Bohemian Gothic Tarot

SEVEN OF CUPS

Lighter or more conventional meanings

Daydreams - both realistic and fantastical * Delusions, confusion * Choices * Opportunities - though some could be misleading * Hopes, ambitions possibilities - some feasible, others not.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Self-aggrandisement, imagining you can do more than you can * Giving in to tempting fantasies * "Lunacy" - becoming moonstruck and deluded * Chasing after impossible plans and ambitions * Dangerous liaisons combined with dangerous illusions.

Dreams, delusions, false hopes, real plans, options, mirages - things that might be and those that will never come to pass. The Seven of Cups is about all of this, and the card challenges us to decide which of the possibilities that lie in front of us are real and which are merely delusions.

The woman shown here looks sure of herself, her smile is smug and self-satisfied and she holds up the glass in her hand as if toasting or saluting some event. But is she really so in control? After all, she is literally gazing upwards at a "castle in the air". She may be self-deluded in her sureness; moonstruck and, in a sense "lunatic" (the word lunatic has its root in "luna", the moon). She looks too ecstatic, almost intoxicated - and we wonder what she has been doing on that roof under the moonlight. She could have been meeting a man, or a lover who is not, in fact, human at all. Has she, we ask ourselves, been concocting a plot, or making dark plans that may or may not come to anything?

In a reading, this card tells us to be aware that the options that seem to be ours to grasp might in some cases be misleading fantasies. The trick is to distinguish between the day-dreams that are, in reality, achievable and desirable, and those that are not. If we can't tell the difference we may, if we are not careful, be drawn to follow impossible ambitions and pursue fleeting phantoms. Looking at the card image here we have to ask if the young woman really understands what she is getting involved in or if it's still all just a wicked and thrilling game to her. The "man" she is, we assume, meeting, has probably promised her the earth but all the temptations he's laid out before her may be deceptive, or mere illusions by which he hopes to draw her into his own plans. Right now, we can speculate that she thinks that all things are possible and that she only has to reach out and grasp what she desires, but the real situation might be rather different. It's time for her to release herself from the enchantment and recognise the realities of what she can and can't deal with - but does she have the willpower and the sense to do this?

Some further ways to consider this card

What is in the glass? Is it innocent wine, or could it be blood - or poison? What is this woman's story? What happened when she was on the roof? Why is she so excited? Is she victim - or villain?

There are many cards in this deck that show the moon, for instance The Moon (naturally), the Page of Cups, the Two of Cups and, peeping through the curtains, the Nine of Cups. If more than one of these cards came up in a reading, how might you relate this aspect of the imagery?

A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan.

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.
- John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes.