1st Decan of Scorpio
The Five of Cups corresponds to the first ten days of the Sun’s passage in Scorpio. When it appears, we’re often going through great loss that can feel unbearable. The kind of pain that flattens us for days and months. Sometimes, even years.
Yet, this card and its total stillness encourages us to be present with our pain no matter how hard that is. To move into it. Acknowledge it. Sit with it. If we can do that, we find that the process of grief is a great alchemizer. We can surprise ourselves when we learn that transformation, healing and even gratitude wait for us on the other side of this process.
The process of grief is a great alchemizer.
Folks often point out the two cups standing behind the black-cloaked man in the traditional Rider Waite. The upright cups are said to symbolize all the things that are going right in our lives. But another way to look at those unacknowledged cups is to realize how we’ve turned away from our suffering, buried our pain, and put a tourniquet around our trauma while we struggled to get on with our lives. Grieving was inconvenient. Each time we ignored our suffering, we lost a piece of our soul. The standing cups behind the man hold those missing pieces waiting for integration and wholeness. What if the Five of Cups and the grieving process found therein is a sort of soul retrieval leading us back to wholeness?
The next time you pull The Five of Cups, think about the unmourned parts of yourself. What pieces of your soul were taken from you and now call back like La Llorona mourning for her drowned children? There’s great healing in the card if we can stomach the medicine.
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