Two of Cups
Deux de Coupe (Tarot de Marseille) · Two of Chalices · Love (Thoth)
A young man and woman pledge their cups beneath a winged lion's head: the Two of Cups is read as mutual love, partnership and reconciliation.
Upright partnership · mutual attraction · union · harmony · reconciliation · friendship
Reversed imbalance · break-up · miscommunication · separation · broken trust
- Astrology
- Venus in Cancer
- Element
- Water
- Number
- 2
- Golden Dawn title
- Lord of Love
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
The Two of Cups is the card of a meeting between equals. In the Waite–Smith tradition it stands for love and attraction that are returned, for partnership, friendship and sympathy. Waite's list reads love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy and the interrelation of the sexes. It is the moment when two people recognise each other and decide to exchange something of themselves.
Love and relationships: mutual attraction, a new romance, an engagement, the healing of a quarrel; deep friendship as well as romance.
Work and money: a good partnership or collaboration, a contract signed in good faith, agreement between parties, a fair deal.
Advice: meet the other person halfway. Exchange is the whole gesture of this card: offer what you have, honour what you receive, and let the bond rest on respect as much as on feeling.
Reversed
Reversed, the pledge falters. Readers describe imbalance in a relationship, one person giving more than the other, misunderstandings, a quarrel or a parting. Sometimes the reversal points to a partnership in business whose terms no longer suit both sides. An inward reading looks instead at the relationship with oneself — a need to reconcile conflicting parts of one's own character before seeking harmony with another. Many readers do not use reversals at all and would read difficulty here only from the surrounding cards. Where reversals are used, the counsel is honest conversation before assumption hardens into distance.
The image
A young man and a young woman face each other, each holding a cup, and appear to be exchanging a pledge or a toast. She wears a long gown and a laurel wreath; he wears a short patterned tunic and a garland of flowers, and reaches toward her cup. Between them, above the raised cups, rises a caduceus — the staff of Hermes entwined with two serpents — crowned by a pair of wings from which a red lion's head emerges. Beyond them a green landscape leads to a house on a hill.
History
In the Tarot de Marseille the Two of Cups is already one of the more ornate pips, with two cups beneath a decorative floral motif from which a pair of creatures sometimes emerge, but there are no human figures. Pamela Colman Smith's couple was a new invention in 1909. Waite's text describes a youth and maiden pledging one another, with the caduceus of Hermes rising above their cups and a lion's head between its great wings, and he says that this emblem is a variant of a sign found in a few old examples of the card. That remark suggests that the winged device, at least, was adapted from older iconography rather than invented outright.
Symbolism
The Golden Dawn titled the card the Lord of Love and attributed it to Venus in Cancer, the planet of love in the sign of home and nurture, placed in Chokmah on the Tree of Life. Crowley's Thoth card keeps the title Love. Two is the number of pairing and reflection (see number 2). The caduceus signifies the reconciling of opposites and has long been linked with negotiation and healing; the lion's head suggests passion and animal vitality, lifted up and balanced by the wings of spirit. The house in the background places the encounter within the possibility of a shared life.
In a reading
It is among the plainest love cards in the minor arcana and often appears with the Lovers, its counterpart among the trumps. With the Ace of Cups a new relationship begins; with the Four of Wands a celebration or engagement follows. In business readings it favours partnerships. Beside Justice it may describe a fair contract or agreement.
Readers note that the two figures stand on level ground, neither above the other, which makes the card a picture of reciprocity rather than of rescue or conquest. For that reason it is also used in readings about friendship, mediation and the repairing of family ties, not only about romance.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Book of Thoth — Aleister Crowley, 1944
- The Golden Dawn — Israel Regardie, 1937
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — Rachel Pollack, 1980