Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
In Tarot, emotions are typically represented by the suit of Cups and the element of water. At their best, they’re free, deep, flowing, open, and positively reflective of the world around them.
At their more challenging, emotions can be overpowering, oppressive, stagnant, and/or melodramatic.
In the Cup Court cards, there’s a definite progression from the innocent buoyancy of the young Page and Knight to the more controlled emotional maturity of the King and Queen of the suit.
As we move through the ranks it becomes more about finding ways to live fully within life’s flow than to try and get the world to flow around us.
The video below of French freediver Guillaume Néry got me thinking of the King of Cups and his ability to face the metaphoric deep waters head on without fear of becoming swamped or sucked under.
To float like he does, one has to be still, calm, and at true peace with one’s environment. Néry’s a master of his element, a real-life King of Cups.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
As might be guessed from the title, it’s about the unconscious, and how much of what we experience in our conscious lives appears to arise out of or be directed by this mysterious and uncharted part of ourselves.
It’s really interesting stuff, and I highly recommend the book. Reading it made me want to ask my own unconscious what it thinks of itself. To do so of course, I turned to the Tarot.
The card I pulled when I asked ‘what is the nature of our unconscious?’ was the King of Cups.
In it, a king sits on a slab of concrete in the middle of an ocean. A fish pops out of the water to his right, while a boat sails past on his left.
What a perfect card for my question.
This is the emotional King, the one who communicates through feelings more easily than with logic. He intuitively senses how to navigate his way, and works very well with symbols and nuance.
And you could say that within this question, the King himself might represent consciousness. He’s the part of us that experiences sensation. He acts and emotes.
The ocean on the other hand, is like the unconscious. It’s deep, and dark, and for the most part unknown. Anything might pop up from under the waves or float by.
If we look at it this way, it’s also interesting to notice that the King takes up so much of the picture, when in fact he’s so little compared to the sea below and around him.
It’s similar to how we experience our consciousness relative to our unconscious. Our conscious mind seems to think it’s the one directing the action, or at least is the most important element in the picture.
Really though, it’s likely just a tiny speck on a giant ocean.
I was watching the video below about stormy seas and it got me thinking about stormy seas in the Tarot.
Two cards in the Rider Waite Smith deck show boats facing very rough waters, though like the boats in the video, they seem to be up to the challenge.
There’s a ship in the water behind the King of Cups, and two riding the waves in the background of the Two of Pentacles.
Water, of course, is a symbol of the emotions, and a choppy sea suggests emotions that are in turmoil or somehow disturbed.
A boat on a rough sea might represent an emotional journey, or an effort to ‘navigate’ one’s way through an emotionally tumultuous situation.
The King of Cups is surrounded by a turbulent ocean, yet he appears calm, collected, and very grounded, not at any risk of capsizing.
And within the deck that’s this King’s specialty. He understands relationships and how they work.
He’s a master of emotions and when things get rough between people, there’s no one better to turn to for mediation.
In the Two of Pentacles, though the waves are high, the boats stay afloat and the man with the disks keeps on juggling.
This card speaks of an emotional yet practical change, with lots of little details to take care of as you go along.
The lemniscates around the disks reflect the curves of the waves, and reminds us that to succeed it’s a matter of finding our flow, or moving with the waves, not fighting against them.
If we can be cool, yet compassionate like the King, and even keeled like the juggler, we can probably face most emotional situations with strength.
But there’s no question about it, the ocean can be a very scary place when the winds start blowing.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
Compassion, emotional strength and mature love are key energies today. The King of Cups understands well the joys and sacrifices involved in relationships of all kinds.
Concern yourself with how others are feeling, what they need for support and how you might help. Through concern for the needs of others you might unexpectedly fulfill your own.
And if you know you’re needing some assistance yourself but have been afraid to ask – get over it. Emotional generosity and support are there if you’re willing to let someone help. But they have to know you need the help before they can offer it.
