Four of Cups — Luxury is a card of the Minor Arcana, suit of Cups in the Thoth Tarot. In a reading it speaks of luxury, comfort, emotional stability and contentment. In the Golden Dawn system it corresponds to the sephirah Chesed, the element Water and Moon in Cancer in astrology.
luxury · comfort · emotional stability · contentment · inertia
What does Four of Cups mean?
Enjoy what you have, but stay alert: emotional stability can become a gilded cage.
Everyday meaning
Comfort, pleasure, emotional stability, but also the beginning of weariness and boredom. It points to a satisfied emotional situation that risks becoming static.
Psychological meaning
The wish for emotional security which, once satisfied, risks turning into immobility: you guard what you have for fear of losing it, and meanwhile the feeling stops flowing.
Initiatic meaning
Water in Chesed, Mercy, with the Moon in Cancer in the third decan: emotion becomes a reassuring habit. Luxury is established pleasure, but stagnant water already contains the seed of decay.
The shadow side
Ill-dignified, it signals apathy, satiety, complacency, a refusal to grow.
Four of Cups reversed
The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading:
Boredom, dissatisfaction, a wish for something more; or resistance to emotional change.
Four of Cups in love, work and spirit
In love
A comfortable, reassuring relationship, perhaps a little routine; wellbeing needs renewing with small new gestures.
At work and career
A stable position, but perhaps unstimulating; a risk of stagnation.
In spiritual practice
Telling the nourishment that sustains apart from the gilded cage that lulls to sleep.
Kabbalah, astrology and the Hebrew letter of Four of Cups
Chesed · Water · Moon in Cancer
Crowley on Four of Cups
In the Thoth deck four cups rest on a square base above a stormy sea: stability built on the instability of the emotions.
Frequently asked questions
What does Four of Cups mean in the Thoth Tarot?
Enjoy what you have, but stay alert: emotional stability can become a gilded cage.
What does Four of Cups mean in love?
A comfortable, reassuring relationship, perhaps a little routine; wellbeing needs renewing with small new gestures.
What does Four of Cups mean for work and career?
A stable position, but perhaps unstimulating; a risk of stagnation.
What does Four of Cups mean reversed?
The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Boredom, dissatisfaction, a wish for something more; or resistance to emotional change.
What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of Four of Cups?
In the Golden Dawn system Four of Cups corresponds to the sephirah Chesed, the element Water and Moon in Cancer in astrology.
