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Small card, Malkuth in Briah

Ten of Cups

Satiety

Lord of Perfected Success

♂︎ ♓︎

In a reading

Matters settled as wished, lasting success, contentment; but with the sense of too much, the moment before the tide turns. Badly placed: peace turned to dissipation, waste, satiety.

On the card

Ten cups in the pattern of the Tree of Life overflow so completely that the arrangement is unstable; the water is spilling everywhere.

Kabbalah

Malkuth, Kingdom, in Briah, the world of creation. The Kingdom, the tenth Sephirah, the world as it actually is: matter, the body, the finished thing that has fallen away from its source and yet contains it. Malkuth is the Daughter, the final Heh. The Tens are Malkuth in the four worlds and show the element carried to its end, for good or ill; the Princesses belong here.

Malkuth in the world of Water: the element carried to its end and fixed, where fullness becomes surfeit. Mars in the last decan of Pisces disturbs the completed waters.

Astrology

Mars in the third decan of Pisces (20°–30°, about Mar 11–20). Mars is force, war, energy, the breaking of forms so that they can move. On the Tree it is Geburah; among the trumps it is the Tower. Mars also opens the sequence of the decans at the first degree of Aries.

Pisces is mutable Water: the two fish, the end of the zodiac, dissolution and the waters before the spring. Jupiter rules it traditionally (Neptune in modern practice) and Venus is exalted here. Its trump is the Moon. The trump of Pisces is The Moon.

This decan is ruled by the Queen of Wands, whose arc runs from 21° Pisces to 20° Aries. The two Shem angels of the decan are Haiaiel and Mumiah.

Number

The crystallised Actual: the cycle complete, matter as it is known, the end that contains the next beginning. Malkuth, the Kingdom. The Tens carry each element to its extreme; Fortune is trump X.

Depth psychology

Feeling at its limit; the value so fully possessed that it begins to cloy. The Cups are usually read as the feeling function in Jung's typology, an interpretive convention rather than a text of Jung's.

Thoth and Rider-Waite

Rider-Waite calls the suit Cups (also Chalices). Its small cards carry scenes; the Thoth small cards carry the suit emblems arranged geometrically, with the keyword printed at the bottom and the colours of their Sephirah and decan. The Golden Dawn title (Lord of Perfected Success) is shared by both traditions.

Related cards

The Tens, Malkuth in the four worlds

The other decans of Pisces

The trump of Pisces

The trump of Mars

Ruled by

Neighbours in the year

Correspondences follow the Golden Dawn system as used in Crowley's Book of Thoth and Liber 777. Card images are described, not reproduced. Where sources differ.