Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
With the Cups in tarot, we meet with the second level of manifestation — how we are choosing to create and experience our world in every moment.
As I point out frequently in this column, life doesn’t simply happen to us. Or, at least, that’s not how I have come to see our time here on this planet. In every moment, we are Magicians, whether we know it or not, whether we work actively with the concept or not. We are creating life, with our energy (Wands), our feelings (Cups), our thoughts (Swords) and our actions (Pentacles).
In The Magician card, second card of the major arcana, the magus stands behind his work table, all four suits there in front of him to employ in his act of self- and world-definition: They are the ingredients for the experience he is in the process of creating. The Magician is a powerful card — yet it appears at the beginning of the major arcana: which means it is an archetype that is available to us from the start. That, I feel, says something worth bearing in mind; from the outset we have the tools and means to create magic. It might take a few journeys through the major arcana to understand and accept this. But that is what we are: We are wizards. (A book I highly recommend, which explains things to this effect is The Way of the Wizard by Deepak Chopra.)
As the second suit in the minor arcana, Cups harness the neutral energy of the Wands and run with it in a particular direction. This direction is dependent on the quality of the emotion we are experiencing. Cups, as emotions, influence our thoughts, Swords, which in turn influence how the world appears to us — and how we appear to the world. This is not woo-woo stuff — although it’s often seen and explained in particularly woo-woo, New Agey terms, which has the effect of its seeming relevant only to those people who have watched The Secret or read the Abraham-Hicks books. But really, it is an entirely practical experience. It comes down to this, at its simplest: If you are feeling crappy, it is hard not to see that in the world around you. If you are feeling joy, that is what you will tend to choose to see above everything else. Thus, you have started to shape your reality.