Lord of Blended Pleasure, Four of Cups: Book T deck, painted with its symbols
Book T deck, painted with its symbols. AI painting (gemini-2.5-flash-image) from Book T's words, prompt by PlayfulProcess, framed by the deck's glyphs (drawn for this site) in Book T's order, composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_painted_symbols.py). CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Book T no. 56 · Four of Cups · decan: Moon in Cancer

Lord of Blended Pleasure

Four of Cups · Lord of Blended Pleasure

Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it.

Book T (1912)

FOUR cups: the two upper overflowing into the two lower, which do not overflow. An Angelic Hand grasps a branch of lotus, from which ascends a stem bearing one flower at the top of the card, from which the white water flows into the two upper cups. From the centre two leaves pass right and left, making, as it were, a cross between the four cups. Above and below are the symbols Moon and Cancer for the Decan.

Success or pleasure approaching their end. A stationary period in happiness, which may, or may not, continue. It does not mean love and marriage so much as the previous symbol. It is too passive a symbol to represent perfectly complete happiness. Swiftness, hunting and pursuing. Acquisition by contention: injustice sometimes; some drawbacks to pleasure implied.

Chesed of ה (Receiving pleasure or kindness from others, but some discomfort therewith).

Therein rule the great Angels הייאל and מומיה.

Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's).

In Book T's table

No. 56 of Book T's 78 titles · Four of Cups · decan: Moon in Cancer

Read it on the 1912 page

Correspondences

Decan: Moon in Cancer (the 3rd decanate of its sign).

Sephirah: Chesed in Briah (the Creative World).

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 young man is seated under a tree and contemplates three cups set on the grass before him; an arm issuing from a cloud offers him another cup. His expression notwithstanding is one of discontent with his environment. Divinatory Meanings : Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, as if the wine of this world had caused satiety only; another wine, as if a fairy gift, is now offered the wastrel, but he sees no consolation therein. This is also a card of blended pleasure. Reversed : Novelty, presage, new instruction, new relations.

Picture sets

Text: Book T (1912), Waite (1911) and Case (1920), public domain. Pictures and arrangement CC-BY-SA-4.0 (PlayfulProcess). Data: tarot/book-t/grammar.json.