Tarot Journey with Leisa ReFalo

Number: 1
Card Title: Ace of Cups
Esoteric Title: Root of the Powers of Water
Numerical Keywords: 1: Unity, Origin, Potential
Numerical Attributions: Primium Mobile, White, Soul, Good
Intelligence: Hidden Intelligence
Element: Water (cold, wet)
Elemental Keywords: Love, Container, Emotions
Elemental Attributions: West, Fall, Twilight
Astrological Attribution: Cancer Scorpio Pisces
Dates & Timing: The Hanged Man
Qabalistic World: Kether in Briah
Translation of World: The Crown of Creation
Suit Color: Cups - Blue

Keywords: Friendship, joy, happiness, beauty, pleasure, richness of feelings. Vessel, Holy Grail.

Ill-Dignified:Selfish, Unstable desires, disruption, unhappiness.

Interpretation: Beginning of new love. Female complement to Wands. A container that gives size, shape, definition. Beginning of joy and artistic expression. New social or romantic relationship on horizon. Spiritual nourishment and emotional replenishment. Opening of heart. Good Emotional Karma. Overflowing emotions.

Reversed Interpretation: Wishful thinking about a relationship. Rushing into a relationship prematurely. Emotional imbalance. Delay of new relationship. Over impressed with physical beauty. There is a way out of non-working relationship. Having a sense of false joy. Wishing for a new relationship and seeing one where none exists.

Rider-Waite Imagery

A white hand emerges from a gray cloud from the right. A golden cup rests in the palm of the hand. A white dove is dropping a wafer the has an equal armed cross into the cup. The cup is over flowing with 5 streams of water and 26 drops of water.. There are 3 bells on the base of the cup which has a letter W or upside down M. The sky is gray. There is a green hill in the distance on the left. The water flows into a lake with green lilies that have pink flowers.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)

The waters are beneath, and thereon are water-lilies; the hand issues from the cloud, holding in its palm the cup, from which four streams are pouring; a dove, bearing in its bill a cross-marked Host, descends to place the Wafer in the Cup; the dew of water is falling on all sides. It is an intimation of that which may lie behind the Lesser Arcana.

Divinatory Meanings: House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof.

Reversed: House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution.

4 Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana

Ace.–Inflexible will, unalterable law. Reversed: Unexpected change of position.

The Recurrence of Cards in Dealing

In the Natural Position: 4 Aces = favourable chance; 3 Aces = small success; 2 Aces = trickery.
Reversed: 4 Aces = dishonour; 3 Aces debauchery; 2 Aces = enemies.

The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus; tr. A. P Morton, [1896]

Signification of the Four Series of Minor Arcana in the Divining Tarot
CUPS. Preservation. Love. Instruction.

ACE OF CUPS. Commencement of a love affair.

The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]

Meanings of the Cards
49. Ace of Cups.–Feasting, Banquet, Good Cheer; R. Change, Novelty, Metamorphosis, Inconstancy.

Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa

Chap. vi. Of the wonderfull Natures of Water, Aire, and Winds.
The other two Elements, viz. Water, and Aire, are not less efficacious then the former; neither is nature wanting to work wonderfull things in them.

There is so great a necessity of Water, that without it no living thing can live. No Hearb [herb], nor Plant whatsoever, without the moistening of Water can branch forth. In it is the Seminary vertue of all things, especially of Animals, whose seed is manifestly waterish. The seeds also of Trees, and Plants, although they are earthy, must notwithstanding of necessity be rotted in Water, before they can be fruitfull; whether they be imbibed with the moisture of the Earth, or with Dew, or Rain, or any other Water that is on purpose put to them. For Moses writes, that only Earth, and Water bring forth a living soul. But he ascribes a twofold production of things to Water, viz. of things swimming in the Waters, and of things flying in the Aire above the Earth. And that those productions that are made in, and upon the Earth, are partly attributed to the very Water, the same Scripture testifies, where it saith that the Plants, and the Hearbs [herbs] did not grow, because God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth. Such is the efficacy of this Element of Water, that Spirituall regeneration cannot be done without it, as Christ himself testified to Nicodemus. Very great also is the vertue of it in the Religious Worship of God, in expiations, and purifications; yea, the necessity of it is no less then that of Fire. Infinite are the benefits, and divers are the uses thereof, as being that by vertue of which all things subsist, are generated, nourished and increased. Thence it was that Thales of Miletus, and Hesiod concluded that Water was the beginning of all things, and said it was the first of all the Elements, and the most potent, and that because it hath the mastery over all the rest. For, as Pliny saith, Waters swallow up the Earth, extinguish flames, ascend on high, and by the stretching forth of the clouds, challenge the Heaven for their own: the same falling become the Cause of all things that grow in the Earth. Very many are the wonders that are done by Waters, according to the Writings of Pliny, Solinus, and many other Historians, of the wonderfull vertue whereof, Ovid also makes mention in these Verses.

