For You to See Life - 4u2c.life

The card of the Act of Cups portrays a beautiful black-haired woman rising from a foamy sea. She holds up a single golden cup.

Minor Arcana ~ The Ace of Cups

In this card we meet that goddess who is the initiator and moving power behind the tale of the love of Eros and Psyche: Aphrodite the Foam-Born, goddess oflove in its most noble and its most degraded aspects. In myth, the birth of Aphrodite was a strange one. When, at the instigation of his mother Gaea, the wily Cronos had castrated his heavenly father Uranus, he cast the severed genitals into the sea. They floated on the surface of the waters, producing a white foam out of which rose Aphrodite. Carried on the breath of Zephyrus, the West Wind, the goddess was bome along the coast of Kythera and finally landed on the shores of Cyprus. She was greeted by the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons, who dressed her richly, adorned her with precious jewels, and conducted her to the assembly of the Immortals.

Aphrodite was a complex goddess. The essence of feminine beauty, everything about her was pure charm and harmony. Yet she could be jealous, spiteful, vain, deceitful, treacherous, lazy and vindictive. Throughout all nature she spread her life-bringing joy; yet she was also the fearful divinity who filled human hearts with the frenzy of passion. Those whom Aphrodite chose for her victims were often unfortunate; such would betray their own fathers, or abandon their homes, or would be overcome with incestuous or bestial passions. But the same Aphrodite protected legitimate unions and presided over the sanctity of marriage.

In short, Aphrodite is an image of a force of nature. The meaning of the Aces in all four Suits of the Minor Arcana is an initial emption of raw energy, and the black-haired goddess emerging from the sea bearing her single golden cup represents an upsurge of raw feeling. This is the urge toward relationship, which must precede any actual encounter with another; for if we are not ready, then the other will not appear. In the tale, Eros and Psyche would never have met, had it not been for Aphrodite; for it is her caprice which inaugurates the action in the story. Thus the Ace of Cups implies the beginning of the great journey through the realm of the heart, where abundance of feeling erupts and drives the individual into a relationship.

On a divinatory level, the Ace of Cups heralds an outpouring of feeling, although this feeling has not yet differentiated and emerges as raw, vital and often overwhelming. The potential is implied for the beginning of a relationship, although often this has not yet manifested.

The individual is ready to embark on the journey of love.

I will explain in my readings what each card means, this is a general interpritation taken from the Mythic Tarot Deck

Information Source: Mythic Tarot Deck
[published in 1986 by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene and Illustrated by Tricia Newell (not the New Mythic Tarot)]