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Minor Arcana · Suit of Cups · Number card
Four · Cups
A card that falls upside down is read reversed.
Key words
↑ UprightWearinessA missed offerTurning inward
↓ ReversedFresh interestSomething newLooking up
What it means
↑ Upright
Boredom can blind a person to what is being held out. The young man under the tree is so tired of his three cups that he misses the fourth offered from the cloud, and his discontent is often with things that are not truly wrong. Rest if you need to, but lift your eyes now and then: not every offer is one more of the same.
↓ Reversed
Arms unfold, and interest stirs again: a new idea, a new acquaintance, something worth learning, or a hunch that it is time to stop sulking. Follow the small curiosity rather than waiting for a large one, and say yes to one thing you would normally refuse.
Four brings stability, and in Cups stability can settle into a feeling that has gone stale. In the 1909 Smith–Waite deck, this card shows a young man sitting under a tree with folded arms, eyes on three cups set on the grass, while a hand from a cloud holds out a fourth that he seems not to notice. The crossed arms and closed posture show withdrawal; the offered cup is what that withdrawal keeps him from seeing.
Upright
Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel, but he sees no consolation therein. This is also a card of blended pleasure.
Reversed
Novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III.