—– Hornd Hammons Waters at high noon
Are cold; hot at Sun-rise and setting Sun.
Wood, put in bub’ling Athemas is Fir’d,
The Moon then farthest from the Sun retir’d;
Circonian streams congeal his guts to Stone
That thereof drinks, and what therein is thrown.
Crathis and Sybaris (from the Mountains rol’d)
Color the hair like Amber or pure Gold.
Some fountains, of a more prodigious kinde,
Not only change the body but the minde.
Who hath not heard of obscene Salmacis?
Of th’ Æthiopian lake? for, who of this

But only tast [taste], their wits no longer keep,
Or forthwith fall into a deadly sleep.
Who at Clitorius fountain thirst remove,
Loath Wine, and abstinent, meer Water love.
With streams oppos’d to these Lincestus flowes:
They reel, as drunk, who drink too much of those.
A Lake in fair Arcadia stands, of old
Call’d Pheneus; suspected, as twofold:
Fear, and forbear to drink thereof by night:
By night unwholesome, wholesome by day-light.

Josephus also makes relation of the wonderfull nature of a certain river betwixt Arcea, and Raphanea, Cities of Syria: which runs with a full Channell all the Sabboth [Sabbath] Day, and then on a sudden ceaseth, as if the springs were stopped, and all the six dayes you may pass over it dry-shod: but again, on the seaventh day (no man knowing the reason of it) the Waters return again in abundance, as before. Wherefore the inhabitants thereabout called it the Sabboth-day river, because of the Seaventh day, which was holy to the Jews. The Gospel also testifies to a sheep-pool, into which whosoever stepped first, after the Water was troubled by the Angel, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. The same vertue, and efficacy we read was in a spring of the Ionian Nymphs, which was in the territories belonging to the Town of Elis, at a Village called Heraclea, neer the river Citheron: which whosoever stepped into, being diseased, came forth whole, and cured of all his diseases. Pausanias also reports, that in Lyceus, a mountain of Arcadia, there was a spring called Agria, to which, as often as the dryness of the Region threatned [threatened] the destruction of fruits, Jupiters Priest of Lyceus went, and after the offering of Sacrifices, devoutly praying to the Waters of the Spring, holding a Bough of an Oke [oak] in his hand, put it down to the bottome of the hallowed Spring; Then the waters being troubled, a Vapour ascending from thence into the Air was blown into Clouds, with which being joyned together, the whole Heaven was overspread: which being a little after dissolved into rain, watered all the Country most wholsomly [wholesomely]. Moreover Ruffus a Physitian [physician] of Ephesus, besides many other Authours, wrote strange things concerning the wonders of Waters, which, for ought I know, are found in no other Authour.

Picatrix the Goal of the Wise by Ghayat Al-akim

Book “T” The Tarot

OF THE ACES

FIRST in order and importance are the Four Aces, representing the Force of the Spirit, acting in, and binding together, the Four Scales of each Element: and answering to the Dominion of the Letters of the Name in the Kether of each. They represent the Radical Forces.

The Four Aces are said to be placed on the North Pole of the Universe wherein they revolve, governing its revolution; and ruling as the connecting link between Yetzirah and the Material Plane or Universe.

II. THE ROOT OF THE POWERS OF THE WATERS
Ace of Cups or Chalices
A WHITE Radiant Angelic Hand, issuing from clouds, and supporting on the palm thereof a cup, resembling that of the Stolistes.

From it rises a fountain of clear and glistening water: and sprays falling on all sides into clear calm water below, in which grow Lotuses and Water-lilies. The great Letter of the Supernal Mother is traced in the spray of the Fountain.

It symbolizes Fertility — productiveness, beauty, pleasure, happiness, etc.

Often the General signification of the Majority of a particular suit and of the particular signification of the either 3 of 4 cards of a sort in a reading:

• A Majority of Cups Pleasure, merriment.
• A Majority of Aces Strength generally. Aces are always strong cards.
• 4 Aces Great power and force.
• 3 Aces Riches, success.