Ten of Cups

Mutable water: striking the set, lunar glamour, screens

PISCES III + TEN OF CUPS

The Ten of Cups corresponds to Pisces III, Velvet Curtain; the final decan in the zodiac. You can learn more about the decans here.

This decan corresponds to the Moon tarot card, as well as the Ten of Cups.

T. Susan Chang, in her essay on Pisces III 'The Rainbow Unwoven' brings together the two cards in a theatrical metaphor that represent the final moments of the zodiac.

Like the rainbow, the vision of happiness in the 10 of Cups is just that - a vision. It's like the title card you see at the end of 1940's movies: "The End". It is the wedding at the end of the romantic comedy. But the Moon is the wellspring of illusions: perhaps the 10 of Cups' vision of perfect joy is pure lunar glamor; a temporary enchantment that will pass even as the moon waxes and wanes.

The other major arcana card that corresponds to this decan is the Tower. For T. Susan Chang this conjures another theatrical metaphor – striking the set.

The couple and the children occupy what might well be a raised platform or a stage. Behind the curtain, the stagehands are already striking the set. The curtain falls, the false-fronted village collapses to the ground, the background scrim with its artful illusion of perspective crumples in a heap. The Tower strikes! and in retrospect, you knew it would all along.

Theatre and cinema use velvet curtains to represent the boundary between the magical and the real worlds. Once you sit, enthralled, in the dark theatrical space, you enter the lunar realm and are captivated by the shimmer of the screen; the illusions of light and shadow.

You might forget your own mortality, just for a while.