Four of Cups
The four of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a young man under a tree, discontented with three cups, as a hand from a cloud offers a fourth. A. E. Waite read it as weariness, disgust and aversion.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A young man is seated under a tree and contemplates three cups set on the grass before him; an arm issuing from a cloud offers him another cup. His expression notwithstanding is one of discontent with his environment."
What does the Four of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel"; reversed, "novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations". His list of additional meanings adds "contrarieties", and reversed, "presentiment".
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 "serious obstacles to the love, arising from other persons".
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