If you're going to cry about someithing it may as well be spilled liquor

[kingtycoon]

Carrying forward the theme of the Cups - this is maybe the flip side of the 4 of cups.  Where he's relaxing and disinterested, she's all heartbroken.

 

The traditional 5 of cups is a fairly famous picture and I'm sure like me that you like it plenty, it's fine. It gets across this idea of regret and sorrow - three of my cups are spilled! I care nothing for my two cups that aren't! I ignore the river in the background! Wah! Sorrows! There's a communion in this you know? We're all sorrowful and heartbroken in our way, we're all killed by something specific to us and insensible to the plenty, and to what's available just at the edge of vision. In this respect I am pointing to heartbreak as having a kind of polar relationship with the complacency in Card 4. There's again, the ignorance of what's available, what is possessed - because there's too much interest in what's been lost. Just as the the Gamer didn't care for what he had, the heartbroken girl doesn't care about what she has. Well, maybe.

There's other ways to look at this one - I like that about it too. There's a lot going on. 5 is uneven, there's 3 cups down


And 2 cups up


This has the suggestion of being a kind of bargain then. Look at it like this- here is the person, who has made a choice - maybe to move on and leave behind the complacent lover- well that's a bargain in some respects - leaving people behind, maybe it's too much, maybe too much is lost and not enough is left. There's that element of it- an unequal bargain.

But at the bar it's senseless to think of spilled drinks, there's booze enough to fill them again - just as at the riverside you can fill your antique chalices and whatnot.


The Rider-Waite cards have the figure hiding his face with a cape. This idea of hiding your face- it supposes a kind of shame- it demonstrates something familiar - how you don't like having your face seen when you are sad, concealing the eyes, looking down and away. Shame - well - I wasn't so interested in showing shame -I thought... 'despair' But by an accident I have her throwing up her other hand - shock, outrage - and you know, I think a lot of despair, a lot of sorrow comes with that sense of shock - 'How could he?' She's asking, but also - 'how could I?' There's responsibility to distribute too - and the two cups are hers, the 3 spilled cups are the injuring party's. It's all about the unequal confrontation - the inequality that we have in relationships, in love.

Heartbreak is the subject of a whole lot of songs, but I like this one best: