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
In Waite's words: "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, but by which Nature is sanctified". 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
The Italian suit is coppe, cups, among the marks of the earliest cards in the British Museum's catalogue of 1876. Papus reads it as unimportant obstacles raised by one of the lovers.
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsThree of CupsThe three of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: three maidens in a garden raising their cups as if pledging one another. A. E. Waite read it as plenty, happy endings, victory and healing.
- In Symbols of medicineCaduceusA staff with two snakes twined around it and a pair of wings at the top. It is the wand of Hermes, messenger of the Greek gods, and the staff heralds carried; since 1902 it has been the medical insignia of the US Army, and it is widely used for medicine in the United States.
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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves, letters and numbers or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 30, 2026. How we research
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