Guest Night Shade Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 The 5 of cups is a card of loss, sorrow, and regret. Here are a few positive ways to spin it if it comes up in your reading. The traditional positive spin on this card is that even though three of the cups have fallen over and tipped out their contents, two cups remain upright and full. Even in your loss, you still have something to hold on to. To make your reading even more positive when this card shows up, remember that it's the things that truly matter that will last the test of time. Jobs, material things, and shallow relationships will come and go, but true love, genuine friendship, and close family ties will always remain. Hold tightly to these in your times of sorrow and loss; lift up your head, turn around, and see how much you really do have left. Next is the possibility that the cups didn't just fall over, but that the man kicked them over himself. One of the cups has spilled out a green, poisonous looking liquid - perhaps this represents all the toxic things in your life that just need to go. Bad relationships, sour attitudes, even just having too much stuff can cause you stress and give you grey hair, like the man on the card. So if you get this card, it's time to take stock of your life, clean house, say "good riddance" to everything that's dragging you down, and make a fresh start of it. Next, we can look at this card by the numbers. Fives can represent change, so lets look at this as a change for the better. The 4 of Cups can represent apathy and refusing to see what's right in front of you. Even though the man in the 5 is going through sorrowful times, he's finally let go of denial and avoidance, and is facing the truth about his situation. Now he can begin to heal, take up the two cups that are still left, and move on to the simpler, happier times that the 6 of Cups promises. This leads to he bridge in the background, which makes me think of a "bridge over troubled waters". Sure, you may be crying and feeling at a loss now, but there's a way out. Grieve your losses to release the pain, then pay your respects to them, throw off your cloak of mourning, gather your strength and courage, cross the bridge, and head to a place where you can find safety and security (represented by the building in the background which Waite describes "a small keep or holding" in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot). Even when it seems that all is lost, if you'll just remember what you have left, and embrace the things that really matter, you'll be able to make it through.
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