Cups In The Spanish Tarot: The Emotional Suit

Cups are the suit of emotions and feelings in the Spanish tarot. Tied to the element Water, these 10 cards tell the story of the heart — from the home taking shape to fulfilment, by way of temptation and melancholy.
When Cups dominate a spread, your love life takes centre stage.

✦

Cups: the emotional suit

In the Spanish tarot, the 40 cards fall into 4 suits of 10. They carry the whole structure of the deck on their own: since it has no major arcana and no queens, nothing else takes the symbolism on.

A cup is a vessel: it holds, it receives, it fills up or runs dry. That is exactly the image this suit carries — a heart that takes emotions in, sometimes overflowing, sometimes empty.

✦

The 10 cards of the emotional suit

From the Ace to the King, each card marks a stage in the theme of its suit — a beginning, an ordeal, a culmination. Here are the keywords of each one.

✦

What Cups reveal in a spread

When Cups come up in numbers, the question almost always touches on the heart. The number cards, from the Ace to the 7, tell a progression:

• The Ace and the 2 bring the bond to life: a new love, a home, then true love and fertility.
• The 3 brings the message or the piece of news that moves the situation along.
• The 4 is the card of temptation: instincts take over, with the slip that implies.
• The 5 celebrates, the 6 falls back into melancholy — the heart does not move in a straight line.
• The 7 crowns the suit with fulfilment, that of desires met.

The court cards of Cups (Jack, Knight, King) stand for sensitive, loyal people — a lover, a confidant, a relative who listens — or for your own capacity to feel and to love, at three degrees of emotional maturity.

Want to know whether Cups will run your spread today, and what that would say about the stretch you are going through? Find out now.

✦ ✦

Your questions about Cups in the Spanish tarot

✦

Discover the other suits

← Everything about the Spanish tarot