Queen of Cups

 When you look at the Queen of Cups, the woman entranced with the fantastical cup that she has created, it is a warning from the cards not too get too lost in your own thoughts, to make sure your fantasies match reality. 

 But that can sound a bit judgmental.  I found this amazing mosaic by Irina Charny,  (I just love her work!) and to me it just looked like the Queen of Cups.  Here the Queen is losing herself in her own music,  and that just felt to me like a much more loving way of viewing her.  

 I just have to edit this because I saw this beautiful Queen of Cups by Robert Scott - the artist whose deck I bought through Kickstart a while ago (he's yet to finish it,  but it's definitely going to be worth the wait!)

and this is what he writes about her:
"The Queen of Cups represents the role of water in the context of water; the emotional center of the court cards. She is kind, affectionate and comforting. She is perfectly accepting - receiving others without judgement of any kind, and stands for calm reflection and introspection. She is the queen of the still pond, the surface of which is a mirror. The Queen's own nature is hard to grasp, for when you gaze into her depths, you only see yourself."

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… )

Queen of Wands

Wands are fire, and the Queen of Wands is a fiery woman – warm, passionate, interested in the world around her. She’s got presence and charisma, lighting up a crowded room - a creative, commanding woman. These women are noticed, and enjoy being noticed: extroverted, strong, thriving in the spotlight. The Queen has the boundless energy of the wands, and she is a capable, imaginative woman. The shadow side of the Queen is when she has moved from energetic and self assured to forceful and proud. Her flaw is that she can be blunt and intolerant; sure her way is the only way. Wands Queens have to make sure they don’t cross the line into bossy or intimidating, or burning their lovers … But when they are good, they are excellent!


The Inner Child card shows the Pied Piper – someone charismatic, a leader who plays their own tune, but beware, if you cross them there will be a high cost.


I love this image, because it captures the controlled intensity of the Queen of Wands, those commanding eyes, that energy barely held in check. She is indeed, a force to be reckoned with.

The Court Cards

Before we start with the specifics of the Court Wands, I just want to have a little blurb about the Court Cards in general. The court cards are us and our family or the important people in our lives – the youth, the brother/sister and the mother/father. Or the child, teen and adult, or the aspects of ourselves that need to grow or are all grown up.

I often find the court cards are more complex to read than other cards. Who are they and what do they mean for the querent? (you!) The way I read the cards, most cards represent an aspect of you, but the court cards are the most obvious cards to refer to someone else. If we see the King of Cups hovering on the possible outcome cards, we are talking about an adult, a lover who is around but not quite there yet, and we spend the rest of the reading figuring out how to draw him in. If you are a Queen and your partner is a Page, there is an obvious disparity in power and maturity and needs to be looked at. I find a wealth of information in the court cards, where they fall, who they are next to, how many of them are in the reading. They are not the easiest cards to summarize here, because they can mean so many things.