Pamela Colman Smith · RWS deck
The Minor Arcana
Ace of Cups
Kether in Briah
- Suit
- cups
- Rank
- Ace
- World
- Briah
- Station
- Kether
- Verb
- I create
Each Ace is the Yechidah point of its world: the soul before it wears a face, and Kether of that world's Tree. That is why Smith draws a hand out of a cloud and never a person. An Ace does not describe a situation. It says which world is lit.
Upright
Flowing. This is the self before it makes anything: who you are, given as the thing to make from. Briah is the world where the self generates, and who you are becomes what you make. Before there can be a creation, there has to be a self with something in it to give, and the Ace says that this is now true.
Misdirected. An overflow with no vessel, or feeling mistaken for the gift.
Reversed
Blocked. Nothing generates and feeling is held in.
Flooded. Feeling and creative impulse pour out with no form.
The image
A hand holds a cup above a pond covered in water lilies, and five streams pour from it into the water. A dove comes down from above with a small wafer marked with a cross, and drops fall around the cup like letters. Everything is overflowing and nothing has been shaped yet.
Learn how to read Ace of Cups in a spread
This page shows you what Ace of Cups means. Knowing how to read it — how it shifts next to the other cards, what the reversal is really telling you, and how to turn a spread into a clear answer — is what the RWS Decoded course and book teach, card by card.
