Ten 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 Ten of Cups card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A man and woman stand with their arms raised toward a rainbow in which ten cups are set, while two children dance beside them. Behind the family is a small house, a river, and green hills. The adults look up at the arc; the children look at each other.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Nine yellow goblets stand upright in three rows of three. A tenth, larger cup lies on its side across the top, its mouth turned to the left and marked with a red four-petal flower. A small numeral X appears at each side. There is no foliage.
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 man and woman stand with their arms raised toward a rainbow in which ten cups are set, while two children dance beside them. Behind the family is a small house, a river, and green hills. The adults look up at the arc; the children look at each other.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Nine yellow goblets stand upright in three rows of three. A tenth, larger cup lies on its side across the top, its mouth turned to the left and marked with a red four-petal flower. A small numeral X appears at each side. There is no foliage.
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
A large cup lies on its side across the top of the card. Below it, nine upright cups stand in three rows of three, with small grey four-petalled flowers set between them.
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
Ten gold goblets with blue bands: one lies on its side across the top, and nine stand below in three rows of three. Blue and red flowers and green sprigs sit between them. A faint stain marks the cream ground near the centre left.
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 man's head, with a purple band and a lidded vessel worn like a hat, stares out from the centre. Lidded vessels crowd round him on every side, and below hangs a string of red beads with a blue ornament. The numeral 10 is at the bottom.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
On a pale, sepia-toned card, a family celebrates by the sea: a father and son throw their arms up, a small girl claps and the mother kneels smiling. Ten red lacquer cups are stacked in a pyramid on a tray on a low table covered with a wave-patterned cloth. Carp streamers fly from a tall pole, petals fall, and a pale sun hangs over hills and a winding river.