Page of Cups
The page of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a studious page looking at a fish rising from a cup. A. E. Waite read it as a studious young man, news and reflection.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form."
What does the Page of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "fair young man, one impelled to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, message; application, reflection, meditation"; reversed, "taste, inclination, attachment, seduction, deception, artifice". His list of additional meanings adds "good augury; also a young man who is unfortunate in love", and reversed, "obstacles of all kinds".
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, who calls it the Knave of Cups, reads it as "a fair child, a messenger, a birth".
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