Queen of Cups: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Queen of Cups upright means: Good, fair woman; honest, devoted woman, who will do service to the Querent; loving intelligence, and hence the gift of vision; success, happiness, pleasure; also wisdom, virtue; a perfect spouse and a good mother. Reversed: The accounts vary; good woman; otherwise, distinguished woman but one not to be trusted; perverse woman; vice, dishonour, depravity.

The picture

“Beautiful, fair, dreamy, as one who sees visions in a cup. This is, however, only one of her aspects; she sees, but she also acts, and her activity feeds her dream.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Good, fair woman; honest, devoted woman, who will do service to the Querent; loving intelligence, and hence the gift of vision; success, happiness, pleasure; also wisdom, virtue; a perfect spouse and a good mother.

Waite's additional meanings: Sometimes denotes a woman of equivocal character.

Reversed

The accounts vary; good woman; otherwise, distinguished woman but one not to be trusted; perverse woman; vice, dishonour, depravity.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: A rich marriage for a man and a distinguished one for a woman.

In one line

Loving intelligence, and the gift of vision. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Queen of Cups is the thirteenth card of the suit of Cups, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Queens: Queen of Wands, Queen of Swords, Queen of Pentacles.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Queen of Cups can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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