Bohemian Gothic - 5 of cups

Dancing Bear

Well I cant get over how beautiful this card is, even though in a morbid melancholy way....
I have always felt at peace in graveyards, and i get the feeling so does this young woman..gazing upon a bunch of flowers, maybe admiring them..but i dont get the feel she is actually seeing them ..
she seems totally detached from her surrounds , and yet so comfy there..
the beam of light behind her, a ray of hope? if only she wakes from her daydream, her self absorbed state, to see it!..
It truly is a beautiful card.. and i really feel quite at peace gazing into it..

But i do have a few questions about it..where did she get those flowers? there are no bushes around that would give those..it all looks like overgrown ivy to me.. and why is she holding them at arms length? Would it mean holding others and beauty at arms length?

I really do like this card visually (as i will probably say without a doubt about all the cards I talk about LOL! )
 

6 Haunted Days

This is one of my very favourite cards in the deck. It reminds me so very much of me. The mourning colour of her dress which is the focal point of the image, her sad, melancholy gaze....just the darkness and stillness you can see and feel in that cemetary. Like she's trapped inside a moment of loss and grief. Remembrance and deep regret.

Very haunted and wonderful depiction of the 5 of Cups.
 

firefrost

With the way her dress is wrapped around her, it looks to me like she's swaddled - how could she possibly have walked there and had the dress wrap like that?

It looks like she is trying to contact her loved one. I don't think she's mortal. It's how the dress is wrapped - for me, she appears as if she's just floated from a coffin. Perhaps she's a ghost, about to waken her partner?
 

sharpchick

She can only come to see her love in the light of the moon. She has brought flowers - white flowers - to symbolize the purity of their love, innocence lost forever to an untimely death.
 

Master_Margarita

I look at the way her dress is wrapped around her as signifying that she is caught up in the past, unable to move forward in life because she is preoccupied with her losses.

:heart: M_M~
 

Grizabella

This looks like a child to me. She's got the poochy little tummy of a child and no breasts that I can see. Girls were sometimes betrothed quite young in times past and maybe the skirt wrapped around her legs like that signify she's been betrothed, so she's now caught and can't run freely in life like a child anymore. The flowers could be part of her wedding bouquet or a bouquet her betrothed gave to her. The graveyard could signify the death of her dreams of marrying someone she's chosen for herself---or of having any future she may have dreamed of.
 

sharpchick

What an interesting take on this card, Solitaire.*

There are just so many ways to see these cards. I know I will be noticing details anew for quite a while. . .
 

HoneyBea

I too think this is a very beautiful and yet solemn card. As Karen described in the card that she stands in a graveyard unaware of those things around her and transfixed on the dead posy she holds, I also noted that she also seems to be totally unaware of the bright shaft of light that falls behind her! Behind her is that shaft of bright light, showing all is not dark, now if only she would just turn around and see it, who knows what it may well illuminate for her!


Karen also brings to our attention here that she wears that beautiful dress of lavender, because I think of purple as a colour that signifies wisdom as well as spiritual knowledge and insight, so may allude to the subconscious mind — lavender seems to me to be a lighter version of that colour and therefore could well symbolise the conscious mind here and that this is a choice to remain looking backwards rather than move forward.

I see that all her focus is on what she just wants to see, and like that beautiful dress she wears it is this focus that binds her.

When I look at her looking at that posy of flowers in her hand, I wonder if she is remembering how beautiful those flowers were that she is holding but that will not make them come alive again.

This card does definitely make me see its meaning as stuck in the past.
 

ncefafn

I was considering the suit of Cups as a storyline and it occurred to me that the woman in the Four of Cups looks very similar to this woman, only in different dresses. In the Four, the woman is resting in a coffin in her wedding dress, holding a posy of flowers. As I'm looking at it, in the Five of Cups she's risen from her grave. The flowers have withered and died from her undead touch, and as others have said, she's gone to visit the grave of an old lover. She's wearing the color of "coming out of mourning", suggesting to me that she's married again, to the vampire who made her. So while her old lover is dead, she's got a new husband and a future with him to look forward to.

Also, note that she's standing outside the graveyard. She can't enter because it's holy ground.
 

Alisa13

ncefafn said:
She's wearing the color of "coming out of mourning", suggesting to me that she's married again, to the vampire who made her. So while her old lover is dead, she's got a new husband and a future with him to look forward to.

Also, note that she's standing outside the graveyard. She can't enter because it's holy ground.

I like the idea of the 5 of Cups following from the 4 - but I don't think the flowers are dead and I think she is in the graveyard.
The flowers look to be white - the colour of hope? What about the enclave with the headless person holding a cup and book? Surely, that means something? Something about knowledge of hope remains? I keep thinking of that line from Lord of the Rings, where King Theoden says about the white flower "Cymblemirna, the white flower that covers the grave of my ancestors; shall now cover the grave of my son". . . that sense of hopelessness but hope at the same time.
Somehow the white means rebirth . . . .
Alisa13