Minor Arcana · Cups · Water
Page of Cups
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.
In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)
A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.
In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)
A BEAUTIFUL Amazon-like figure, softer in nature than the Princess of Wands. Her attire is similar. She stands on a sea with foaming spray. Away to her right a Dolphin. She wears as a crest a swan with opening wings. She bears in one hand a lotus, and in the other an open cup from which a turtle issues. Her mantle is lined with swansdown, and is of thin floating material.
Sweetness, poetry, gentleness and kindness. Imaginative, dreamy, at times indolent, yet courageous if roused.
When ill dignified she is selfish and luxurious.
She rules a quadrant of the heavens around Kether.
Earth of Water
Princess and Empress of the Nymphs or Undines
Throne of the Ace of Cups.
Golden Dawn Rank
Book T — Golden Dawn, c. 1888 · the deck's native system (predates this imagery)
RWS Page of Cups = Golden Dawn Princess of Cups — Earth of Water.
Editorial note · where Book T's figure and the picture differ. The picture is Pamela Colman Smith's (1909); Waite's words are from The Pictorial Key (1911).
Book T's figure is a Princess, "a beautiful Amazon-like figure" standing on the sea, a turtle issuing from her cup. The picture is a page who "contemplates a fish rising from a cup" (Waite).
Correspondences
Rules one quadrant of the heavens around the North Pole (with the Ace). As Earth of Water, this court is the earth aspect of a tender and dreaming suit.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's). The correspondences are this site's compilation from Book T. Open it in the Golden Dawn deck.