Knight 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 Knight of Cups card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A knight in winged helmet and winged boots rides slowly on a white horse, holding a cup before him as if presenting it. His armour is decorated with fish and his horse walks rather than charges. A narrow river winds through dry country behind him.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A rider with long grey hair holds out a yellow cup with red panels and a blue knop. He wears a green jacket, a blue cloak lined in red and red breeches. His grey-green horse walks to the left with one foreleg raised, wearing a green scalloped breastband. Titled CAVALIER DE COUPE.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A knight in winged helmet and winged boots rides slowly on a white horse, holding a cup before him as if presenting it. His armour is decorated with fish and his horse walks rather than charges. A narrow river winds through dry country behind him.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A rider with long grey hair holds out a yellow cup with red panels and a blue knop. He wears a green jacket, a blue cloak lined in red and red breeches. His grey-green horse walks to the left with one foreleg raised, wearing a green scalloped breastband. Titled CAVALIER DE COUPE.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
A long-haired rider in a red tunic and yellow cape sits on a pink horse moving to the right. He holds up a footed cup in his right hand, and the horse wears a red and yellow saddle cloth with a scalloped edge.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A fair-haired young man in profile rides a pale gold horse walking to the right, his right hand held out flat before him with nothing visible in it. He wears a gold-patterned tunic with purple sleeves, a pale stocking and a spur. The ground behind is tooled gold, and the green grass below is heavily flaked.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
A bearded rider with large feathered wings and a red headband sits on a brown horse, wearing a red tunic and blue breeches and clasping a purple cloth. A lidded vessel stands on the ground before the horse. Lettering at the top reads ATANABO, its first character faint, and 12 is at the right.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A young man in a dark blue kimono rides a grey-white horse at a walk through a golden landscape, holding out a small gold cup from which a curl of teal mist rises. A pack hangs on his back and a sword at his side. A red-crowned crane walks beside the horse, with bamboo at left, a pine and wisteria at right, and red maple leaves drifting.