Four of Cups in 6 decks
The same card as 6 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own. Not in Oswald Wirth, which has no Four of Cups card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A young man sits under a tree with his arms folded, staring at three cups set on the grass in front of him. A fourth cup is being held out to him by a hand emerging from a small cloud, and he does not seem to see it. His posture is closed; the landscape is quiet and green.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Four yellow goblets stand at the corners around a central green stem. The stem bears a blue-green flower and two red berries at the top, a red tulip and spreading green leaves in the middle, and a red bud hanging below. The numeral IIII is printed at both sides.
Marseille number cards are read through their number and suit; the written meaning here gives the scene the Rider-Waite-Smith card adds.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A young man sits under a tree with his arms folded, staring at three cups set on the grass in front of him. A fourth cup is being held out to him by a hand emerging from a small cloud, and he does not seem to see it. His posture is closed; the landscape is quiet and green.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Four yellow goblets stand at the corners around a central green stem. The stem bears a blue-green flower and two red berries at the top, a red tulip and spreading green leaves in the middle, and a red bud hanging below. The numeral IIII is printed at both sides.
Marseille number cards are read through their number and suit; the written meaning here gives the scene the Rider-Waite-Smith card adds.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
Four cups stand in a square around a central red stem crowned by a red flower. Small blue flowers on thin stems and two grey leaves spread between the upper and lower pairs.
Viéville number cards show only their suit symbols; read them through number and suit, with the written meaning as a guide.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
Four gold goblets with blue bands stand in two pairs, above and below a curled gold and white ribbon lettered 'abon droyt' in red. Small red and blue flowers on green stems run up the centre between the cups, and leafy sprigs fill the margins.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
Three lidded jars bound with rope sit on a dark lintel above a doorway. Below, a naked man bends to pour from a fourth jar into a large sack held open by a winged infant. The numeral 4 is at the right.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A man in a dark kimono kneels in a misty bamboo grove with his head bowed, hands resting on his thighs. Four cups lie tipped over on the ground before him in a pool of spilled liquid among red maple leaves. A red fox sits watching beside a lit stone lantern; in this deck the overturned cups and grieving figure appear here rather than on the Five.