Two of Cups · Cups · Water

A woman and a young man face each other on flat ochre ground under a pale blue sky. Each holds a gold cup, both at exactly the same height. She grips hers from below. He reaches across and lays his free hand on the foot of her cup, where hers already is. The cups never touch. Between them hangs the pointed tail of a caduceus, two serpents twined up a rod, and above it a red lion’s head between wide red wings. Green laurel rings her hair; her gown is white, her mantle turquoise, her shoes red beneath the hem. Red roses ring his dark curls, his yellow tunic is strewn with dark blossoms, his feet bare. Behind them, on a low green hill, a small house with a red roof.

The caduceus belongs to neither of them. It hangs there because they are facing each other.

That is the argument of the card. Waite hands the pair the emblem of exchange and healing, then crowns it with a lion: appetite, grown wings. The Golden Dawn assigns the decan to Venus in Cancer, love in the sign that keeps a house; Smith put one on the hill.

Upright, the tradition reads mutuality: two cups at one height, neither pouring into the other. A truce, a pledge, The Lovers made small and made daily.

Reversed, the level goes. One cup rides higher, and the exchange begins keeping accounts. Sometimes it reads as a merging in which somebody quietly disappears; sometimes as a pledge made to someone on different ground. The card passes no verdict. It holds up two hands at one height and leaves you to say whether yours are.