The deck · Cups · Water

Two of Cups, from the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck

Two of Cups

LovePassionFriendshipAffinity

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.

Reversed

Waite gives no reversed meaning for this card.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), Part III §2

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 (1911), Part III §2

Older readings

Favourable in things of pleasure and business, as well as love; also wealth and honour. Reversed: Passion.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), Part III §4. Waite collected these and says they often disagree with the main meanings.

Waite wrote in 1911 and some of his meanings show it. Tarot is a tradition of reflection, not a prediction, and no card decides anything for you.