The Queen of Cups is one of the Court Cards of the Tarot. On the Decan Wheel, she rules from June 11 to Jully 11. She is the Nuturer. Keywords include nuturing, intuition, empathy, sensitivity, emotional and changeable, protective, sentimental, fiercely maternal, mother hood, responsive to others, and emotions shown opening.
Many people choose a Court Card to be their Significator in a Tarot reading; a card that represents themselves. If your birthday is between June 11 and July 11, then choosing the Queen of Cups as your Significator may be appropriate! Or, you may choose her because you resonate with her qualities, regardless of the dates, and that is perfectly acceptable as well.
On the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the Queens of the Tarot are assigned to the sephirah Binah. When seen in a “Jacobs Ladder” configuration, the Queen of Cups is Binah in the World of Briah. The Queens represent Binah’s qualities of “the Great Mother” - the receiver of the force of Chokmah (Kings), and the organizer of force into form. The Queens also represent the first Heh in the Holy Tetragrammaton “Yod Heh Vau Heh”, which is related conceptually to the Breath of Life. When the Tree of Life is shown as as representing only the World of Briah, it is colored according to a particular set of colors developed by the Golden Dawn. Because of the correspondances between Heh = Briah = Queens, the color scale for Briah is called the Queen scale.
Drawing the Queen of Cups can indicate a person, personality, or behavior. A question you may ask yourself is, how do you relate to the concept of Nuturing, as a person you may know, or a personality or behavior that emerges from time to time, in yourself or others? The Queen of Cups calls on us to ruminate on this.
And for those of you who like math, if you take a look at the Decan Wheel below, you will see that it has several divisions. A circle is 360 degrees, and a Decan is 10 degrees, so there are 36 Decans in a circle, which correspond to approximately 10-11 days each.
There are 40 minor cards, (Aces thru 10’s, 4 suits) but the Aces have been removed, leaving 36 minor cards (2’s thru 10’s, 4 suits) So there is one Decan for every minor card in the tarot (36 x 10 = 360.)
Now for the Court Cards: there are 16 Court Cards, but the Princesses have been removed, leaving 12. So each of the Court cards gets 30 degrees (12 x 30 = 360). You can see by studying the Wheel that for every Court Card there are 3 associated minor cards, with corresponding dates. At the center of the Wheel are the 12 Zodiac signs, however they do not align directly with the 12 Court Cards. The consensus seems to be that the sign with the 2 out of the 3 Decans aligned with the Court Card is the sign usually connected with that Court Card. For example, the Queen of Disks covers one Decan of Sagittarius and two Decans of Capricorn, so she is more often associated with the sign of Capricorn. (Note, the C, F, M at the very center of the Wheel indicate if the Zodiac sign is Cardinal, Fixed or Mutable.)
Lastly, we see the Aces and Princess that were removed placed in tandem in the 4 large sections around the outer rim of Wheel. These can also correspond to the listed dates, or seen generally as the seasons between the Equinoxes and the Solstices. Aces are associated with Spirit and the essence or “root of power” of the Elements (Wands = Fire, Cups = Water, Swords = Air, Pentacles = Earth) Princesses are associated with the “boots on the ground” aspect of the Element. Sometimes they are also allocated to space, or quadrants of the globe, rather than time. (Princess of Wands = Asia, Princess of Cups = the Pacific Ocean, Princess of Swords = the Americas, Princess of Pentacles = Europe & Africa) Both the Aces and the Princesses correspond to the three Zodiac signs in their quadrant.
The 3 Minor Cards associated with the Queen of Cups are the 10 of Swords (Lord of Ruin), the 2 of Cups (Lord of Love) and the 3 of Cups (Lord of Abundance.) If you resonate with the Queen of Cups as your significator, you may want to intuit how these cards connect to your life and experiences. Have fun!
Tarot Deciphered by T. Susan Chang & M. M. Meleen
Astrological Keywords by Manly P. Hall
The New A to Z Horiscope Maker and Delineator by Llewellyn George
Qabalistic Tarot by Rober Wang
Astrology for Yourself by Douglass Bloch & Demetra George
A Beginners Guide to Astrology by Lisa Butterworth
The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall