Prince of Cups

A naked prince rides a chariot drawn by an eagle over calm water, holding a lotus and a cup from which a serpent rises; his crest is an eagle and the sky behind him is heavy with stillness.

The Vau of the Heh: Air of Water, mind moving over the depths, feeling analysed and directed. He rules the last decan of Libra (the Four of Swords) and the first two of Scorpio (the Five and Six of Cups). Crowley's hexagram, 61, Inner Truth, is the wind moving on the lake: the surface reveals the depths without disturbing them.

Rules Four of Swords (Libra III, Jupiter), Five of Cups (Scorpio I, Mars), Six of Cups (Scorpio II, The Sun). The courts of the twelve arcs each take the last decan of one sign and the first two of the next, so that every court contains a hidden tension between two signs.

Crowley builds each court's hexagram from two trigrams, the suit below and the rank above: Cups give Lake, Princes give Wind. The result is hexagram 61, Chung Fu, Inner Truth (Wind over Lake). See I Ching and the courts.

Feeling carried by thought: the person who knows exactly what he feels and what to do with it. As an inner figure, the animus as seducer and strategist of the emotions. The four ranks are often read as the four ways the suit's function can be lived: the Knight extraverted and initiating, the Queen introverted and sustaining, the Prince as its intellectual form, the Princess as its embodied form.

This card corresponds to the Rider-Waite Knight of Cups. Crowley renamed the ranks to follow the letters of the Name: Knight (Yod), Queen (Heh), Prince (Vau), Princess (final Heh), so that the Thoth Knight is the Waite King and the Thoth Prince the Waite Knight. The figures' mounts follow the Golden Dawn: Knights on horses, Queens on thrones, Princes in chariots, Princesses on foot.

Libra (“I balance”): fairness, charm, harmony, aesthetic sense, cooperation, diplomacy. Shadow: indecision, people-pleasing, superficial niceness, conflict avoidance, codependence.

Scorpio (“I desire”): depth, loyalty, intensity, psychological insight, resilience, emotional power. Shadow: jealousy, obsession, vengefulness, control, secrecy, destructiveness.

The card holds the last ten degrees of Libra and the first twenty of Scorpio, so its character is mostly Scorpio with a trace of the sign before. Anyone born Oct 13 – Nov 12 has this as their court card. Find a birthday.