Queen of Cups · Cups · Water

She sits where the land stops. The throne is pink-grey stone on a yellow shore strewn with green and red-striped pebbles; the water runs up to the rock beneath it. Her white robe pours over the ledge onto the shingle; folds and ripples take the same line, the same pale blue wash, and you cannot say where cloth ends and sea begins. Children are carved into the throne: two along the crest, one in a low niche, an arm lifted.

The strangest object in the suit stands on the throne’s ochre arm, her hand curled at its foot. Every other cup in the deck is open. Hers is gold and lidded: a faceted dome, a small cross at the peak, a winged figure on each handle, a church vessel nobody drinks from. She does not offer it. Her gold-crowned head stays bent to it, a red shell pinning the mantle at her throat.

A lid is a decision about what stays inside.

Tradition gives her feeling taken all the way in and kept: empathy that knows before it is said, intuition given the weight of a throne. Waite calls her dreamy, one who sees visions in a cup. The lid is the argument: what she carries need not spill to prove it is there.

Upright, that is depth with a floor under it: she holds what others bring, and the water stops at the stone.

Reversed, the tide comes further in. Feeling absorbed until she cannot tell whose it was, care souring into martyrdom, the lid shut and the head turned away. Same throne, same shore, same cup. The dial is how far up the bank the water is allowed.