Book T no. 54 · Two of Cups · decan: Venus in Cancer
Lord of Love
Two of Cups · Lord of Love
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it.
Book T (1912)
A WHITE Radiant Hand, issuant from the lower part of the card from a cloud, holds lotuses. A lotus flower rises above water, which occupies the lower part of the card rising above the hand. From this flower rises a stem, terminating near the top of the card in another lotus, from which flows a sparkling white water, as from a fountain. Crossed on the stem just beneath are two dolphins, Argent and Or, on to which the water falls, and from which it pours in full streams, like jets of gold and silver, into two cups; which in their turn overflow, flooding the lower part of the card. Venus and Cancer above and below.
Harmony of masculine and feminine united. Harmony, pleasure, mirth, subtlety …
Chokmah of ה (Marriage, love, pleasure).
Therein rule the Angels אועאל and חבויה.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's).
If ill dignified
Book T (1912): its words for the card when it falls ill dignified, set apart from its text
… but if ill dignified — folly, dissipation, waste, silly actions.
In Book T's table
No. 54 of Book T's 78 titles · Two of Cups · decan: Venus in Cancer
Correspondences
Waite, Pictorial Key (1911)
A. E. Waite, a member of the Golden Dawn, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911) · public domain · he describes the Rider-Waite-Smith picture of this card, not Book T's
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. Divinatory Meanings : 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.
Picture sets
Book T deck, SVG. PlayfulProcess (line art traced from the AI painting). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, painting. AI painting (gemini-2.5-flash-image) from Book T's words, prompt by PlayfulProcess. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, iconography. PlayfulProcess: glyphs drawn for this deck, composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_iconography.py) from the card's own metadata, placed as Book T (1912) places them. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, full imagery. PlayfulProcess: parts drawn for this deck (tarot/book-t/parts, tarot/book-t/glyphs), composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_full_imagery.py) from a spec per card that follows Book T (1912). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, linocut. PlayfulProcess: a linocut printing of the full imagery, composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_linocut.py) from the same spec per card, which follows Book T (1912). CC-BY-SA-4.0.