Bohemian Gothic Tarot

TWO OF CUPS

Lighter or more conventional meanings

The early stages of an important relationship * A contract between two people, possibly betrothal, marriage or a partnership * A feeling that someone you've just met may become a soulmate * Getting close to someone.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Too caught up in one relationship to notice what's going on around you * Someone is jealous of a partnership that you're building * A potentially good partnership is undermined or spoiled * A close relationship is disrupted.

A young couple talk under the trees on a moonlit night - a most romantic setting. The woman is sweet, almost simpering, whereas the man, in his respectable tweeds, is the absolute model of a solid Victorian gentleman. But the whole setting is very dark and sombre in its colouring. Behind the couple loom the towers of an old castle, lit with reddish light, while above them the outline of a large bat can be seen flying across the full moon.

The picture is reminiscent of scenes in both Bram Stoker's Dracula and, indeed, many vampire books and films derived from it. We see the classic innocent couple, seemingly lost in their own affections, who are about to be attacked, intruded upon and drawn into the nightmare world of the vampire. The tension here comes most obviously from the looming threat, but there could also be another tension for the viewer - because aren't we, if we're honest with ourselves, just a little bored by the sheer properness of the couple and secretly looking forward to seeing their world opened up to something more macabre, strange and - dare we admit it -fascinating? The young man is particularly respectable, and even a little "tweedy" in his dress, there is something both secure, and, sadly, dull about him. As we consider the rather simpering expression on the woman's face we also have to wonder why she is looking away from her lover and instead gazing vaguely, with a half-smile on her lips, into the middle distance. She seems to be in her own fantasy, but it is of married life with her upright young man, or does she anticipate something altogether darker, more dangerous and more delicious?

It's worth adding that in some respects this is very much the dark mirror of the Two of Cups in our Victorian Romantic Tarot. That also shows a young couple seated on a bench with trees all around, but in that deck it's an entirely sunny scene, with none of the darker and more mischievous implications of the Bohemian Gothic card.

Some further ways to consider this card

What is the most important relationship that's beginning? Is it that between the sweet young woman and the upstanding young man - or is it possible that she is just at the start of a much more complex relationship with the vampire? How does this card relate to The Lovers, which also shows a vampire and his victim? In what way are they similar - and different? Could the Two of Cups indicate a relationship that might lead to the mixture of fascination and despair depicted in The Lovers?

In all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest...
- Montague Summers, The Vampire. His Kith and Kin.