beauty dwelling on loss… ah the 5 of cups, always one of my favourite tarot cards, came up in a reading for a friend a few weeks back, then i was telling my sis about it, so have been mildly pondering
minor arcana, so on a pleasantly worldly scale, none of the overwhelming grandiosity of some of the trumps, but to my eye also profound
as a daydreamy cancerian i’m drawn to cups, the suit of water, of emotions… often the problem of procrastination and pondering… emminence grise is always keats, with his beautiful melancholia
this card always makes me think of hamlet, the black prince, tho the Rider Waite Smith image is possibly a bit ‘scottish widows’
a figure contemplates 3 cups spilled, in the distance a bridge leads across a pleasant river to a tree thronged church, the sky is light grey and nondescript
as the figure has its back to us we naturally associate with them, are drawn into their world, so are inclined to ask, what is it that we have lost?
it’s actually a fairly benign card, in this moment she has neglected to notice the 2 cups left standing, focusing rather on that which is lost (‘And no more turn aside and brood / Upon love’s bitter mystery’),
yet we all know that in time, she will pick up the remaining cups and proceed across the river to whatever new adventures will unfurl
where will that path take us? from the image most likely a warm and human place
So a gentle reminder that however bleak things may seem, it may well not be as bad as we imagine?
even the forbidding cascading black cloak has subtle hints of blue and heart chakra green… Sorrow, but not quite despair… and if it is despair, which often it may feel like, that is not all the energies that are present
curiously when i was thinking about the card on my bike ride i remembered it as 2 knocked over and 3 standing (the other way around!), so have tended towards a rosier interpretation
it’s a useful card for anyone of middle age… waaggh so many things that have been lost!
ha, just thinking now, theres something of gloomy introspection here, keep expecting her to glance around and smile… often when i am sad i go off to some amazing natural place, but despite the introspection, theres always a slight element of ‘hope someone notices how poetically beautiful i am’
i think many folk would be infuriated with her… ‘stop your moping, get on with it’, but hey the ‘live in the moment gurus of perpetual positivity’ are ten a tuppence (inflation used to be a penny)
sometimes the past is important
It is only cups, which, with a rich beguiling brew of dreams and memories, reminds us, that yes, there is sadness, but nothing which we truly love can ever be lost
fractal hologram realm, sweet ponged perfume of the myriad petalled Rose of the Heart
