Card 40 • cups

Five of Cups

Brief Description

The Five of Cups signifies grief, sadness, and fixation on loss that blinds you to remaining joys and the true state of affairs. It warns of emotional overwhelm, depression, disenchantment, and an inability to acknowledge what remains, often due to a misguided perspective rooted in the past. The card's advice is to stop concentrating solely on losses, work through mourning, and begin appreciating what you still possess so you can move into the present. Reversed, it indicates renewed hope, reunions, and a willingness to leave the past behind and return to normal life, though the quick answer notes more loss may precede eventual gain.

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Upright

This is a card of grief and sadness. Being overwhelmed by loss, and incapable of acknowledging the joys that remain. An expected event that has never come. Emotional struggles, depression, disenchantment, emptiness. Misguided point of view, ignoring the real state of affairs. Fixation on the past.

Card's Advice

While concentrating on your losses, you're losing what you have left. Get yourself out of the swamp and start enjoying what you have.

The Warning

You can only be free from your loss after you've worked through it. The only way to open the road to the present is to leave the past behind.

Reverse

A fresh outlook on life and the circumstances that used to make you sad. News that brings hope. Reunion, returning to a former pleasant relationship. Willingness to leave the past behind and move forward. Coming back to the normal course of life after a profound loss.

Quick Answer

No, you will definitely lose more before gaining.

Visual Description

A cloaked figure sits on a low mound with his head in his hand, a walking stick across his knees and a red pack on his back. Three golden cups lie overturned on the ground before him with liquid spilled nearby, while two cups stand upright on a stone to the right. A young person in a blue dress rests face-down on a sack at the figure's feet. In the background there is a distant shoreline, hills and a church steeple, and a large spiderweb stretches from a tree branch in the upper left; a scroll at the bottom bears a Russian title and the Roman numeral V appears at the top.

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Old Style tarot

✍️ Deck author(s): Alexander Ray

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