3 of Cups
- Arcana Minor
- Suit Cups
- Figure on this site The feast
In the earliest decks
The Three of Cups belongs to the suit of cups, one of the four Italian suit signs (cups, coins, swords and batons). Playing cards reached Italy from Mamluk Egypt in the 1370s, and the Italians kept the cups, coins and swords and turned the Mamluk polo-sticks into batons. Tarot is an Italian invention of the fifteenth century, built on this suit system, and it has no connection to the runes.
In the earliest tarot decks the numbered cards were mostly plain pips: the card showed three cups and ornament, not a scene. A page describing the Visconti-Sforza Three of Cups (Milan, about 1450, Bonifacio Bembo’s workshop) says it shows three goblets among foliage and scrollwork, with no figures and no story. That page is a commercial course site, so treat this detail as unconfirmed by a scholarly source.
The Tarot de Marseille continued the pip tradition. The earliest surviving Marseille-pattern cards that scholars have identified are by Philippe Vachier of Marseille, dated 1639. Its pips are drawn as objects and ornament without human figures.
The first tarot with every suit card illustrated is the Sola Busca deck, probably engraved around 1490 and coloured about 1491 (the place and dating are still debated). The scene of three figures raising cups in the modern image appears to belong to 1909 rather than to the old decks.
- Wikipedia contributors, Italian playing cards (opens in a new tab)
- Global Spiritual Studies, Visconti-Sforza Three of Cups (opens in a new tab)
- Wikipedia, Tarot de Marseille (opens in a new tab)
- Wikipedia contributors, Sola Busca tarot (opens in a new tab)
- The Public Domain Review, Sola Busca (collection page) (opens in a new tab)
The Rider-Waite-Smith card
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 for A. E. Waite and published in 1910. Its numbered cards each carry a small scene, which was unusual for tarot: before it, only the Sola Busca deck had illustrated every suit card. Black-and-white photographs of the Sola Busca cards were given to the British Museum in 1907, and Waite and Smith likely saw them. Some scholars think she drew on them for part of her Minor Arcana. The cards usually named as models are the Three of Swords and the Ten of Wands, not the Three of Cups.
Waite’s card shows women with raised cups, in a garden, and he calls them maidens. In older decks the Three of Cups has no such group, so the image should be understood as Smith’s own work for this deck. Many later decks copy it.
- Wikipedia contributors, Sola Busca tarot (opens in a new tab)
- The Public Domain Review, Sola Busca (collection page) (opens in a new tab)
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (opens in a new tab) (1910 (1911 edition)), Part III, §2, Cups, Three Rights: Published 1910-1911; author died 1942.
Waite’s description
Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (opens in a new tab) (1910 (1911 edition)), Part III, section 2, The Suit of Cups, Three Rights: Published 1910-1911; author died 1942.
Later meanings
The meanings people now attach to the Three of Cups, such as friendship and celebration, come largely from the Rider-Waite-Smith picture and from later writers, not from fifteenth-century use. Later occult systems also added attributions. The Golden Dawn tradition gave each numbered card a zodiac decan, and secondhand sources place the Three of Cups in the second decan of Cancer, under Mercury, with the title “Abundance” or “Lord of Abundance”. Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck uses the label “Abundance” for this card. These are modern occult systems, laid over the card long after the first decks were made.
- Wikipedia contributors, Three of Cups (opens in a new tab)
- Global Spiritual Studies, Visconti-Sforza Three of Cups (opens in a new tab)
As read on this site
This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.
Upright
Keywords: celebration, shared joy, community, openly felt happiness
The feast is for sharing, and joy kept quiet is joy half-experienced. This card asks you to actually celebrate, out loud, with the people who'd want to celebrate with you, rather than downplaying something good out of modesty or habit. Let the good thing be visible. It was meant to be witnessed.
In general: Something worth celebrating shouldn't be minimized. Share the joy rather than keeping it private out of habit.
In love: A relationship milestone or simple happiness worth celebrating openly with the people who matter to you both.
In work: A success worth acknowledging with your team or collaborators rather than quietly moving past it.
Reversed
Keywords: hollow celebration, obligation over joy, fading enthusiasm, empty gathering
A celebration with no one left who actually wants to be there has lost the thing that made it a feast in the first place. If the gathering or relationship feels obligatory rather than genuinely joyful, that's worth being honest about, even if the original intention behind it was good.
In general: A ritual or gathering has become obligatory rather than genuinely joyful. Worth reassessing whether it still serves its purpose.
In love: Going through celebratory motions in a relationship that's stopped generating real shared joy.
In work: Team rituals or celebrations that have become performative rather than reflecting actual enthusiasm or connection.
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