March 23, 2012: Five of Cups, Daniel's Bootstrap Tarot
Oh, woe, what have I done...The five of cups is no damn fun! This card never has much to say that people want to hear, but there might be a rather unique way of looking at it, if we're willing to give it a try...
Here we see the bartender doing one of those amazing sleight-of-cup tricks that makes us fascinated enough to order another round simply to participate in the magic, even though we don't like martinis. And before him sits the customer who already appears to have either run out of hope, run out of patience for the headache to go away, run out of money, run out of friends, or is ready to run out of the bar, no matter how enticing is the visual magic taking place behind her. And so--how can anything good possibly come out of this incipient hangover?
Notice, here, one essential difference from the traditional five of cups--none of the cups in the card is spilled or broken. Au contraire, mon frere--they are not only upright but filled and inviting. But--and here's the significance...they are behind her. Either she hasn't been able to see them, or has turned in despair and disgust because she doesn't want to see them. And herein lies the quintessential meaning of this card, in any deck...It is about rejection of, or regret for, or a negative association with, whatever lies behind us. Of course, since we're using Cups, we're speaking of emotions here..so regret for the past has to do somehow with feelings. Wrong relationship, wrong attitude, wrong response, maybe even wrong bar and too many drinks...but whatever is flowing behind us, we can't look at it any more.
And that's the crux, here. What is behind her is still happening, and doubtless others in the bar are enjoying the trick, and may even ante up for another round. But neither their attitude, or her attitude of turning her back on the situation, has anything whatsoever to do with what the bartender is actually doing. It is what it is. So it is with our "emotional past", the things in our lives that have already happened that evoke in us an emotional response. They are what they are. But we are fully in control, always, of how we choose to react to them.
What is behind you, with all its flow, perhaps its drama, perhaps its manipulation (as the cups and the cocktail are being manipulated) by others, is still behind you. It is over, it is done. And yours is the choice of whether or not to react to it in a way that will hurt you, in a way that will help you, or in a way that simply ignores it and chooses to let it go and move on.
So there it is, lady. I don't know if you just got left at the bar by your boyfriend, if you're drunk on your ass through your own choice, or if you simply aren't interested in what's going on around you. But in any case, you get to decide what happens next. Pick yourself up, grab your purse, and either turn around and order another drink, or go outside and get a taxi and go home. What the bartender is doing is behind you, and has nothing to do with you. And tomorrow is always another day, another place, another time. You have all the choices here. Make one.
