Four of Cups

Identity

Symbols

• Seated in the Tree's ShadeShelter and, at the same time, a green screen that shuts the world out.+

  Waite seats him 'under a tree' and reads his face as 'discontent with his environment' — yet the environment is only this: shade, grass, a trunk at his back. Nothing is wrong with the place; the discontent is his.

• Three Cups Before HimAccomplishments already in hand — they no longer move him.+

  Waite reads the three as 'the wine of this world' that has 'caused satiety only'. The Golden Dawn calls the card 'Lord of Blended Pleasure' (the Moon in Cancer's third decan, in Chesed), and Waite echoes the title.

• The Fourth Cup from the CloudThe unseen offer — a new possibility from outside that hovers only briefly.+

  Waite calls it 'another wine, as if a fairy gift', offered to 'the wastrel' who 'sees no consolation therein'. Like the Ace's hand it reaches out of a cloud at the side; here, though, it stays outside his lowered gaze.

• Folded ArmsThe body speaks before the heart — the posture of a door held closed.+

  Waite's list runs 'weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations', and 'imaginary' is the telling word: nothing in the scene troubles him. Folded arms take both hands out of use, away from all four cups.

Story

Four cups, and only three of them are looked at. The young man sits on the grass with a tree at his back, arms locked across his chest, eyes lowered to the three cups set before him. From a cloud at the side an arm reaches in and holds out a fourth; it hangs at the edge of his view, close enough to take. The eye moves from that offered cup to his face and finds no answering glance. Nothing in the scene moves except that arm; the picture holds a refusal that is not even a refusal, only not looking.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

The Hanged Man

Five of Cups

Eight of Cups