The Cup Knight has been given so many analogies of “Loving” and “Caring” and “Devotion”, and then consonantly accused of “not taking care of the details”. He has been Hyper-Romanticized as some “Divine Seducer”, then by extension some “Great Lover”, and then the relatively modern “Knight-in-Shining-Armor” metaphor; yet then quickly accused of “ignoring ‘the real'”. He will take you to Passion Unending — until “the rational” appears, and then that “passion unending” come to a traumatic end. The receivers of the zeal of ‘his’ attitude feel immediately swept into some fantasy, and then eventually see that as mere fantasy. These are all the usual mundane interpretations of the character described by this card.
The Cup Knight is The Active Believer. ‘He’ Actively Traps ‘Himself’ into Passionately Feeling Something. ‘He’ Must Feel on an Emotional Scale. There must be an Overwhelming Aesthetic Quality in ‘his’ attention. ‘He’ is the Waves That Erode the “solidity” of the surrounding, churning that into a mud which is then assimilated into the very substance of ‘his’ “water”. ‘He’ takes “the other” and consumes that into ‘his’ very Aesthetic Being. The assimilation must have an Aesthetic Quality to it. When ‘he’ likes “something”, it is all.
When ‘he’ dislikes “something”, it is “nothing”. Of all the Cup Court Roles, ‘he’ is quite absolute with ‘his’ process of Valuation. Anything that counters That Valuation will be swept aside.
And even in the frenzy of Valuation, anything that is considered unvaluable will be completely dismissed, swept aside as expendable, unconsidered in the assimilation process. And remember, with this one, considerations must have an Aesthetic Quality.
At one extreme, ‘he’ can be considered The Dangerous Zealot who will “kill the infidel” without a second thought. At the other extreme, ‘he’ can be considered the most “heartless bastard” turning a deaf ear to anyone who counters ‘his’ belief.
O-A-Hum
OPD
[added 03-22-12]
An excerpt from my new manuscript “The TARO Court Cards and Astrology”:
The Cup Knight — House 12
This card is a portrait of Water in the form of Turbulent Waves, and by extension, Water’s Power of Erosion.
The Violent Force of Water changes its surrounding landscape. It moves the material about according to its chosen direction. It is the Force of Water, as a “sinking” substance, subject to the ‘force of gravity’; which only emulates ‘anti-gravitational’ behavior by mere reactivity.
The Twelfth House — classically associated with Pisces
This phase of the Mundane Cycle involves the initial projection of One’s Expression unto One’s Environment. Yes, there is uncertainty as to how that will be received. But the classic interpretations get too fixated on whether your given expression will be rejected by the surrounding environment; and your reaction thereby. Thus you get all the spooky ghost-stories about psychological self-repression and silencing of “one’s truth”. I’m not denying this valid mechanism.
What is generally missed in all the classic interpretations of this House, can be clarified, ironically, by our ‘modern fast culture’. As one is driving a car along the roads, and we pretend that we are being ‘so very aware’ of all the other surrounding fast-moving considerations, we really end up not cognizing how very lucky we are. We conveniently forget that if something really out-of-the-predicable were to occur, we are really toast. We, in our fast cars, with our imagined perpetual awareness, are actually skirting the odds much greater than we dare to imagine. We are comprehensively taking a chance that everyone else is “as aware as I (imagine)”. One moment of ‘slumber’, and you (and others) are butter on the road. Every time you glance into the rear-view mirrors, to validly keep an overall awareness, you are diverting your immediate attention away from your direction of going. You are practicing a moment of Faith that the conditions will not change in that brief moment of attention-deviation – yet, at such velocity, it only takes a moment for conditions to change!
Surrounding conditions do not always answer to our desire for their accommodating our given expression. If I do a certain act, there is no guarantee that it will be received as I wish. The x-factor does not involve any “act of sabotage” or any such nonsense. The softest ‘apology’ is lack of coordination. But also, sometimes ‘there are those who lay in wait to sabotage’, and you will simply frustrate yourself trying to ‘plan around them’. Otherwise: “shit happens”.
As we formulate a given expression for a given moment, there is really so many things occurring in the surrounding environment to consider; and as you are ‘enraptured’ with your given momentary expression – well, sorry dude, you’re going to miss some of the details. Here is where the “unpredictability”=”Pisces” relation comes in. (And, by the way, here is also where the “Pisces”=”Jupiter”=”Luck” factor intrudes.)
So, if you are going to express what you really desire to express, yet have any cognizance that what you may express may not be ‘accepted’ amidst the surrounding ‘uncertainty’, then what is left? You have to Believe that your expression is valid. You have to Believe in “the Truth” of what you want to express. You have to Believe that ‘it is real’ for the context of that expression.
In the generality of merely Reactive Behavior, the expressor generally doesn’t give a damn about any ‘unpredictability’ of the surroundings. But when the surroundings seem to ‘deny’ one’s expression, you have basically “two” choices: Suppress or Believe; Do Not or Do.
This card happens to be associated with the legend of The Grail Knights, who persevered in their chosen actions to achieve their chosen goal, despite all evidence against their efforts, by their chosen Force of Faith.
This Belief “erodes” all barriers to that expression. It moves the surrounding material according to one’s chosen course. I will not bother to get into whether This Belief is “imaginary” (all Belief is imaginary). But if this Belief has The Force to “move matter”, then ‘it is real for you’. And who is to say that such doesn’t become ‘real for others’; Belief can be rather contagious.
To be specific, here is what can be called Active Belief. Here is a Belief Process that “radiates from a central source”. It fulfills one’s own passion, but can also ‘illuminate’ or ‘affect’ others. And, actually, here is quite a danger. Here is The Passion of Active Faith – which is actually the dangerous origins of “active God-Formations”.
OPD Tarot 