Yeah Buddy

You want to know about the King of Cups? I will TELL YOU about the King of Cups.

I mean, seriously, I will.

This is a guy on a throne, holding a scepter in one hand and a cup in the other. In most decks, the throne is just floating in the middle of the ocean, which is a pretty awesome trick. Like a more comfortable Jesus, or one of those rafts with cup holders. The animal friends are back: there’s a dolphin leaping out of the sea behind him. It’s kind of a weird skull-face fish-thing on the Rider-Waite deck, but sources assure me it’s a dolphin, and not a freakish creature from Silent Hill. There’s also a ship on his other side, representing balance between the physical and material worlds, or the eternal conflict between ships and dolphins.

As a person, simplistically, the King is an older man, and/or someone who’s good at ruling over emotions. That might mean his own; that might mean other people’s. That might be good, but it’s not a guarantee. If you do reversals, upright tends to be more inspirational, while reversed is where you get body thetans and secret messages from Beatles albums. Otherwise, there’s the potential for both, as well as common-variety support or dickishness, depending on the context.

In the more individual reading, the King is artistic, kind, quiet yet deep, and So Dreamy. The booklet doesn’t generally say that, but it’s pretty well implied.

Like many of the court cards, the King doesn’t often appear in the abstract, but if so, he’s a symbol of balancing emotions–either successfully doing so or the need to do so. Unlike the Page, he knows what he’s doing; unlike the Knight, he doesn’t need to go anywhere. He’s good where he is, even if that’s on a weird floaty throne. Unlike the Queen, he’s handling emotional stuff at its most developed. He just needs to do things with it.

So dreamy.