Five of Cups Tarot Card Meaning

Five of Cups upright

A cloaked figure looks down at three spilled cups, not yet noticing the two still standing behind him; a bridge leads to a small keep. Waite calls it a card of loss, but something is left over. Allow the disappointment — then turn around and see what is still yours.

Five of Cups reversed

Waite reversed gives news, alliances, affinity, ancestry and return — though also false projects. A link with family or the past comes back.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is Five of Cups a yes or no?

Upright: Leans no. No — not in the way you hoped. But not everything is lost.

Reversed: Reversed, Five of Cups reads as mixed — not a clear yes or no: return, reconnection, news.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the Five of Cups card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Three spilled cups — what has been lost
• Two cups standing behind — Waite: something remains
• Bridge to a keep — a way back home

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: a card of loss, but something remains over; inheritance, patrimony; disappointment, bitterness, frustration.

Reversed: news, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return; false projects.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.