Hello, and 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 Three of Cups. In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of

the tarot, this card features three people circling up with cups overhead, their arms

held high. They look joyous. It seems to be harvest time, as there are fruits and vegetables

and plants around their feet. We see crowns of flowers in their hair. They're outfitted

in gorgeous flowing fabrics. Overall, it is a card of community and clear celebration.

In 78 Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollock interprets this card as a card of shared experience.

And in the creative tarot, Jessica Crispin takes it to be a card of female friendship.

I am partial to Jessica Doerr's interpretation of the card, or rather, really just one phrase

that she uses in Tarot for Change, where she talks about the Three of Cups as, I'm quoting,

the reinforcement of thriving.

I think that when we pull the three of cups in a reading, sometimes it will feel very obviously aligned with the moment.

We will easily be able to imagine ourselves in the present or the recent past or future

celebrating with friends or community or family

or colleagues, holding our cups aloft together and turning to each other joyously.

Sometimes those moments are easy to access and remember, but other times this card might come up in a reading

when a moment that feels or looks similar to the Three of Cups is very far away,

or feels very hard to access or connect with our present selves.

And in those moments, I think that the Three of Cups is an invitation to seek out joy,

to reminisce in celebration,

to maybe even be a little nostalgic for moments like this in the past,

or if we can't even access or find those memories,

to invent new reasons and resources for celebrating, to plan a celebration for the future,

and to remember that we don't have to celebrate something we've achieved or accomplished.

We can simply celebrate yet again being alive.

Our lives are worthy of shared celebration every day we take another breath.

Our lives are also worthy of shared celebration long after we've stopped breathing, when we can

come together to celebrate those who we have lost, or when those who have known us can come together

to celebrate our lives after we've passed. Any time I see a card of celebration in the tarot,

I often think of the shadow side of that card as a card of grief. Joy and grief to me are two sides

of the same coin. And often when we pull such a clear invocation of one or the other, the opposite

also arises. So when we pull the three of cups or receive it in a reading or study it on our own,

it presents as a card of joy, but it may feel like a card of grief. And I think that the

intermingling of those two emotions, that the tension between them is what holds open

this celebratory circle that we see these three people creating together. Our joy would

not be as joyous if our grief was not as deep, and we can celebrate both in community.

Thank you for listening to my tiny tarot practice and to opening a tiny portal to joy and grief

together in this episode. If you'd like to reference any of the books that I mentioned

here, you can head to the show notes to find the link to my bookshop where I have included

all of these books and many other things that you can read to deepen your own tarot practice.

Thank you again for listening to this show. I send you much joy and many blessings.