The Two of Cups (Tarot Triptych)
Name: Love, the Two of Cups
Number: 2
Astrology: Venus in Cancer
Qabalah: Chokmah of He
Chris Gabriel July 20, 2024
The Two of Cups is a card of love and the energetic union between two beings. It pertains to all matters of shared pleasure, mutual growth, and emotional experience - a human alchemy.
In Rider, we have two lovers holding their cups. Between them there is a surreal caduceus, spiralling snakes culminating in a winged lion head. The lovers are well dressed and crowned with laurels and flowers, standing in front of a pastoral scene.
In Thoth, we have two cups overflowing with water received from a lotus fountain, around which two fish are entwined. This card is Venus in Cancer, a personal, deeply intimate love. We have the greens of Venus, and the blues and amber of Cancer.
In Marseille, we have a uniquely symbolic major arcana. Here the two cups are secondary to the brilliant, alchemical scene. Underground, two angels work at an alembic containing a phoenix. Rising from this alembic, a flower sprouts another flower with fish heads as its leaves. Quite the scene! Through Qabalah, we are given the key to its name: the Queen’s Wisdom. The Queen’s Wisdom is Love.
We have many shared motifs between these cards, all of which point to the joy of love, and the energies at play within. This is when a relationship is ‘in its element’, like a fish in water.
As for the alchemical motifs, all alchemical philosophies are centered on human love as a vessel and metaphor for divine transformation. Alchemy is the Chemical Wedding, a motif we will see depicted in the Thoth deck when the Lovers VI are transmuted into one being in Art XIV.
We can see the cosmic spiralling of love directly in the work of a modern alchemist, Wilhelm Reich. A student of Sigmund Freud, Reich became increasingly far out in his vision of sexuality, moving from psychology and scientific study into mystical visions that perfectly mirror the esoteric traditions.
To Reich the sexual relationship is a product of literal spiraling cosmic energies. A motif which is clearly present in the Two of Cups.
Let us turn to the fish, present in both Marseille and Thoth. The image of a fish as related to Love calls to mind one of my favorite Grimm’s fairy tales, the Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.
The story follows the misadventures of a boy, cast out by his father for his idiocy, and told to learn how to shudder. He finds the task quite impossible, even when faced with corpses, phantasmagorias, demons and a haunted castle. After overcoming these trials, marrying the Princess, and becoming King, he is still sad, as he can not shudder. His wife, in her wisdom, hatches a plan. It goes as follows:
“At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was to draw the
clothes off him and empty the bucketful of cold water with the
gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about
him. Then he woke up and cried
'oh, what makes me shudder so. - What makes me shudder so, dear wife.
Ah. Now I know what it is to shudder.'
The End”
This Queen’s Wisdom is clearly that of the Two of Cups. That shuddering, as Freud knew well, is not always what one does in fear, but in love and pleasure, which the fairy tale is alluding to.
When pulling this card, we are asked to consider the union of love, forming that union, or giving energy to one we are in. To take joy in our pleasure, and to let it grow, and spring into something divine!
