Three of CupsTarot card meaning

What the card shows

Three women raise their cups together in a garden heavy with fruit and pumpkins. They dance in a loose circle, dressed in different colors, each one distinct and none of them alone. It is harvest and friendship in one picture: joy that grows when it is shared, and shrinks when it is hoarded.

Three of Cups reversed

The circle feels off, gossip, third wheels, isolation from your people. Reversed, it asks when you last actually saw your friends, and what's keeping you from them.

Three of Cups in love

In love, the Three of Cups is shared joy: three women toasting in a circle, fruit at their feet. It speaks of love that grows among friends, of a relationship your friends celebrate, of the party where you meet someone. Sometimes it speaks of three where there should be two. The card says look at the circle: who is inside it and who is one too many.

Is Three of Cups a yes or a no?

The Three of Cups answers yes, and celebrates. Three women raise their cups in a circle, with fruit at their feet. What you ask goes well and does not go alone: there are people to share it with. It is a yes of friendship, of a toast, of something celebrated in company.

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Compare: the same card in all four suits

Cards that often appear with it

• Four of Cups

  The next card in the suit

• Three of Wands

  The same number in the opposed element

• The Moon

  The Major Arcana that rules this suit's questions

Number and correspondence

In the deck's old correspondences, the Three of Cups belongs to Mercury in Cancer.