Five of Cups
The Five of Cups is the card of a cloaked figure mourning three spilled cups while two stand behind. Readers traditionally take it as loss, grief and regret. The Golden Dawn attributes it to Mars in Scorpio, a hard placement for the heart.
- Suit
- Cups (Minor Arcana)
- Golden Dawn
- Mars in Scorpio
- Upright
- loss, grief, regret
- Reversed
- acceptance, moving on, forgiveness
Upright
Grief narrows the eyes to what is gone. This card is read as loss and regret, sorrow over something spilled that cannot be put back. Readers often point out that two cups still stand behind the mourner, unseen for now. Waite describes it as a card of loss where something still remains. Readers treat it gently, as a time to mourn honestly.
Reversed
Acceptance is the usual reading when the card turns over. Readers see someone ready to stop looking at the spilled cups, to forgive themselves or another person, and to move on. Grief is not erased here, but it is no longer the only thing in view.
In love and at work
Heartbreak, a breakup or the memory of an old love that still aches are the love readings people bring to this card. At the workplace, readers apply it to a setback, a lost role or a failed project, and to the question of what is still standing once the disappointment settles.
In the picture
A figure in a long black cloak stands with head bowed, looking down at three cups knocked over on the ground, their contents spilled. Two cups stand upright behind him. To one side a river runs past, and a bridge crosses it toward a small keep or house in the distance.
In a Caelumia profile
When Five of Cups comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Emotional depth, Sensitivity.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.
Updated September 28, 2026.
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