Tarot Insights: Knight of Cups

I think of knights as fire, full of the passionate energy of youth. Not wide-eyed innocent pages, but high-spirited teenagers, sometimes rebellious, sometimes stroppy, usually full of themselves—knowing they are right about everything, constantly testing their boundaries. When we apply this to the Knight of Cups, we see someone who is passionate about following their heart, who puts more emphasis on their emotions than their logic, and who has a faith in their intuition.

In the Bonefire deck, the Knight of Wands seems to be surrounded by a lavender cloud that takes up most of the illustration. This also seems to be the color of what little of his horse we can see. The feeling I get is that this knight is surrounded by his dreams, perhaps emphasized by the few bubbles we can also see. He gazes at a chalice filled with rose wine. Yet his head is above the clouds, the sun is shining big and bright and the wine is captured by the sun’s corona.

This might seem like a contradiction, but it’s more an indication that the knight is aware of the “real” world even though he seems to be overindulging in his dream world. With knights, their energy can veer from one extreme to another. The trick is  finding the balance. I think this illustration convey’s this point well.

Whether it’s healing, divining, manifesting or something else, a lot of energy work requires the open-heartedness and intuition of the cups. The knight is enthusiastic about immersing himself in those energies, and it can be a real buzz to do so. While healing takes place for ourselves and others in this space, it is often a very personal experience. There is also a three-dimensional world out there, the one most people perceive as reality, the one in which most people interact with us. It’s important to try to maintain a balance so that we don’t get so caught up in dreams that we diminish our connection to others.