Start Today with Guidance and a Glimpse of Possibilities

In the Six of Cups, we see the image of a figure giving a gift of a Cup, overflowing with life, to a child. The two people pictured are in the garden of a cottage, and the scene resonates with a sense of domestic comfort and security.

In the Two of Swords, we see the image of a woman, a blindfold covering her eyes, sitting with her back to choppy waters. She holds a pair of swords crossed in front of her chest, and a crescent moon looks down on the scene. This card suggests a balance held - but that has come at a cost.

The Ten of Wands is a card that represents burden and choice. In the Rider Waite image, the figure trudges homeward, weighed down by the many Wands that he bears. He is close, though: a house is visible in the near distance and he has but a short distance of his journey left to complete.

Wands relate to the element of fire, and the suit’s Ace represents its essence: drive, action, energy, movement, and opportunity. And yet fire can burn, too; it has the potential to cause destruction, and these things are also represented in the cards of Wands.

The card of Temperance concerns balance, and harmony achieved through successfully merging all the many elements of our lives. This is seen literally in the image of the angel pouring water from one cup into another, mixing the streams in a never-ending flow. The card hints at it figuratively, too, in the way in which the figure stands with one foot on land - a symbol of the outer world - and one foot in the water, which is representative of the inner one. The path in the card’s background suggests that, with the hard-won self-awareness and openness to change brought about by The Hanged Man and Death, we are now ready to return to our lives, clarified, and with a new sense of purpose.

Where Wands symbolize the element of Fire, Cups represent Water: receptivity, love, and the inner being are the province of this suit. In the Ace we see the culmination of these things: a hand appears from a cloud holding a Cup -a grail - from which multiple streams of water run into a beautiful pool. This flowing water will never run out: it is infinite, as love is.