-julia wolfson
The four of cups represents a time for getting clear, refining things down to simple truth. Feelings are hurt. Things don't feel quite right so, it's time to figure out what's wrong and change it. The personality needs to strip itself bare and undergo a cleansing. The figure has turned her back on us in a temporary rejection of help from others--her work must be done alone.
ISOLATION
The water from the river that flows into the ocean will be her helpmeet. Carefully, she steps into the cold stream and begins to wade across, letting the current wash her clean and revitalize her emotionally. Perhaps when the figure has completed her ritual, she will lie on the warm sand and imagine new possibilities.
She has entered a time of uncertainty, like the place where the river and the ocean meet, where fresh waters swirl into the salt. This time can be used for re-evaluation of life and relationships. If there are tears, they can fall unseen into the water, allowing a free flow of feelings that will heal all wounds.
-motherpeace
"full of themselves"
Dreaming up new and exciting conquests is sort of like dreaming up new and fantastic animals...
...Activities that demand discipline and endurance, such as exercise or meditation, may turn out to be the key to silencing those hissing, preening doubts, one beak at a time.
I have lost; what is your world to me?
The Four of Cups is never satisfied...it has discovered form, and water has no shape other than that of the vessel it is poured into; and water moves in cycles, and cannot be kept in one place forever.
Fours of Cups differ, but tend to have three full vessels and one empty one - sometimes poured away, sometimes thirsting to be filled. No form can hold the entirety of your feelings and language. Write a poem, and you have a vessel, but you can only hope that this vessel can hold your feelings - perhaps by tomorrow, or by the time you show the poem to your friend, it will be empty again.
This card is discontent, clearly because it does not appreciate its full glasses, or the boundless flow which has filled them and will fill them again. There was a time when I was 'well, duh' about this card's situation, thinking it should just turn to the river, but...loss is loss. This card is mourning - for some feeling put into a form which has now shattered. Or perhaps for a glass crafted with such care, never to be filled.
There are layers of lessons here, but there is a time to disregard all of them. Yes, be grateful for what you have. Yes, trust the world to give you more and more to feel, to say, to express, to love. Yes, you shouldn't obsess over what you don't have, or no longer have. But damnit, there's a time for this. It is a moment when, because your words and feelings have taken form, you find there's not enough, or that what may be brought by the rushing river is nothing compared to what you have lost. Yeah, I'm sure you can be a super-aware thing and see what is in each glass as non-individual, as simply water this water in this cup, but the world is not like that; we have, we hold, and we lose, because cups break and water flows away.
Water is tears.
Given time and attention, confusion will sort itself out and clarity will return.
-motherpeace tarot
