The Cups Suit

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The Cups Suit

The Symbol:

For most people, the legend of the Holy Grail is either a subject for movie magic — from the comic Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the action-adventure Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — or else a dim memory of Arthurian Legend from high school and college literature courses.

Tradition has it that King Arthur lost most of his Knights of the Round Table when they embarked upon the Quest for the Grail, fabled to be the very cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and which Joseph of Arimathea later used to catch Christ’s blood as he hung on the cross.

However, with the current popularity of Dan Brown’s novel, The DaVinci Code, the Holy Grail has returned to the public forefront as something very different: a symbol of the Divine Feminine. The characters in The Da Vinci Code discover the “secret” of the Holy Grail: that the Grail was the literal womb of Mary Magdalene — the sacred “chalice” that carried the divine blood, or child(ren), of Jesus — who allegedly settled in southern France after the crucifixion. Regardless of our personal preferences and prejudices about its significance, the Holy Chalice or Grail is a vast and complex symbol of literary, historical, mythological, and spiritual import. This Chalice serves as the perfect symbol for the Cups Suit, which represents the receptive Water element.

Just as Wands and Swords are tall, piercing, prominent phallus-like symbols, so the hollow depths of the Chalice represent the female vagina and womb, waiting to receive the masculine force which sparks its process of creation through the sacred merging and bliss of sexuality, as the two become one with a greater whole. Cups signify the fertile substance of the universe that unites in order to create, and so rules issues of emotion, intuition, love, and spirituality.

But what, exactly, is the historical significance of this Suit’s symbol? The origins of the Grail are diverse and wide-ranging. Experts offer three possible linguistic foundations for the curious term grail. The first is Latin, gradale, a dish used in various courses of the meal, and the second is Old French, gradule, a wide plate. The third theory is that it originated from the French sang real or Sangreal, meaning Royal Blood, which eventually changed to San Graal, and finally Saint Grail. The proposed range of past sources for the Grail as a spiritual icon is vast. Some of these include:

• Egyptian roots in the Pomegranate cup of the cult of Isis.

• Celtic roots in the healing and life-giving cauldrons of the gods Dadga and Bran, or even the Celtic goddess Cerridwen, who had a cauldron that created a potion of inspiration and knowledge called greal.

• Asian roots in the begging bowl of the Buddha.

• European roots in the Communion cup of Catholic transubstantiation.

• Arabic roots in the Kaaba, a sacred black stone near the Great Mosque of Mecca that the Moslems believe God sent from heaven.

You can find out more about the symbolism of the Cups in tarot in our book: The Kingdom Within Tarot.