Ace of Cups: Ceremony
This week, it’s time for a change – a Minor Arcana card. Although it would make sense to post all of the majors in order (as I have been so far), my approach to the minors is somewhat more experimental, and I would like a bit of diversity. I hope that you enjoy this change of tone for the Ace of Cups, friends. We’ll be back with the Majors next week, when we work with The Lover!
Left is the Metanoia Marseille version of the Ace of Cups, right is the New Age Tarot version.
It took a simple mindfulness practice to change the course of my adult life from a world of anger and identity to a path which embraced a deep connection with Nature.
It was a warm summer. I lived in Musselburgh at the time, a seaside town on the edge of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. Days were spent experiencing the different landscapes I was lucky to live near: woods, parks, the river. But it was the beach that marked my new beginning.
……..
The beach is stony, dark, the sand is caramel brown. Few people are around. The Sun warms my bare, pale skin, so unaccustomed to t-shirt weather lately. The heat lights up my body as I do the unthinkable: I take off my shoes.
Musselburgh Beach, Scotland
In my whole adult life, I have never taken off my shoes outdoors unless encouraged. I have a disconnect from my feet which has been around since childhood, a weird shame in their nakedness, as if exposing them to the seashore was akin to walking naked from the waist down. It’s just one of those weird human quirks (we all have them) that I rarely question.
As a child, for example, I once hid behind the sofa for a full hour when a friend of my parents visited, afraid to appear from behind the upholstery until the visitor had gone. When the visit was over, I emerged; my Mum asked me why I had stayed in the same place the whole visit, and I said, ‘I’ve got no socks on and I didn’t want her to see my feet’. My Mum looked at me as if I’d just landed from Mars with a rat in my mouth.
But a new energy has been springing to life lately. An acknowledgement of my impermanent existence on this trippy land full of colourful animals. This new energy tells me to take off my shoes, to put my feet in the water, to walk along the shore. I smile, and take off my trainers and socks, carrying them in my hands. I walk in the gently lapping waves, so cold on my sensitive feet that have been deprived of air and light for years, even in socks I wore to bed at night.
I feel the freshness of the sea refreshing my body through my feet, baptising me. I smile and say hello to a woman passing with her dog, wondering what the hell I’ve been doing for all these years, keeping my feet so disconnected from the earth, from water. I notice this sense of newness that the water brings, washing away weird foot issues that I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. I giggle at my strangeness as gulls and curlews cry above me, and diamonds of sunlight reflect on the estuary surface.
The Aces in Tarot can mark new beginnings, and/or they can represent the essence of each suit in its purest form. In a Nature context, Ace of Cups can announce a fresh start with the sacredness of water. This life-giving liquid that we all rely upon, which makes up around 60–70% of our bodies, is so essential that we can’t go without it for mere days. We are, in no small part, water. How dare we deprive our bodies of it when it is available!
Left is the Tarot de Marseille (Jodorowsky/Camoin) version of the Ace of Cups, right is the Waite-Smith version.
So many spiritual traditions use water as a symbol of cleansing, to mark new beginnings. Notice how you feel after a shower, a bath, that sense of newness on the mini-scale. The Ace of Cups marks this energy for a more significant moment: it can represent a beautiful new beginning with an Earth-connection practice, specifically with water-connection, washing away negative residues of your past madness. It creates room for a new stage in life as we let the water splash, drip, carry us to an oceanic land that we inhabited millions of years ago. It marks a new chapter and yet a return to our deep ancestral home: the sea.
In the Waite-Smith Tarot, the chalice is offered from a hand in a cloud (the hand of God?) with five streams (one for each suit of the Tarot?) projecting upwards before falling down into the water. In the Marseille, a grand, castle-like goblet stands against a backdrop of water, sometimes with leaves growing from its sides, sometimes with water escaping instead (depending on the deck).
The cup is offered to me on my Musselburgh stroll. I will take this simple memory with me for the rest of my life. It is about so much more than walking in the water. Something has changed in me lately, something revolutionary in my life, and Nature is at the heart of it. And this is the perfect ad-hoc ceremony: my skin is grateful to feel the summer seawater, this place where all animals share our common ancestry. I will remember this scent of salty seaweed and sand, the call of the laughing gulls. So much water in abundance, so much freedom. I have returned to my source. I am new, fresh. The cup has been offered to me, by mysterious forces that I cannot explain, as if from that Waite-Smith hand in a heavenly cloud. This water blesses my feet, and this is my new beginning.
That’s all for the Ace of Cups, friends. Thank you for being here – and be sure to check out my Tarot Therapy Sessions if you’d like us to work together. Alternatively, sign up to my newsletter below to receive updates on new posts – or come back weekly to get them fresh!
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
