~ Discovering the Wild Unknown 2 of Cups ~
Today’s card draw in the Discovering the Wild Unknown series is the 2 of Cups.
I want to start off by providing an important notice, which will be included in all of this series. However, other things that will be included that you can skip to are:
- Card Description
- Considering the Card, where I look at how I would interpret certain imagery used
- Traditional Rider-Waite definition
I only include the latter as a comparison, to show how wandering down your own understanding of images and symbols can bring you to a similar meaning, though along a different path with different experiences. This is to help expand knowledge of the card.
I will not, however, be including the definitions from the guidebook, as that is not the point of this. Also, I don’t have rights to that material.
Important Note
I started this series because I had read that people struggled with the deck purely because the definitions in the Little White Book were very Rider-Waite-based, and that there wasn’t much wisdom regarding the animals and symbolism chosen.
This series is to help you to decipher the meanings yourselves. I am by no means saying what I have to say about the cards are correct for anyone outside myself. However, I am providing my daily journal entries regarding the deck to act as a guide so that you can begin your own journey.
When I started tarot, I had no idea what to write in my journal, and thus didn’t. Instead I obsessively read and re-read the Little White Book belonging to the Spiral Tarot (which is why today I can completely quote the book). I didn’t trust myself to know the cards, even when I could recite the definitions. I was afraid to put the book down.
To this fear of lack of knowledge, Kim Krans, creator of The Wild Unknown, writes:
You do know enough. You’ve been a person on earth every day since you were born. You’ve experienced all the emotions and situations these cards depict. Quiet the naysayer…don’t let it prevent you from sitting down with a friend (or yourself) and using these cards to help talk about what’s going on in your life. It will be positive. It will be radical. You’ll find things start to reveal themselves through the cards that have been hidden away, covered with dust.
pp. 10-11, The Wild Unknown Guidebook
Description of the Wild Unknown 2 of Cups
The Wild Unknown 2 of Cups shows two roses crossing. They are thornless, and they also have the only color in the card. Each rose is red and partially opened rather than in full bloom. The stems and leaves are white.
There are two cups in the card as well. One rose leans toward the left from behind the cup on the right, while the other rose leans toward the right from in front of the cup on the left.
The background of the card is black at the bottom, though gets lighter as it makes its way to the top of the card. However, it never makes it to fully bright, just lighter.
Traditional Card Meaning
The 2 of Cups is about union and partnership. It is often about finding that in someone else as well. But in order to share one’s cup to another, to be able to offer it to another, you need to be able to make sure your own cup is full. Furthermore, you need to know that they are equally willing to share of their cup.
What I derive from the Wild Unknown 2 of Cups
In the Wild Unknown 2 of Cups, neither rose means any harm, as both are without any thorns. They lean on each other, and likewise with the support of their own cup. If each rose’s cup wasn’t there, then not only would it not be able to support itself, but it wouldn’t be able to support the other rose.
The darkness in the picture, aside from the aesthetic nature of making the roses pop, is a reminder that the cups have to do with the subconscious. The element the Cups represent is Water, which has to do with the subconscious and intuition, as well as the emotional self. But emotions are intricately related to our subconscious—we might fear something without any conscious reason for why, for example.
Thus, in order for us to be able to provide a cup in order for romance to lean on and support another, we need to sort out our deeper self, which can sometimes be called our ‘shadow self.’ It’s the difficult areas that can be painful to deal with and heal from, but manifest in our everyday life.
While this is a card of romance and harmony, it’s also potentially an indicator to look inward in order to obtain that harmony.
About the Deck
The Wild Unknown Tarot is a 2016 Harper One publication, created by Kim Krans. The deck is widely available at most bookstores who carry Tarot cards, but also on Amazon. Kim Krans always wrote The Wild Unknown Guidebook.
