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The Rider-Waite-Smith card is true to the nature of these tarot water cards in a mundane divination presentation. The energy of this card is shown as very passive as Smith's young male figure seems almost indifferent to the spiritually offered cup filled with "fresh drink", as he already has reached satiety form the other 3. The meaning of the Rider-Waite-Smith card is blended pleasure and success, receiving pleasure but mixed with anxiety and some slight discomfort. You might say, that instead of pure energy in motion, it is now an emotional idea held in conceptional confinement. The meaning of the tarot 4's is also perfection, completion, and making a matter fixed and settled.

The B.O.T.A. 4 of Cups, is minimalistic at best. The Silver and Blues "moon cups" relate to the Feminine and the Universal Element of Water. The above 2 cups show a reflection below, as if on a shore of a "Moon Pool", which was used for magic rituals, skrying etc. in the ancient Temples of the Goddess. 4 is a number  of completion thereby, fixed and settled. There also seems to be a certain indifference to this card. Such as "the common" luxury become a form of mediocracy. 

By understanding that the number 4 is a "awkward" number; alone among the natural numbers, as it is impossible to construct a "Magic Square" of four cells, one doesn't expect this luxury to last for long. Therefore, since 4 being a dead stop number, a different idea of order is necessary to carry on the series. Hence, it is not long for the severity of the 5's. Thus, for now everything is seemingly luxurious in stability, but the changing of the Moon, its waxing and waning, is such that this won't last.

Water is conscious or willed e-motion (Energy in Motion) and for energy to keep moving, the damning effort of the number 4, will fail. Change is the formula for motion (Change=Stability). 4 is the number of restriction, as in "4 walls" etc., and as a cage, it shows a certain amount of stability, until the energy contained slowly breaks down the walls of confinement. We all know the weakness of putrefaction in stable water as it becomes a still swamp of decomposition for like emotions, water must keep moving to stay pure.

When the 4 of Cups card is thrown during a divination, the querent will be or is experiencing:

• Pleasure, but with some slight discomfort and anxieties. 
• Experiencing a blending of pleasure and success but approaching their end. The querent is experiencing a stationary period in happiness which may or may not continue as long as desired.
• It is too passive a symbol to represent complete happiness and some drawbacks to pleasure are implied.
• Both acquisition and contention in this card. For it is not wrong to enjoy the luxury of your labors, but labor will soon have to begin again or you will lose it.
• Warns us not to get lost in desire.
• Weariness.
• Disgust.
• Imaginary vexations.  

If reversed:

• Novelty.
• Presage.
• New instructions.
• New relations.

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