Minor Arcana, the Cups

Three of Cups

Three women in long gowns raise gold cups together in Pamela Colman Smith's Three of Cups, drawn in 1909. They stand close together in a garden, the middle one with her back to us, and ripe fruit lies heaped on the ground around their feet: oranges in a bush, grapes on the vine and a big orange pumpkin.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

Divinatory meanings: The conclusion of any matter in plenty, perfection and merriment; happy issue, victory, fulfilment, solace, healing.
Reversed: Expedition, dispatch, achievement, end. It signifies also the side of excess in physical enjoyment, and the pleasures of the senses.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 220. Read it in the chapter

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

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

What's in the picture

The middle cup. The woman in the middle holds her cup highest of all, at the top centre of the card, with her arm stretched straight up. All three cups are the same plain gold.
The woman in red. She wears a heavy red robe that falls in deep folds to the ground. We see her from behind, her curly hair falling down her back and her head turned toward the woman on the left.
The woman on the left. Dressed in grey-white, with dark curly hair, she lifts her cup in one hand and smiles. Her other hand rests at her hip.
The woman on the right. She wears an orange gown over a white underskirt and a wreath with green leaves in her hair. Her cheeks are red, and she looks straight out at us.
The grapes in her hand. Down at her side, the woman on the right holds a large bunch of dark grapes.
The oranges. At the bottom left grows a leafy bush hung with round orange fruit, low behind the women's skirts.
The pumpkin. In the right foreground lies a big ribbed orange pumpkin with a leaf, beside more grapes and a curling vine along the ground.
The feet. Under the red robe a foot in a black boot shows, with a pale foot beside it, as if someone is stepping or dancing. Waite wrote only of "maidens in a garden-ground with cups uplifted, as if pledging one another".

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 39 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Cups
Number: Three
Element (Golden Dawn): Water
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Mercury in Cancer
Title in Book T: Lord of Abundance
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 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. ☿ and ♋︎ above and below.
Abundance, plenty, success, pleasure, sensuality, passive success, good luck and fortune; love, gladness, kindness, liberality.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 201–202. See the source
Papus (1892)
Realization of this commencement. The love is mutual.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 312. See the source