Ten of Cups
The ten of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a couple and their children beneath a rainbow of ten cups, a home beyond. A. E. Waite read it as contentment and the perfection of love and friendship.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstacy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm."
What does the Ten of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards"; reversed, "repose of the false heart, indignation, violence". His list of additional meanings adds "for a male Querent, a good marriage and one beyond his expectations", and reversed, "sorrow; also a serious quarrel".
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 "uncertainty in the management of the 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