The King of Cups is a highly compassionate guy with a welcoming heart that is like a big tent, inviting in all the people that he comes into contact with. From this deep sense of connectivity to those around him, the Water King’s actions are seen as diplomatic, harmonic, and understanding. His open heart is not without its shadow side: as he witnesses humanity’s suffering, his heart is touched by the pain, tinging his expression with concern.
Where is the source of the King’s emotional and relational mastery? In this pull, he is looking right at Temperance. This angel is one of his sources. Temperance is the angel of integration. Its alchemical properties imbue it with the ability to reach out to reality and merge in its lessons. As far as our relationship with humanity goes, Temperance is one of the forces responsible for our ever-increasing circles of nurturing, welcoming, and belonging. When we breach out of an exclusively tribal sense of belonging, whether as children or as adults, at first our awareness is met with exposure to that which is fearful—the other, the different, the foreign. But as we grow and understand that the differences between us and them are illusory, and that we and the other in fact are part of the same circle of belonging, Temperance is the healing that cools the fires of separation and cultural strife, allowing for the integration of the “foreign” into our hearts. Healed thus, our love is greater, accepting more and more kinds of people, until all living beings in the entire Cosmos are held in our conscious embrace.
And this ability to reach out with his heart, and invite in increasingly greater numbers of life, is one of the King of Cup’s secrets to an emotional intelligence that acts in the world towards equality, justice, fairness and interpersonal wellbeing. When we tap into this energy, we identify the groups of people or sentient life that are marginalized from our own life. Who do we exclude? Who do we need to let into our circle of care? As we reassess our heart’s relationship with humanity, we not only develop our emotional intelligence—we contribute to the healing of the fractures within the human race.