Three of Cups, the Rider-Waite-Smith card drawn by Pamela Colman Smith (1909)
Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Minor Arcana · Cups · Water

Three of Cups

UprightThe conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.
ReversedExpedition, dispatch, achievement, end. It signifies also the side of excess in physical enjoyment, and the pleasures of the senses.

Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.

Draw & reflect Open in the card viewer

In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)

Maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.

In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)

Lord of Abundance

A WHITE Radiating Hand, as before, holds a group of lotuses or water-lilies, from which two flowers rise on either side of, and overhanging the top cup; pouring into it the white water. Flowers in the same way pour white water into the lower cups. All the cups overflow; the topmost into the two others, and these upon the lower part of the card. Cups are arranged in an erect equilateral triangle. Mercury and Cancer above and below.

Abundance, plenty, success, pleasure, sensuality, passive success, good luck and fortune; love, gladness, kindness, liberality.

Binah of ה (Plenty, hospitality, eating and drinking, pleasure, dancing, new clothes, merriment).

Therein the Angels ראהאל and יבמיה are lords.

Correspondences

Decan: Mercury in Cancer (the 2nd decanate of its sign).

Sephirah: Binah in Briah (the Creative World).

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.

Images: Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951), public domain. Texts: Waite (1911) and Book T (1912), public domain. Selection and arrangement CC-BY-SA-4.0 (PlayfulProcess). Data: github.com/PlayfulProcess/recursive-tarot.