Five of Cups From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot – Wikisource.org

A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding. Divanatory Meanings: It is a card of loss, but something remains over; three have been taken, but two are left; it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration. Reversed: News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.

From The Witches Tarot Book by Ellen Cannon Reed

Strong emotions, righteous anger.  Relationships may be Karmic.  Price paid, narrowing of emotion, end of a relationship past it’s time.  That which is temporal will be washed away

Reversed: Emotions take control, but the result is like a flood rather than a controlled river.  Excess, too much emotion or intuition (yes, it is possible), and damage may be done.  (The stream may turn into a gully.)

My Own Thoughts

As many other sites would tell you this card is one of past and future.  You’ve got the 3 cups that are knocked over in front of the cloaked man and two that are upright behind him.  He’s looking to the past, what has been spilled and forgetting that he still has two that are left.  He’s “crying over spilt milk” as it were.  I personally take from this card the idea that you have to let go of the mistakes you’ve made, the hurt feelings you’ve experienced and stop worrying about what has already happened.  It is what it is.  This card is there to remind us that we still have the future ahead of us to make things better and not to waste our time and energy on the negative or positive past.

This card can be telling you to walk away from a situation or relationship that is either not good for you or has outlasted it’s usefullness.  It can also be telling us that we need to watch our emotions for they might topple us over and take control of our lives.

Emotions are a wonderful thing, but too often we forget to let them go once we’ve validated them.  Everyone needs to acknowledge and validate their own emotions, but then we need to let them go to the Goddess.  Let her loving arms take the burden of them away from us so that we can focus on the good that has yet to come…. the life we want to create, not the life we’ve already lived.

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