Dodal, linked reproduction
Quatre de Coupes
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗When enough stops satisfying
An ordered group of four can look settled while its accompanying account introduces unease.
Start with the pictures
Four of Cups
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 219
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Quatre de Coupes
Four cups occupy two tiers around a central floral stem. Their repeated shapes and the surrounding leaves form a balanced pattern.
Smith
Four of Cups
A figure sits beneath a tree with folded arms before three cups. A hand emerging from a cloud offers a fourth.
Harris
Four of Cups · 4
Four gold cups stand in two tiers, linked by streams of water. Red stems and broad blossoms rise above them against a blue background.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite emphasizes weariness and dissatisfaction even in the presence of a further offer. His reversed list turns toward novelty and new relations, rather than merely increasing the original discontent.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley calls this Luxury: Water has consolidated through Chesed and the Moon in Cancer, but its stability contains the possibility of decay. He describes pleasure becoming restricted by its own settled form.
Where do you locate dissatisfaction when the picture contains no dissatisfied person?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
Foolmade supplies the linked Dodal reproductions. Its surrounding commentary is not the basis for our historical claims. These images are linked externally; the Smith illustration reuses the public-domain source scan with its full page context.
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.