Bohemian Gothic Tarot

FOUR OF CUPS

Lighter or more conventional meanings

Feeling disenchanted and bored with everything * Losing touch with life * Listlessness and lack of energy * Being sickened and sated by material possessions * Deciding that life has lost its spice and excitement * Refusing opportunities, avoiding social events.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Being stuck in some endless, horrible cycle * Condemned to live in a way that you feel sucks the life out of you * Being unable to shake off your obsessions and compulsions, though you feel trapped by them * Losing your love of life * Feeling unreal and not properly alive at all.

This card is about feelings of depression, ennui and boredom - and there is no better illustration of such a state than someone who is neither dead nor alive. The undead vampire in our card looks literally "boxed in" in her coffin, condemned to an endless existence in which each day and night is much the same as all the others. She wears a dress that is both wedding and funeral costume, but we know that she will never marry - and that she is not truly dead. Instead she is condemned to return each dawn to her coffin in the crypt, excluded from real life and emotions.

When this card occurs in a spread it's a sign of someone who is cut off from society and the company of people. It may well be a person who is either depressed or suffering from some form of obsessive, compulsive disorder. Whether this is a serious state or not depends on whether the card indicates a passing phase or mood or something much more long-lasting. We can decide this in a reading only by looking at the entire situation and context. When this card appears it's time to ask about the reasons for this feeling of ennui and to consider strategies for shaking off this debilitating mood and rejoining normal, active life.

Some further ways to consider this card

Vampires are shown on many other cards in this deck. Try pulling out The Magician, The Lovers, the Two of Swords, the Queen of Swords and the King of Cups and laying them out together with this card. There are a huge range of vampire depictions here. Are there any that you particularly relate to and if so, why? Which of the depictions do you find attractive? Which repulse you?

You must know that in the legends of every nation we read of men and women who were called vampires. They are beings, not always wholly evil, whom every night some mysterious impulse leads to steal into unguarded bedchambers, to suck the blood of the sleepers and then, having waxed strong on the life of their victims, cautiously to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are very red. It is even said that they can find no rest in the grave, but return to their former haunts long after they are believed to be dead. Those whom they visit, however, pine away for no apparent reason. The physicians shake their wise heads and speak of consumption. But sometimes, ancient chronicles assure us, the people's suspicions were aroused, and under the leadership of a good priest they went in solemn procession to the graves of the persons suspected. And on opening the tombs it was found that their coffins had rotted away and the flowers in their hair were black. But their bodies were white and whole; through no empty sockets crept the vermin, and their sucking lips were still moist with a little blood.
- George Sylvester Viereck, The House of the Vampire.