← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 41/121
Five of Cups
The Five of Cups is the card of disappointment and mourning. Something has been lost — a hope, a relationship, a plan — and the card describes the time spent looking at what has gone. Its quiet point is that not everything is lost: there is still something left, and a way home, once one is ready to turn round.
The image
A figure in a long black cloak stands with bowed head over three cups that have fallen and spilled. Behind them, unnoticed, two cups still stand. A river runs past, and a bridge leads to a small house or keep. The spilled cups are usually taken as loss; the standing cups as what remains; the bridge as the way forward.
Upright
Grief, regret and disappointment. Waite calls it "a card of loss, but something remains over". It can describe sadness that needs to be felt rather than hurried, or a tendency to dwell on what went wrong. Waite also links it to inheritance that does not meet expectations.
Reversed
Waite reads it reversed as return, news and the reunion of relatives. Modern readers often see acceptance beginning, moving on, or turning to notice what is still there — or, sometimes, grief that has not been allowed. Some readers do not use reversals.
Correspondences
The Five of the suit of Cups, element water. The Golden Dawn, whose attributions most English-language decks follow, calls it the Lord of Loss in Pleasure and gives it Mars in the first decan of Scorpio, 0°–10°. On the Tree of Life it sits in Geburah, the fifth sephirah.
In a reading
In the past, it can name a loss still being carried. As an obstacle, it often points to looking only at the spilled cups. As advice, it invites gentleness with sorrow and, in time, a look over one's shoulder. Beside the Six of Cups it can describe nostalgia mixed with regret.
In astrology
The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow (French, Marseille-based tradition differs for some Major Arcana).
Decan: Mars in Scorpio, 0°–10°
Element: Water — the element of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces
Mode: Fixed — Scorpio is a fixed sign