Cancer III: The Four of Cups — Luxury

Moon in Cancer · Lord of Blended Pleasure · ~July 12–22

Let me set the stage: A Decan Walk follows the Sun through all 10-degree chunks of the zodiac (called Decans), one Minor Arcana card at a time. Each of the 36 decans has a ruling planet, a triplicity ruler – a backup planet that shares the same element as the ruling planet – and two major arcana cards attached (one for the sign, one for the ruling planet). We’re looking at Cancer’s third and final decan.

In the last decan, Cancer II, three friends raised their cups and somebody finally said the true thing out loud. It cost something, and it was worth it. Now we get to the Four of Cups, and the party’s over. There’s one guy left, sitting under a tree with his arms crossed. Three full cups sit on the grass in front of him, and a hand reaches out of a cloud to offer him a fourth. He doesn’t even look at it.

The Moon rules this decan – in her own sign, so she’s completely at home – and her major arcana is the High Priestess. The Chariot, Cancer’s own card, rides alongside. Jupiter is the backup planet here, and he’s exalted in Cancer, which means he’s about as happy as Jupiter gets. That’s two benefics, both at full strength, in the wettest stretch of summer. On paper this should be one of the most generous decans in the whole zodiac. Austin Coppock calls it The Overflowing Cup. Kira Ryberg calls it A Wellspring of Support. The Book of Thoth calls it Luxury, flat out.

So why does he look like that?

A lot of people read this card as ingratitude, like he’s spoiled and needs to count his blessings. I read

it as being closer to apathy, which isn’t the same thing. Ingratitude means you don’t value what you have. Apathy means what you have doesn’t reach you anymore. There’s no real heart in it.

You can see why if you lay the cards out in order. In the Two of Cups, two people trade cups. In the Three, three friends raise them together. In the Four, he’s alone for the first time, and the cups aren’t going anywhere. Nobody handed them to him, and there’s nobody there to hand them to. The heart in this suit has always lived in the exchange. And he’s sitting there by himself.

Ryberg’s title is more nuanced than it looks. A wellspring has a source. That’s the whole point of one: the water comes up from somewhere underneath. But look at where his cups came from. Three of them are just there. The fourth drops out of the sky. He didn’t draw any of them up himself. It’s a wellspring of emotion with no true source, and it’s hard to feel much for something that didn’t come from anywhere.

The Moon knows a lot about this, actually. She doesn’t have any light of her own – everything she shines with, she gets from the Sun and passes along. Coppock says the job of this decan is to be a conduit for luxury, not its endpoint.

Then there’s the number. Fours are about foundation: four walls, four corners, the Emperor on his big square throne. Every four in the minor arcana is something settling down. The Four of Wands builds the house. The Four of Pentacles holds on tight. The Four of Swords lies down for a rest. But in Cups, the thing trying to settle is water. And water doesn’t get solid when you hold it still. It just goes stagnant.

The old sources all have someone heading out to get more. Agrippa’s face-image for this decan is a hunter with his lance and his horn and his dogs, chasing down whatever runs. Ibn Ezra’s is a man with an animal’s foot getting on a ship to bring back gold and silver to make rings for his wives (plural, which, okay). Everyone’s trying to fill the cup from the outside. Nobody’s looking for the spring.

T. Susan Chang calls this a “cosmic MacGuffin” – a quest that is Chariot-coded. “[N]ot merely for riches, but for objects of desire, signifiers of status and wealth,” where the nature of the objects doesn’t matter – it’s all about the “thrill of the chase.” All drive, but what are we driving for? That’s how you end up under the tree: you win every prize, and none of them turns out to be the point.

What prize are we actually seeking, and where did we think it was coming from?

Ryberg also gives this decan to Hekate, goddess of the crossroads. Hekate doesn’t hand you more stuff. She’s the one standing where the roads split, asking where you’re planning to go with what you’ve already got.

There’s a scene at the very start of Barbie that’s basically this decan on screen. Barbie wakes up in her Dreamhouse, steps into a shower with no water, pours milk from an empty carton, and drinks from a cup that has nothing in it. And she’s happy! Everything in Barbieland is perfect and plentiful, and none of it is real. Nobody notices the cups are empty because nobody’s ever needed them to be full. It’s only once Barbie starts to feel things – real things, the kind that leak in from somewhere else – that she realizes what’s been missing. And when she goes looking for it, she doesn’t find more stuff. She finds people. A mom whose sadness has been bleeding into her, and the woman who made her in the first place.

You don’t fix the Four of Cups by trying harder to be grateful. You can’t talk yourself into feeling something. You fix it by finding the source again. In this suit the source has always been communion and community – but this card asks us to go deeper than that, to find and become our own wellspring. A real wellspring is fed from underneath. Hekate’s the one who knows the way down.

If you’ve got more than enough and still feel nothing, that’s usually where a reading starts. 25% off tarot sessions till the beginning of November.