Welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice. I'm Amelia Hruby, and on this podcast, I share my tiny tarot

practice, exploring the tarot card by card, starting with each suit of the Minor Arcana.

Today's card is the King of Cups. In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot,

the King of Cups is a person seated on a throne, and that throne appears to be floating in the

ocean. We can see a fish jumping in the background. We can see a ship off in the distance. The,

King of Cups is riding these waves, is on the sea, but is not touching the water. The

King is seated on the throne wearing a golden cape, wearing a blue tunic, holding a scepter

in one hand and a cup in the other. The King has on a fish necklace, a medallion of a fish,

crown on their head and they gaze off into the distance. When I look at this card and I think

about what the kings represent, representing a certain type of mastery over the topic of their

suit. So the king of cups representing a certain type of mastery over the emotional and the

intuitive and the psychic and the spiritual. When I think of that, I'm reminded of the way

that having mastery over these boundless,

always changing inflow things,

requires a certain type of detachment from them.

Any mastery of our emotion requires understanding that emotions are fleeting, that they will end,

that even if we can immerse ourselves in them, we have to be aware of their fleeting nature.

Similarly, any mastering of the psychic requires that we know how to return from another realm to our own.

And I think that the King of Cups is the master of this detachment and return.

The King of Cups can be on the ocean, but not in the ocean.

In my interpretation of the Queen of Cups, I shared that I always think of her as submerged

in the ocean, even though the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the tarot depicts her as seated on

the shore of the sea. With the King of Cups, it's almost the inverse for me. I feel like the

signature of the King of Cups is his or their detachment from the sea, but also the way that

that they are tethered to it.

For this King of Cups and the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the tarot,

there is only the sea for them.

There is no land here, but yet they are not of it.

The King of Cups could dip their cup down any time,

but in this depiction, they don't.

They are wearing a fish, the medallion of a fish

that's certainly not a living symbol of creativity,

yet they are surrounded by those living symbols of creativity.

We see a living leaping fish in the background.

And so with the Queen of Cups, we see this depth of connection with water,

with intuition, with emotion.

And with the King of Cups, we see the detachment that comes from any attempt

to master these watery realms.

I don't use the word detachment as a value-laden term. I'm not thinking the detachment is bad.

In fact, I'm almost thinking more of the detachment of a therapist who is so in touch with feelings,

who is so wise and informed about them that they're able to create distance,

between themselves and the emotional.

That to me is the king of cups. But I think in the experience of the king of cups,

and if we encounter a person who is like the King of Cups in our lives, we might feel that detachment a bit,

that deep sense of being understood, but perhaps there's still something that feels

like it stands between us and them.

With the Queen of Cups, I think we can get very close.

I said in my interpretation of that card that the Queen of Cups is a queen of boundaries,

but boundaries that are a barrier like skin, so closely held.

The King of Cups, I don't think will let us get too close. It's not a barrier-like skin,

they've got the whole ocean surrounding them.

So just like I said with the queen, every time I pull the king of cups,

I find the card eluding me a bit.

There's something elusive about it, I can't quite grasp it.

But I think that's precisely the point. We can't fully understand the emotional,

the spiritual, the intuitive, because understanding is about bringing it fully to

consciousness, and the cups is about the relationship between the conscious,

the unconscious, and the subconscious. It's about our relationship to these parts of life,

that are slippery, that are fluid, that we can't lock in, that are elusive.

And while the Queen and King of Cups represent a certain type of mature relationship to these

fluid topics, that doesn't mean that they're suddenly fixed or easy to understand.

And that to me is the invitation of these two cards, and the invitation of the King,

of cups, especially. A reminder that no matter how good we think we are at understanding

our feelings, there's always something more. We're always out to sea a little bit.

Thank you so much for tuning in to my tiny tarot practice. If you enjoyed this episode,

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folks know how much you enjoy it. I also curate a bookshop page where I share tarot books,

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affiliate payment that helps me keep this podcast going. Thank you again for tuning in to this

episode and joining me as we journeyed through the suit of cups.

I wish you all the watery wisdom and wellness.