3 of Cups

Jean Dodal Tarot, Flornoy 2009 

Well, this is unexpected, especially after the 10 of Batons day I had yesterday. I won't go into it except to say, it did turn out to feel like a tremendous burden, but there was an ally who told me not to worry. (Fat chance!)

'Three shows things growing,' Dawn Jackson's saying goes, but as Camelia Elias points out in Marseille Tarot: Towards the Art of Reading, it can be growing in increments, or it can be diffusing. Three flowers growing in a tight bunch can be something of a bouquet, but three flowers spread across an entire lawn just looks a bit messy. With a three, you either focus, or you scatter.

The playing card, 3 of Hearts, can mean either love and happiness growing, or emotional problems and inability to decide who or what to love.  (I saw this meaning repeated in several places online, so it must ring true for a variety of bloggers).  The three 'shows us a fork in the road. We must choose which path to take. Negatively speaking, the three symbolises uncertainty and confusion. Positively, the three means entertainment and 'right choice'. We must be optimistic and above all have faith' (Metasymbology).

What do I see here? It's hard to forget the three sisters (I think of them as sisters) carousing in the RWS image. But if we look at what's here in the Dodal image, there are some cues to springboard from. We do see a single cup followed by two cups, and there is  sense of growth in that. We also see that the cups are separated by vines and leaves, and there is a sense of dispersion in that. I also see that underneath the top cup there is a spiky red shape that reminds me of flames. How very curious. What's putting that cup's feet to the fire? There could be fruit for interpretation there, depending on the question and the intuition of the reader in the moment of the reading...

For me, I'm seeing more the separate between the cups than the unity today. To me, it looks like two against one. Two what against one what, though? Don't know yet. :)