Minor Arcana, the Cups

Five of Cups

In the Five of Cups, as Pamela Colman Smith drew it in 1909, a lone figure in a long black cloak stands with bowed head over three cups lying spilled on the ground. Two more gold cups still stand upright behind the figure, and across a narrow river a stone bridge leads toward a small castle among trees.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

Divinatory meanings: It is a card of loss, but something remains over; three have been taken, but two are left; it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations; with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.
Reversed: News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 216. Read it in the chapter

A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups; two others stand upright behind him; a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.

Waite's description of the card, from the same book.

What's in the picture

The bowed head. The head hangs forward inside a black hood, so that only a sliver of the face shows, in orange, just above the shoulder. Waite has the figure "looking sideways at three prone cups".
The black cloak. One long black cloak covers the figure from head to ankles, with no arms showing. Thin grey lines mark its folds, and it runs more than half the height of the card.
The spilled cups. Three cups lie on their sides at the lower left, one on top of the others. Red liquid runs out of two of them, and a green puddle spreads below.
The standing cups. At the right, two cups stand upright, one behind the other, untouched. The figure has its back half turned to them, and nothing has spilled from these two.
The feet. Under the hem two pale shoes show, set apart, as if the figure has stopped walking. The ground there is pale yellow and bare.
The river. A blue river runs across the card behind the figure, from the left edge into the middle, where the cloak hides it, and shows again under the bridge.
The bridge. On the right, a pale stone bridge with dark arches crosses the water. Waite has it leading "to a small keep or holding".
The castle. On the far bank at the left, a small square tower with a few windows stands among dark trees. Above everything the sky is a flat, even grey.

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 41 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Cups
Number: Five
Element (Golden Dawn): Water
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Mars in Scorpio
Title in Book T: Lord of Loss in Pleasure
Drawn by: Pamela Colman Smith
Planned by: Arthur Edward Waite
Published: London, William Rider & Son, 1909
Scan: Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons

In the old books

Book T (1912)
A White Radiating Angelic Hand, holding lotuses or water-lilies, of which the flowers are falling right and left. Leaves only, and no buds, surmount them. These lotus stems ascend between the cups in the manner of a fountain, but no water flows therefrom; neither is there water in any of the cups, which are somewhat of the shape of the magical instrument of the Zelator Adeptus Minor.
Above and below are the symbols of ♂ and ♏︎ for the Decan.
Death, or end of pleasure: disappointment, sorrow and loss in those things from which pleasure is expected. Sadness, treachery, deceit; ill-will, detraction; charity and kindness ill requited; all kinds of anxieties and troubles from unsuspected and unexpected sources.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 184. See the source
Papus (1892)
Opposition to the obstacles. Victory over the obstacles after a struggle.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 312. See the source