Season of Cups
In floats the Knight of Cups for the final Asunder Tarot Season
The Winter solstice brings the Knight of Cups gliding in, glistening with droplets. This is the water quarter of the year. A rain shower that cools and refreshes after the relentless evolution of Fire’s transformation.
In Water Season we enter a kaleidoscope of ripples, which include but are not exclusive to:
Love, intimacy and attachment
Healing, vulnerability and connection
Anxiety, insecurity, sensitivity and comparison
Empathy, compassion and companionship
Gentleness, softness and adoration
Stagnation, rot and deterioration
Stillness, peace and awe
Renewal, reconstitution and replenishment
The Bends, overwhelm and decompression
Humour, novelty and joy
Guilt, grief, sadness and jealousy
Ripples, flow and currents
Mirror, reflection and the moon
Darkness, dissolution, endlessness and being untethered
Ambient Magick, sparkles and glimmers
Non-verbal communication, imagery and symbolism
Illusion, delusion, nostalgia and glamour
In this season we anticipate the challenges of the metaphoric oceans, lakes, streams, pools, puddles, tides, waves, tsunami, rain, floods, ice, glaciers, snow, steeping, dampness, condensation and darkness.
Art for the Cups
I kept turning towards that door because I could only stay if it were possible to leave at any moment.
—Lavinia Greenlaw
Emotions can be challenging. Water can be scary. So before we enter the suit, let’s take note of a few possible doors. What are the easy exits that can allow you to step outside the room for a moment to catch your breath?
Here are some examples: (play around with what works best for you)
Music
Art
Poetry
Cooking
Swimming
A shower
Touching grass
Feeling your pulse
This season we invite you to bring water into your creative practice.
This could be through using a medium such as watercolour paints or ink.
It could be through taking your creative practice outdoors to where you can see water. What changes if you can hear the river or the ocean while you create?
It could be through drinking more water while you create. Or using the colours of the ocean in your art. Or drawing ocean creatures. You can be as tangential as you want here.
I (Christina) am going to be using watercolour paints a lot this season.
In Art Therapy, Trauma and Neuroscience, Lusebrink and Hinz (2022) write that “fluid media such as watercolours and chalk pastels are likely to evoke and allow for emotional expression.”
Some questions I am walking into my cups creative practice with:
What is the effect of watercolour on different surfaces and what does the way the water absorbs or doesn’t help to describe emotions?
Are the colours as bold as expected?
How can softness be added?
What happens when there is too much water?
What happens when there isn’t enough?
Is painting with watercolour paints and no water like being numb?
When there is too much emotion can you even see the colour at all?
What happens when colours merge? Do they lose one another or create something new?
What does the warping of the paper mean?
What questions are you walking into this season with?
Cardinal (21st June - 22nd July)
As the eyes are beginning to refocus, after the large flare of its blinding glare, it can help to locate something small.
—Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
The cardinal modality is all about initiating.
This month is about sampling ideas and possibilities. A drop of water can create a large ripple. Try a variety of ways of bringing water into your creative practice. Where is there ease? Where is the resistance?
How can water bring some refreshment to your art this month?
What are you thirsty for this month? Can you sample ways of quenching that thirst?
Fixed (23rd July - 22nd August)
When you open up this close to the edge, land holds you and water moves through you.
–Alexis Pauline Gumbs
The fixed modality is about continuing.
Can you choose one thing that worked well last month and go deeper? What does it mean to step into the same river, knowing it is different to yesterday?
You can do something each day or maybe create some art at the end of each week. How does your emotional experience change with repetition of a creative practice?
How much water is needed to create the flow you are longing for?
Mutable (23rd August - 22nd September)
Change can also mean adaptation, our ability to remake ourselves in response to pressures in our environment.
—Jarod K. Anderson
The mutable modality is about change.
This month we are going to make a change to what we have been repeating over the past four weeks.
When water is poured into a new container it takes the shape of that new vessel. How can your creative practice change and take on a new shape?
How many different metaphors can you play with this month? How does the context change the experience?
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