Minor Arcana, the Cups

Ten of Cups

Ten cups set in a rainbow arch over a green valley fill the top of Pamela Colman Smith's Ten of Cups (1909). Below, a man and a woman with their backs to us raise their arms toward it, two children dance beside them, and a small red-roofed house stands among the trees on the far side of the valley.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

Divinatory meanings: Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards, a person who is taking charge of the Querent's interests; also the town, village or country inhabited by the Querent.
Reversed: Repose of the false heart, indignation, violence.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 206. Read it in the chapter

Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstacy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm. The two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy but are happy after their own manner. There is a home-scene beyond.

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

What's in the picture

The rainbow. A wide arch of pink, yellow and green bands curves across the sky, edged with short black strokes. Its two ends fade out in the open sky, well above the hills.
The ten cups. The ten gold cups sit along the rainbow, tilting outward with its curve, five on each side of the top.
The raised arms. The man raises his outer arm and the woman raises hers, so the two of them make a wide V, open to the sky. Waite has them gazing at it "in wonder and ecstacy".
The arm around her. With his other arm the man holds the woman around her waist. They stand close, shoulder to shoulder.
The couple's clothes. The man is in a red-orange tunic, blue hose and pale boots; the woman wears a long blue gown with a red lining that trails on the ground.
The children. A boy and a girl hold hands and dance in a ring on the right, each with one foot in the air. Waite noted that they "have not observed the prodigy".
The house. Across the valley stands a small house with a red roof among round trees.
The river. On the left, a blue river winds out of the hills and through the green fields, past a low hill with round trees on it.
The trees. Round trees stand on the hills on both sides and beside the house, each drawn as a simple green ball on a short trunk.

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 46 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Cups
Number: Ten
Element (Golden Dawn): Water
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Mars in Pisces
Title in Book T: Lord of Perfected Success
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)
Hand, as usual, holding bunch of water-lilies or lotuses, whose flowers pour a white water into all the cups, which all run over. The uppermost cup is held sideways by a hand, and pours water into the left-hand upper cup. A single lotus flower surmounts the top cup, and is the source of the water that fills it. Above and below the symbols ♂ and ♓︎.
Permanent and lasting success and happiness, because inspired from above. Not so sensual as the "Lord of Material Happiness," yet almost more truly happy. Pleasure, dissipation, debauchery, quietness, peacemaking. Kindness, pity, generosity, wantonness, waste, etc., according to dignity.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 193–194. See the source
Papus (1892)
Uncertainty in the management of the love affair.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 313. See the source