King of Cups: a sceptre and a cup

A throne on the sea: a sceptre, a cup, a ship and a dolphin at the sides

Waite's description is two sentences. He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea, with a ship riding on one side and a dolphin leaping on the other. He then adds a note that the cup, as a suit, goes naturally with water, so each court card carries some.

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King of Cups: a sceptre and a cup

In the RWS original the King wears a crown with a red cap, a yellow-green cloak over a pale blue robe, and sits on a round-backed throne that stands on a stone platform among rolling waves. The great cup is on the left of the picture and the sceptre on the right; behind on the right is a ship with a red sail, and on the left a sea creature leaps from the water. Waite writes only the sceptre, cup, sea, ship and dolphin; everything else here belongs to the picture alone.

What Waite lists: responsibility and equity, and a warning pointing the other way

Waite's divinatory meanings read: a fair (light-complexioned) man; a man of business, law or divinity; responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art; creative intelligence. The reversed entry reads: a dishonest, double-dealing man; roguery, exaction, injustice, vice, scandal, pillage, considerable loss.

Responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science... creative intelligence.

The additional list does not run in the same direction. Its upright entry is a caution, "beware of ill-will on the part of a man of position, and of hypocrisy pretending to help", and its reversed entry is a single word: loss.

The thing to notice in these four cells is that "disposed to oblige" and "hypocrisy pretending to help" sit side by side: the same act of helping appears once as the original's description of the stance and once as other readers' warning. So the useful question for this card is less "is he a good person" than "how far does this help go as stated, and who looks at whether it was done".

Sceptre, cup, ship and dolphin: who speaks for each

All of these are in the picture, but Waite describes only where they are:

Teaching often hands the three out to three kinds of matter: the sceptre for what has to be settled as a rule, the cup for feelings that need to be heard, and the sea for changes that rise and fall by themselves and cannot be fixed beforehand. The split works well, but it is a later analogy; what Waite wrote is only that the King holds both a sceptre and a cup and sits upon the sea.

How to read it: a community kitchen, handing each problem to sceptre, cup or sea

Picture a community kitchen where volunteers take turns cooking on Thursday evenings. Lately there is more talk: someone feels they are always the last to clean up, someone finds the soup too salty, and someone asks what to do when nobody comes on a rainy night. Mixed together, it wears everyone down. Following the three things in the King's hands, sort them into three boxes:

1. 1

   Sceptre: what becomes a rule

   Things you can write down and check afterward: who washes the pots, when the door is locked, who keeps the key. Put it in a sentence or two and post it in the kitchen.

2. 2

   Cup: what must be heard first

   "Always the same person cleans up" is first of all a feeling. Learn who, when and where the tiredness comes from, and only then judge whether a rule is missing behind it.

3. 3

   Sea: what changes by itself

   How many people come, how much food arrives: none of that can be fixed in advance. What you can do is leave slack, with one plan for a thin night and another for a full one.

Reversed and neighboring cards: a long run of dishonesty, and what the other kings hold

The reversed column is long and heavy: dishonest, double-dealing, roguery, exaction, injustice, vice, scandal, pillage, considerable loss. These words describe conduct, not the portrait of a "bad man"; a reversed reading holds up better as a comparison of promise and deed than as a label for a person.