Two of Cups: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Two of Cups upright means: Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and (as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination) that desire which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is sanctified. Reversed: Passion.

The picture

“A youth and maiden are pledging one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card. Some curious emblematical meanings are attached to it, but they do not concern us in this place.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

Upright

Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and (as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination) that desire which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is sanctified.

Waite's additional meanings: Favourable in things of pleasure and business, as well as love; also wealth and honour.

Reversed

Passion.

Waite gives no reversed meaning in the card's own entry; this one is among his additional meanings.

In one line

Love and friendship: a union pledged. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Two of Cups is the second card of the suit of Cups, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Twos: Two of Wands, Two of Swords, Two 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 Two 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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