For You to See Life - 4u2c.life

The card of the Page of Cups portrays a boy of around twelve years old, black haired and wearing a pale lilac tunic, kneeling at the edge of a deep blue pool. On the ground beside the pool stands a golden cup, into which the youth peers ardently, for he is studying the reflection of his own face and is struck by its beauty. Around him grow dumps of irises and narcissi, budding, not yet in bloom. A woodland landscape screens a gentle blue sky.

Minor Arcana ~ The Page of Cups

The court cards of the Suit of Cups are represented by mythic figures who embody the typical characteristics of the Suit. Here, in the card of the Page of Cups, we meet the changeable, vulnerable, gentle beginnings of the element of water: the nascent emergence of the capacity to feel. This is embodied in the mythic figure of the beautiful youth Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in the water. Narcissus was a Thespian, the son of the river-god Cephisus by a nymph. Anyone might excusably have fallen in love with Narcissus, even as a child, and his path was indeed strewn with ardent suitors of both sexes who were enamoured of the boy’s beauty. But his mother, on the advice of the seer Tiresias, had never permitted the boy to see his own reflection. Thus he was quite unaware of his own identity.

One day when wandering the Thespian countryside, Narcissus came upon a pool. This pool was fed by a spring, clear as silver, and had never yet been disturbed by cattle, birds, wild beasts, men, or even by branches dropping off the trees that shaded it. As the boy cast himself down, exhausted, on the grassy verge to slake his thirst, he fell in love with his reflection. At first he tried to embrace and kiss the beautiful boy who confronted him, but presendy recognized himself, and lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour.

At length Narcissus could no longer bear the agony of this unobtainable love. He plunged his dagger into his breast, crying, ‘Ah, youth, beloved in vain, farewell!’ as he expired. His blood soaked the earth, and up sprang the white narcissus flower with its red corollary.

Narcissus, the Page of Cups, seems at first to be merely an image of vain self-love. But he may also be seen as an image of self-discovery, for loving another must spring first from recognition and value of oneself; otherwise it is a sad and often fruitless exercise in seeking in the other what one has not yet discovered within. Such relationships tend to be doomed, and the apparent selfishness of Narcissus is really the beginning of a discovery of one’s own worthiness of being loved. This is often the start of a genuine capacity to love another as a separate person, rather than a potential supplier of qualities one needs to feel complete.

Thus Narcissus, the Page of Cups, is an ambiguous figure. In one sense, the Page of Cups, as an image of the gentle, nascent beginnings of the feeling-life, suggests the birth of something new - a capacity for love, or the renewal of faith in love which might previously have been damaged or bruised from an unfortunate relationship. Then the sense of self-love which Narcissus embodies is the beginning of healing, vain and infantile though it might seem at the time.

Many people, after a shattering separation or loss of a loved one, spend a long time in a kind of emotional twilight, where they feel they have nothing to give anyone. Often during such a time, one does not care much for oneself either. But the gentle, delicate stirrings of this renewal of the capacity to love often take the form of a slow and gradual interest in oneself- one’s body, one’s environment, trying to please and feed oneself with things that bring pleasure rather than pain or reminders of pain.

This is a process which must occur before the individual is ready to risk another emotional encounter. The Page of Cups, like the other Pages in the Minor Arcana, suggests something fragile and delicate, easily misunderstood and easily crushed. So too is our nascent sense of self-love which can ultimately lead to a more fulfilling relationship life. We can easily call Narcissus callous and selfish, because he has eyes for no other than himself But he must begin with himself before he can see anyone else - and it is interesting to note that in the myth it is his mother who tries to keep him from self-knowledge and self-recognition.

The rather sad ending of the story of Narcissus can also be taken on several levels. In some ways, the Page of Cups and all that he embodies must eventually transform - or ‘die’ - before love of another can fully develop. But it is necessary that this be a self-sacrifice, a genuine moving from self-preoccupation to awareness of others. Thus in a way it is fitting and right that Narcissus end his own existence, for he transforms into the Knight of Cups, where the feeling-life can now move freely outward toward others.

When the Page of Cups appears in a spread, the birth of something new on the feeling level is suggested. This might be a new relationship, a new quality of feeling within a relationship, even the birth of a child. Often the Page of Cups augurs a renewal of the capacity to love, beginning with love of self after a time of hurt and withdrawal. This delicate quality must be nurtured or it can rapidly vanish.

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)]