The Five of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

The Five of Cups is the spilling out of all we have accumulated. It is the glass half empty and the fly who drowns in a fine wine. It is the card of trying and failing to get what you want.

In Rider, a man in a black cloak looks down upon three spilled cups, while two still stand behind him. The sky is grey. He cares not for what he has, only what he has lost. He is “crying over spilt milk”.

In Thoth, we have an arrangement of cups reminiscent of the biomechanical art of H.R Giger. They appear almost as an alchemical laboratory, each connected by pipes in the shape of a pentagram. Below them is a sick, stagnant water, and above them is a rust red sky. Two lotuses arise from the lowest cup but are already withering away. Two lily pads droop down above the rest.

In Marseille, we are shown five cups around which flowers grow. A plant below brings forth two flowers, and there is a poppy growing from the central cup. Qabalistically, this is the Severity of the Queen.

This is a card of realization of rough awakenings. The calm comfort of the four of cups is broken, and we are thrust into a harsh reality. This is the misery and regret that follows a heartbreak.

The cloaked figure in Rider seems to me to be a perfect image of the young poet Arthur Rimbaud. “One evening, I sat Beauty on my knees - and I found her bitter - And I insulted her.” Rimbaud falls from his simple, pleasant life of banquets and goes straight to Hell.

As the Six of Cups is the Goldilocks zone, where things are just right, the Five of Cups is not enough. It is an unsatisfying meal - spoiled food, sour milk, and a rough bed. It is incapable of satisfying us.

As Mars in Scorpio, there is an element of resentment and rage that comes from this dissatisfaction. This is not the sort of anger that leads to revolutions, but petty crimes of passion; scorned lovers who yearn for blood or those who kill out of desire for what they feel they have been denied.

Wilhelm Reich describes how young people who go unloved will develop bizarre illusions about themselves, imagining defects where there are none. Thoth shows well the sort of perverse libidinal machinery that is formed by disappointment and ressentiment (the bitterness that feelings of inferiority breed).

When drawing this card, we must be careful that our disappointments and jealousies do not grow strong like a poison tree. This card lets us know we will be faced with failures, with not getting what we need and want, but we mustn't strike out. Instead, let the bitterness fade. As Blake says in A Poison Tree: