Queen of Cups

The Queen of cups gazes into the fantastical cup she has created. She has all the beautiful cups qualities we’ve met before – she is loving, nurturing and empathic. But she can also have the cups frailties: she can be hypersensitive, volatile, needy. Often a healer, counselor or psychic, this is a woman who seems to know what's wrong even before you open your mouth. I read somewhere that Princes Diana was a perfect Queen of Cups, and that really crystallized this card for me.

I always tell people when they get this card that this woman needs to look up and see what is going on around her, rather than gazing so raptly into the cup of her own making. She is capable of great emotional depth but has to be careful not to fall into her own fantasties.

The Inner Child cards show the Queen of Cups as the witch Glinda the Good from the Wizard of Oz. I read her more as a fairy godmother – incredibly, magically helpful, but also with strange controlling limitations (why did Cinderella’s carriage turn back into a pumpkin at midnight, why couldn’t it have retained its form for the entire night? You can see I’ve given way too much thought to that fairy tale, but the limitations of the fairy godmother always interest me… )