for good writers or artists. Can become overly emotional or depressed. Prone to putting others before themselves, causing emotional burnout.
Ace of Cups
The Ace of Cups represents beginnings and new starts in terms of the inner self, particularly emotion, intuition and creativity. In the outside world this manifests as relationships, emotional renewal (such as ‘recovery as a new start’), inspiration and compassion.
More importantly, the Ace of Cups can represent a crucial factor in all decisions; how emotionally happy you will be with the outcome.
The Ace of Cups can represent a crucial factor in all decisions; how emotionally happy you will be with the outcome.
The Ace of Cups tends to matter most in relationships and the way people will treat each other. An upright card suggests good relations, and a reversed card suggests problems that need to be resolved, or incompatibility.
It can also suggest your level of happiness and contentment in new situations that are not really a ‘relationship’ such as career or how happy you will be after a move or relocation. In short it can be a measure of how happy you are with a new direction in life.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is associated with love, fertility and sex. She is also associated with the negative sides of love as she can be fickle, jealous, illogical and cruel.
Just like the Latinized version (the Goddess Venus), Aphrodite was associated with war as well as love. In Aphrodite’s case, it was literal. Aphrodite has an affair with the God of War, Ares (the Knight of Wands). Everything hates War except love itself.
Aphrodite is strongly associated with water (water is often a symbol of emotion, hence the suite of Cups - cups hold liquid). She is the protector of travelers at sea and trade (as most of it happened over water).
Description and Symbology
The Ace card shows the birth of Love via the birth of the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite.
Some of Aphrodite’s symbols are shown on the card:
- Water, a common symbol of emotion. Aphrodite is shown literally clothed in water.
- The scalloped shell (one of which is said to have borne her to land after her birth in water). The shell is also often seen as a symbol of fertility.
- The dove. Aphrodite is associated with several birds, but the dove is the most well-known. Although the dove is more strongly associated with peace today, in ancient times it was also associated with love (the olive branch was more associated with peace).
- The Celtic symbol on the card is a stylized cup. Above this we see two trinity knots side by side, with their closest ‘leaves’ forming a circle. The trinity knot (or triquetra) represents infinite love and devotion. Two together forming a circle represent the two halves of the relationship becoming one. The trinity knot may also hark back to much earlier infinite ‘symbology of threes’ such as birth-life-death and past-present-future. In more recent religions it represents other trinities.
We also see a golden cup full of water with 5 streams of water coming from it, representing the five senses we use to sense beauty and pleasure in this world. These senses can create positive (or negative) emotions within us.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the ancient Goddess of love and almost certainly comes from much older archetypes imported from Mesopotamia and the East. She is probably one of the earliest love archetypes.
Water and the shell
Water is a common symbol for emotion and shells are commonly used as symbols of fertility.
The dove
One of the most common symbols of love and peace, as well as romantic love.
The cup of the five senses
The cup is overflowing with water and we see five splashes coming from it, representing the connection between the emotions and the senses.
Tips for Readings
The following table shows the upright and reverse meanings for general questions. The last row ('Yes/No') is useful when you are picking a single card to decide a yes or no decision.
Upright
Reversed
Within an existing relationship this card suggests an event that will cause deepening emotional bonds.
For those who are single it represents a new love interest will soon appear.
For those who are looking to rekindle an old relationship, this card is broadly positive but asks you to be sure you are actually walking into a new beginning. Be certain that old issues are resolved for you and not just for the other person.
Whatever the relationship, the card literally offers you a cup brimming with new emotion for all your senses. It invites you to take it!
There are unresolved issues that will go against positive changes in existing or fruitful new relationships.
There is a need for caution and/or some thought on where the problem lies (unresolved issues from the past, a lack of trust or self-belief, bad behavior from others or self-defeating thoughts from yourself).
Without a pause for RRR (‘repair, replace or remove’), there will be a hard path ahead when it comes to relationships.
This card represents new emotional beginnings and in the career sphere this will be centered on happiness rather than money or status. There may be a move to a new role or new job that feels like a ‘better-fit’ or a project that allows you to flex your creativity. The cool thing about such changes is that although money is not a concern, it tends to follow when you are totally on-board and passionate about something because it gets noticed and creates its own positive results!
There is a sense of dissatisfaction or disconnection in what you are doing irrespective of how successful you are. Your heart is just not in it.
You are either being prevented from doing what you would like by others or the job itself is nothing more than a pay-check generator.
It is time to start thinking about fixing the situation you are in or looking elsewhere because there is no growth or fulfilment in your current position.
