Ace of Cups
The ace of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a hand from a cloud holding a cup from which four streams pour, and a dove descending with a Host. A. E. Waite read it as joy, content, nourishment and abundance.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "The waters are beneath, and thereon are water-lilies; the hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup;"
What does the Ace of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "house of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof"; reversed, "house of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution". His list of additional meanings adds "inflexible will, unalterable law", and reversed, "unexpected change of position".
In older decks
In Italian packs the suit is coppe, cups: the earliest suit marks, the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 records, were coppe, danari, bastoni and spade, "cups, money, clubs, and swords". Papus reads it as "commencement of a love affair".
See also
The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Lesser Arcana; Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Divining Tarot, second lesson: the minor arcana
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history: the marks of the suits
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research