Two of Cups
The two of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a youth and a maiden pledging each other, the caduceus rising above their cups. A. E. Waite read it as love, passion, friendship and union.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "A youth and maiden are pledging one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card."
What does the Two of Cups mean?
Waite's meanings are "love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and—as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination—that desire which is not in Nature". He gives no reversed meaning for this card. His list of additional meanings adds "favourable in things of pleasure and business, as well as love; also wealth and honour", and reversed, "passion".
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 "unimportant obstacles raised by one of the lovers".
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