For those out of work the card suggests you are either being passive to the situation or retreating from it. It might be time to grasp the situation and start planning ahead because there will be no new beginning if you carry on as you are. More than anything else, ignore rejection from others and learn to appreciate yourself.
Health is not really a focus of this card but emotional attachments and creativity are, so health will work best when you include significant others. Walks, common health interests, a joint diet (top tip: a diet will never work for long unless your partner is also on it!) or anything that will build bonds as well as health. The heart grows through good exercise, but the heart also grows when it is closer to another heart!
Health starts with loving yourself and issues in other areas of your life mean this is not happening. It is time to be a little selfish and give yourself some me-time to recuperate, or a little more distance so you can recharge.
Although this can be difficult, there also has to be a list of priorities where ‘me’ is at least on the list!
Anything that comes from the heart will work, meaning spiritual satisfaction and emotional satisfaction need to be one and the same.
Move towards things that satisfy you emotionally such as the divine as a sense of compassion and understanding (charities, helping others, learning your place in a connected universe), rather than a set of rules and ritual.
More than anything, trust your own intuition. If it doesn’t satisfy your heart, it probably isn’t your path right now.
You are blocked from moving forward spiritually and this is happening through disconnection from other people or conflict within your relationships.
Although believing in a higher power is proven to help with emotional problems, it is not the whole solution. You also have to either accept or repair the problems blocking you moving forward.
This will come through introspecting and understanding, and not through ignoring previous events and issues.
Finance and emotion can often be a bad mix as there is a big difference between an investment and a passion-project (only one of them is primarily aimed at securing an income!), but things that align with your emotional goals will always go well. A new place to live or anything that will bring you closer, such as investing in common goals between you and your significant other.
Emotion driven finance is always a problem as it tries to fix a problem with sticking plaster rather than a real cure. So, no retail therapy, confusing passion projects with investments, or buying anything ‘because you want to be the empowered person in the marketing advert’!
Instead, either wait until the emotional storm subsides, or try to fix the underlying emotional issues before you start looking at finances!
Yes through emotional fulfilment and intuition from the heart.
No through not being emotionally ready.
Reading the Card
The upright card
The upright Ace of Cups signifies new beginnings in the emotional sphere and is one of the best cards for those seeking a new relationship. For those in an existing relationship it can point to a new phase in the relationship and this will be denoted by closer ties and better understanding.
The Ace of cups can also represent the start of a creative project or self-imposed challenge. It can represent a greater clarity regarding intuition and what feels right in both relationships and creative work.
The card can represent the ending of one phase and the start of another via coming to terms of past events, leading to an emotional healing. You may be smarting from a previous relationship, and this card suggests you are over the worst and making sense of previous events. This will allow you to begin to move forward.
In non-relationship areas of life it represents the love or appreciation of more abstract concepts than a significant other: love of a new job, new area after relocation, or simply that any recent change will make you happier in the future.
The reversal
The reversed Ace of Cups often reflects the same ‘beginning of something in the emotional sphere’ themes as the upright card except that something is blocking the process to emotional closeness, greater intuition or creative clarity, or moving on from past emotional hurt and injuries. This is an important card to think about because it often means you are going to become unhappy with something.
This unhappiness could be coming from you or other people.
It may be:
- Caused by previous unresolved emotions that prevent you moving forward. These issues may be caused by resentment, lack of equality or one or both party being distant and the other party being hurt by it. It could represent a previous breakup or emotionally traumatic event that is preventing you opening up or hiding.
- Caused by a lack of energy or focus in a creative task. Your mind will not be receptive and your intuition may be off, caused by worries or residual anger coming from other aspects of your life or simply a lack of engagement. We are around 60% water and given water is a symbol of emotion, that can mean an awful lot of emotions sloshing about inside!
- In extreme cases it can be caused by issues we cannot resolve ourselves. This is a time to reach out to others who can help.
In all cases the card suggests you are at the cusp of something new emotionally or creatively, but you are not ready for it. The card advises addressing the issues before moving forward otherwise that ‘something’ might pass by or fail.
Card Design Process
As with all Ace cards in this deck the design is significantly different from a standard Rider-Waite-Smith design. This is by intention. This deck assumes a single, strong archetype is easier to read than many symbolic ticks coming from different places and potentially also from hidden occult meanings (which is not really an archetype at all).
What better archetype for love and emotion than the Goddess of Love?
Final Words
The Ace of Cups represents a new beginning in your life centered on matters related to emotions, creativity, and a possible change in your overall happiness related to this new direction.
