Queen 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 Queen of Cups card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A crowned queen sits on a stone throne at the edge of the sea, studying an ornate covered cup, the only lidded cup in the deck. Her throne is carved with water nymphs and shells, and her robe flows into the waves at her feet so that it is hard to tell where she ends and the water begins. She looks at the cup intently, as if what matters is inside it.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A crowned queen with long grey hair holds up a tall lidded yellow cup in one hand and rests a sword against her shoulder with the other. She wears a green gown with a yellow belt and a blue cloak over red drapery. A grey striped hanging rises behind her. Titled REYNE DE COUPE.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A crowned queen sits on a stone throne at the edge of the sea, studying an ornate covered cup, the only lidded cup in the deck. Her throne is carved with water nymphs and shells, and her robe flows into the waves at her feet so that it is hard to tell where she ends and the water begins. She looks at the cup intently, as if what matters is inside it.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
A crowned queen with long grey hair holds up a tall lidded yellow cup in one hand and rests a sword against her shoulder with the other. She wears a green gown with a yellow belt and a blue cloak over red drapery. A grey striped hanging rises behind her. Titled REYNE DE COUPE.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
A crowned woman in a red turban-like headdress sits facing slightly right in red and dark robes. Her left hand holds up a tall covered cup, and a staff with a red pennant rises behind her right shoulder.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
A crowned fair-haired woman stands in a long gold brocade gown with green gloves, a blue mantle lined with ermine hanging from her arm. In her right hand she holds a tall blue and white object whose shape is hard to make out. A red shoe shows at the hem. She stands on a pale hexagonal step; the paint is worn in places.
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 crowned woman in blue sits on a purple seat with a wheel, a golden serpent rising behind her. She reaches towards a vessel on a red pedestal, from which thin wavy shapes sprout. The name POLISENA is at the top and the numeral 13 at the left.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
A woman in a dark blue kimono patterned with waves sits on a stone ledge, eyes lowered, holding a dark bowl in both hands. A curling plume of turquoise mist rises from it, shaped like a swirling fish or wave. Pink lotus flowers grow at left, two white egrets stand at right among bamboo, and wisteria hangs above a misty forest.