What the card shows
PACE dj CUP 5, A fair, pleasing, somewhat effeminate page, of studious and intent aspect, contemplates a fish rising from a cup to look at him. It is the pictures of the mind taking form.
cups
Page
Page of Cups
Suit: Cups Minor Arcana Element: Water
Also known as Page of Chalices.
Core interpretation
Page of Cups: feeling and imagination taking an unexpected communicable form. The card joins the water nature of Cups to its courtly role.
The card's place in the historical Minor Arcana sits beside its Golden Dawn correspondences and Waite's account of Pamela Colman Smith's image. Each reading keeps the source and deck that gave it shape.
8 sourced claims: 5 traditional , 3 modern
In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck
The meanings are Waite's own words from The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. They belong to one influential school of reading and do not exhaust what the cards have meant in other hands.
Divinatory meaning
- Upright
- Fair young man, one impelled to render service and with whom the Querent will be connected; a studious youth; news, message; application, reflection, meditation; also these things directed to business.
- Reversed
- Taste, inclination, attachment, seduction, deception, artifice.
A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, Rider–Waite–Smith — Part III, §2, The Lesser Arcana — Page of Cups.
The same card in the Thoth deck
Princess of Cups · The Princess of the Waters; the Lotus of the Palace of the Floods
What the card shows
ModernA youthful figure studies a cup from which a fish unexpectedly rises, against a background of moving water.
A concise visual description of Pamela Colman Smith's 1910 design, checked against Waite's card entry and the public-domain scan.
Divinatory meaning
ModernUpright, Waite associates the Page with service, study, reflection, a message and imagination applied to practical matters. Reversed, it can indicate seduction, deception, artificiality or an unexamined inclination.
Waite treats these as historical divinatory allocations and explicitly warns that they vary by context and are not a universal symbolic canon.
Court-card structure
Court cards are organised by rank, suit and elemental composition in Book T. They are listed separately because the source does not assign them to the numbered sephiroth in the way it assigns the pip cards.
Golden Dawn correspondences 5 sourced claims
Book T's formal title, Tree or elemental place, astrological attribution, and characteristic reading. This is the system used by the Hermetic Tree.
The Princess of the Waters; the Lotus of the Palace of the Floods
Book T's formal title for this court card.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Titles of the Symbols, pp. 3–4; The Sixteen or Royal Cards, pp. 11–21
Water · Cups
Cups express the powers of Water: receptivity, relationship, imagination, pleasure and emotional experience.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Titles and descriptions of the four suits, pp. 3–23
Princess / final Heh · Earth of Water
Book T uses King for the mounted figure now usually called Knight, Prince for the figure now usually called King, and Princess for the Page or Knave. The source's role is preserved here rather than silently modernised.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Sixteen or Royal Cards, pp. 11–12; The Princess of the Waters; the Lotus of the Palace of the Floods, pp. 12–21
One polar quadrant above the water sign Scorpio
The twelve King/Knight, Queen and Prince/King cards bridge zodiac signs; the four Princess/Page cards instead rule polar quadrants.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — Spheres of Influence of the Court Cards, pp. 12–21
Sweetness, imagination and kindness take form gently, but can become indolent, selfish or luxurious.
A concise paraphrase of Book T's well- and ill-dignified characteristics.
Sources (1)
- Book T , Mathers, c. 1888 (Golden Dawn internal) — The Princess of the Waters; the Lotus of the Palace of the Floods, pp. 12–21
History and variants 1 sourced claim
Historical context and places where influential decks or occult systems differ.
One of the fifty-six suit cards in a standard Tarot pack: four suits of ten pip cards and four court cards.
The Met documents this structure in surviving fifteenth-century Tarot: Cups, Swords, Batons and Coins, each numbered from one to ten with king, queen, knight and knave. Occult correspondences developed later.
Sources (1)
- Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards , Metropolitan Museum of Art online article, 2016 — paragraphs 2–4
Correspondences 1 sourced correspondence
| Relation | To | First attested |
|---|---|---|
| Suit and element | Water | 1888 CE |