King of Cups upright
The King of Cups shows a mature person who has taken a place of responsibility and who remains sensitive, creative and attentive to others. You hold that place seriously: you are reliable and you want to be of service. You have put your creativity at the service of socially useful achievements, and your responsibility comes before the expression of yourself. In this role, you are not always entirely at ease, because your imagination would need more room. You try to stay steady among emotions that could overwhelm you. Your outside is calm, and that calm can hide stronger emotions that you keep to yourself. In the artistic field, the card indicates success, mastery and maturity in your work. It also speaks of knowledge and abundance, and of well-protected possessions. This card describes a period or an aspect of your life, not your whole person.
Your strengths
You are reliable, kind and compassionate. You are honest, fair and caring, and you treat people equitably. You know how to welcome people, you are a good friend and a confidante. You sense what others need and you can comfort them. You give loving and wise advice.
What holds you back
- You hold in your emotions and your imagination, and you can cut yourself off from your own creativity.
- You control yourself stiffly so as not to be overwhelmed, which can make you cold.
- When you are in a position of authority, you fear looking weak if you show that you are tender, artistic or intuitive.
- Beneath your calm, there may be troubled emotions, sometimes anger, which you hold back even from yourself.
- You may deliberately touch other people's emotions to win their sympathy for your goals.
- You tend toward nostalgia and the values of the past.
What helps
- Trying to stay steady when your emotions rise.
- Letting your imagination express itself, because it needs to circulate and tolerates being shut in poorly.
- Putting your sensitivity at the service of others: listening to them, advising them, comforting them.
Careers
business, law, religion, art and science; poet, artist, merchant, priest or minister, family doctor, counselor, lawyer, judge.
Love
If you recognize yourself in the Queen of Cups, the King of Cups may represent your husband's influence on you.
Family
As a father, you may be loving and protective, or afraid to show how much you care for your own.
King of Cups reversed
Upright, the King of Cups shows emotional maturity: staying steady amid emotions and knowing how to care for others with sensitivity. Reversed, he speaks of difficulty managing your emotions and living them with other people.
You may close yourself off from others and seem heartless, or turn toward your inner world at the expense of your relationships. You may feel excessively sentimental. You may also play the tough guy so as not to look weak or ineffectual. Behind that, you are afraid of losing control of your emotions. Under pressure from outside events, violent emotions can burst out of a calm appearance.
You may be disappointed in yourself, melancholy, or downcast, to the point that your heart is no longer in it. You may look for love in the wrong place, or express it in a possessive way. You may also believe love should come to you while you wait without doing anything.
You may see the world as indifferent and exploitative, and take advantage of others in turn. You may hide what you feel behind a caring front or surface friendliness. If you play a role to meet someone else's needs, you can lose sight of who you are. It may also be that your sacrifice for your family goes unrecognized, and that you mainly seek compassion. As with the other Cups, you may take refuge in dependence or in overwork. You may adopt a "poor me" attitude and sink into self-pity, with passive resistance. Acting directly costs you, so you act behind the scenes, or you drift without direction.
This card can also show that you will break with received ideas about the male role in caring for others and in friendship between men. It can say that you are looking for the deep causes of an imbalance or a lack of harmony.
Your strengths
You may question ready-made ideas about how to care for others. You look for deep causes rather than symptoms.
What holds you back
- You close yourself off from others and come across as cold.
- You play the tough guy to hide your fragility.
- You are afraid of losing control of your emotions.
- You are disappointed in yourself and melancholy.
- You play a role for others and lose sight of who you are.
- You feel sorry for yourself and act behind the scenes rather than directly.
- You wait for love to come to you, or you look for it in the wrong place.
- You may take advantage of others because you see the world as exploitative.
What helps
Looking for the deep causes of what is not working.
Love
You may be drawn to a dishonest, domineering partner, or be one yourself. You may look for love in the wrong place, express it possessively, or wait for it to come without doing anything.
Family
You may feel that your sacrifice for your family is not appreciated. As a parent or partner, you can become overprotective and smothering, or emotionally unavailable and moody.
Work
You may use your talents for dishonest ends instead of putting them at the service of your work. You may also take refuge in overwork to escape what you feel.
Creativity
In the artistic field, this card can say that your success stays modest, or that you have not yet reached the maturity needed to have an important body of work to show.
What the card shows
The King of Cups sits on a throne set on the sea. He holds a short scepter in one hand and a large cup in the other. On one side of the throne a ship sails, on the other a fish leaps. Cups refer to water, and water appears in every figure of the suit. The King shows this suit in its mature form: social responsibility, achievement and maturity.
The fish is the symbol of creativity. It hangs from the King's neck like an ornament, not like something alive. The King has directed his creativity toward achievements that serve society. To succeed, he has had to discipline his dreams and even set them aside. His place as guardian of the social order therefore does not sit entirely comfortably on him. Water asks to flow, not to be contained.
Behind the throne, a living fish leaps in the waves: your imagination stays alive even when it is pushed into the background. The throne floats on a rough sea, but the King does not touch the water. His success therefore comes from your creativity, even though you have arranged your life to keep yourself at a distance from your imagination and from your poet and player side. He does not look at his cup. He holds it like his scepter, the symbol of power.
This image says two things. At the extreme, someone has barred the way to their emotions and imagination. More mildly, someone expresses them without making them the center of their life: responsibility comes before self-expression. Beneath an apparent calm there may be troubled emotions, sometimes anger, which you hold back even from yourself.
This card also evokes hidden depth and the deep currents of water, with the mature authority of the water signs: Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. It asks you to stay steady amid waves of emotion. In a position of authority, today's culture gives little encouragement to being artistic, affectionate, intuitive and caring, because that can pass for weakness.
Your strengths
You are responsible, mature and willing to be of service. You are honest and fair, kind, attentive to others, and you offer loving support. You can be reliable, sensitive, loving and compassionate. You are a good hostess, a good friend and a confidante. You sense other people's needs and bring them comfort. You have a creative intelligence. You may have a sense of fairness, of art and of science. You can offer loving, wise advice and lead cultural activities.
What holds you back
- You set your imagination aside in favor of your responsibilities.
- You hold back your emotions, sometimes even from yourself, and keep up a calm front.
- To avoid being overwhelmed by your emotions, you impose a rigid self-control on yourself and become cold.
- You may be tempted to stir up other people's emotions to win their sympathy and serve your goals.
- When the card is reversed, you may close yourself off from others, seem heartless, or sink into your inner world at the expense of your relationships.
- Reversed, it also indicates that your talent may slide toward dishonesty or vice, and that your calm may give way under the pressure of events, with violent emotions.
Careers
business, law, religious office, poetry, art, science, trade, family medicine, counseling.
Love
You can be affectionate and supportive. Reversed, the card can point to a dishonest, domineering partner, more often a man, sometimes a woman.
Family
As a father, you can be loving and attentive, or you may fear showing how much you care for your family because of the way you were raised.
Creativity
In the artistic field, the King of Cups symbolizes success, mastery and maturity. Reversed, he can indicate that the work has little reach, or that the person has not yet matured and has no significant work to show.
