This weekend’s subject is about your being effectively assertive in a way that is comfortable for you

Friends get along and happily share one another’s good fortune knowing one friend may get more than his fair share

Queen of Cups
Two of Cups, Knight of Cups, Three of Cups

Social Perspective (positive):
Friends get along and happily share one another’s good fortune knowing one friend may get more than his fair share.
Your friends share and help one another; you know when a person is taking advantage.
He and the girls have banded together over a common factor they know about and mistrust.
He accepts her getting more than her share out of his friendship with her.
She knows how to offer friendship to all the women there, even the scheming ones.
He gets together with them as if he was one of the girls, and they understand him.

Social Perspective (negative):
The girls know how to unify against his offer that is too good to be true.
His offer has strings attached and his women friends all know it.
The girls know he is trying to get them to mistrust one another by befriending them.
She knows he is only being friendly to her and her girl friends to take advantage of their friendship.

She is wise to people who offer friendship in order to suck up to her friends.
The girls who make the money have figured out he is getting his cut behind their backs.
He is friendly to all the women who are prosperous, they know he is a bit of a con artist.
She knows he is up to something with her close and trusted women friends.

Romantic Perspective:
She knows he is in lust with all the women – such a friendly fella.
She understands why all her girlfriends crave her sweet boyfriend.
She sees him as the kind of boyfriend who would seduce her girlfriends.
He approaches the women she knows for sex.
He is a troubadour; he has the woman who understands him, and the girl friends.

He is a cute guy and a player, and the girls know they share his attentions.
He will cuddle with all the women and they know his agenda.
He is the kind who is meant to have sex with the ladies, they know what he is up to.

At first I did not understand how these could be in response to ‘how to be assertive.’ The advice is to know the people you can trust, and hang with them, and to know the people you mistrust, and tolerate them for what they are – you can be friendly with self-interested people that you are wise to. Advice also is that you can expect certain guys to be flirts, that women know who they are and let them be flirts, just know you share them with other women, that’s all. The gist of the advice is: Figure out who’s who and you got it made. (Of course we know this is easier said than done.)

The first two cards are romantic ones: Two of Cups in Rider Waite is the untrue lover, the con artist who is your friend. The Knight of Cups is the friendly fellow who makes an offer or presents himself, and is the Boyfriend. The Three of Cups is to share, to party, to be girlfriends or to have girlfriends. The Knight of Cups and the Three of Cups both refer to friendship. Lastly is the woman who knows, has figured out or understands – often referring to her man, but here she is one of those girls who are hanging together, unified. A meaning the Queen of Cups and the Three of Cups have in common is loyalty. All these cards are cups, and cups often represent emotion, so we have a very emotional spread.

Meanings and Illustrations:

Two of Cups: In Rider Waite this Tarot card is not a happy romantic association, it is a friend or lover who has a use for the partner. It can be to be conned or seduced. It is mistrust. That caduceus is not a good symbol. It also means a sexual connection, a sexual liaison, or lust. It does not have to be a ‘bad’ card because sex is sometimes a pretty good thing.

Knight of Cups: Here is the friendly fellow, the polite man who takes the initiative in friendship … and the boyfriend. He is placed in between seduction and girls, so that is what he is meaning here today. The photograph shows him drawn in soft rounded lines, with soft colors, and his horse is downright seductive too.

Three of Cups: These ladies have pooled their investment and they are sharing the profits in good cheer. They are a team, unified, bonded together. It’s ‘The Girls.’ The illustration in Rider Waite makes this abundantly clear. In the midst of the harvest on the ground, they raise their glasses in toast, in celebration, and they are very well dressed and of good cheer.

Queen of Cups: Well, the girls have it figured out, they know. In this spread, the Queen of Cups is one of the girls in the Three of Cups. She is the good woman who is loyal. She is a dreamy impractical person: See how she is staring at that apparatus she has in her hands?