The Five of Cups represents loss and grief.
Your losses may be real and many. To a lesser degree, you might feel like life is your enemy; nothing seems to be going your way.
The Five of Cups appears when you’re at a crossroads with grief. You’re left wondering how to pick up the pieces of what’s been broken.
The longing for what’s been lost lends itself to the bargaining stage of grief. You’re asking, “Why didn’t I do things differently?” Or, at the end of a relationship, think, “If I had been less needy, they wouldn’t have left.” The Five of Cups brings up feelings of regret, but most often, they’re psychic attempts at retrieving what’s been lost.
It can be helpful to process and reflect on your experiences, but reliving the past is not helpful. The remedy is to assess your emotional reserves, strengths, and accomplishments; from here, you can rebuild–or start over. While changing the past may not be possible, the future holds promise and potential.
If the Five of Cups has been drawn reversed, you might have been cut off from someone or something or behaved in a way you’re not proud of. If desired, reconciliation may still be possible.
However, in asking about someone else who’s hurt you, the card’s reversal implies they’re unlikely to apologize or change.
In a different read, Mary Greer connects the reversal of the Five of Cups to mediumship and initiation. You might feel called to work with death and the dying, grief, or rituals centered around difficult rites of passage. The pain in the Five of Cups can become a portal to other realms.
Ultimately, the Five of Cups reminds you that you’re in mourning but that this is not the end—far from it. It might be the beginning of something better.
Video
Tarot Spread
If you are drawn to the Five of Cups and want to dig deeper, remove them from your deck, make them your mascot, and draw some cards from the rest of the deck with this tarot spread I created!
