Tarot · Cups
King of Cups
King of Cups - Water
Correspondences
- Element
- Water
- Planet
- Mars
- Sign
- Scorpio
- Number
- 14
- Yes / no
- Yes upright, Maybe reversed
Traditional Golden Dawn attributions. The yes / no value is a convention for single-card questions, not a prediction.
Upright
Emotional maturity and calm diplomacy will steady this situation.
King of Cups. Emotional maturity and calm diplomacy will steady this situation. A King of Cups is feeling under governance, deep water held calm at the surface, with the composure of someone who has already been through it. Under Mars, it works by force and initiative, direct and fast and wholly indifferent to whether the timing is comfortable. Being Water, it resolves below the surface, on feeling rather than argument. Its keyword range runs through emotional mastery, diplomacy, wise generosity, and calm authority.
Reversed
Emotional control has become manipulation or cold withdrawal.
King of Cups reversed. Emotional control has become manipulation or cold withdrawal. Its sign is Scorpio, which goes underneath: what is concealed, what is intense, and a refusal to accept the surface account of anything. Reversed here, it has turned inward: felt privately, withheld, or held so tightly that nobody around you knows it is happening. Its keyword range, to be read here as difficulty, delay, or a lesson not yet learned: emotional manipulation, volatility, coldness, and moodiness.
About the Tarot
A 15th-century Italian card game that was turned to fortune-telling only 350 years later.
The upright and reversed meanings here follow the mainstream Rider-Waite-Smith reading tradition. A reversed card is treated as the same force blocked, turned inward, or overexpressed - not simply as its opposite.
Full history →Meanings are a guide to a symbolic tradition, offered for reflection and entertainment. They do not predict the future or describe real people or events. See the Terms.