In Episode 4 of Seeing Tarot, artist Anna Rose Stabler and tarot reader Gina Wisotzky continue their card-by-card exploration of the tarot, moving through the aces of the Minor Arcana.
Rather than defining cards through fixed meanings, this podcast explores what happens when you live with their energy over time: through art-making, daily life, season, and conversation.
This month’s focus: The Ace of Cups
In this episode, Anna and Gina discuss:
* Water as a fluid, transformative element that dissolves the hardness of Swords and Wands into something tender and ineffable
* The shadow side of Cups: beneath the softness, what is sinister, soporific, and hidden
* The Grail legend as tarot mirror: the holy fool, purity of heart, and the quest for impossible wholeness
* How the five streams in the card’s imagery connect to the senses and the facets of being alive
* The upside-down M on the chalice and its possible allusion to the Virgin Mary
* Rachel Pollack’s framing of the Ace of Cups as “an emblem of love underpinning life”
* Psychedelics, blue lotus, and states of perception beyond language
* The Cocteau Twins as the ultimate Cups band
* Gina’s March forecast and how the Eight of Cups, Ten of Cups, and Six of Wands illuminate the art of following the flow
* Anna’s illustration process: gray skies, a sun-sized wafer, and a Medieval-style border
* A preview of the Ace of Pentacles and the turn toward earth
The conversation moves freely between the mystical and the grounded — from Arthurian legend and Gnostic Christianity to perfume and Pokémon. The Ace of Cups emerges the place where the full spectrum of emotional life gathers: seeking, melancholy, beauty, and the underlying unity beneath it all.
References & Influences
The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Elaine Pagels and the Gnostic Gospels
Ace of Cups Moodboard
Scents & Sensory Correspondences
Ace of Cups
Fragrance
Gina’s Pick
Parfum de Thérèse by Frédéric Malle — created by Edmond Roudnitska in the late 1950s for his wife, who wore it exclusively until Frédéric Malle later brought it to market. Notes of melon, green violet, and moss that together evoke a secret shaded pool with water lilies — romantic, melancholy, and quietly watery.
Anna’s Pick
Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès — light, aquatic, luminous. Anna’s mother’s signature fragrance.
Natural Material
Still water and lily pads
Rain on a gray afternoon
Violets
Blue lotus (flagged for future Cups exploration)
Environment
A shaded garden pool, secret and still
Clouds heavy before rain
The surface of things — and what moves beneath
About the Hosts
Gina Wisotzky The founder of Incandescent Tarot, Gina has been reading and practicing tarot and the intuitive arts for over two decades. Her work weaves tarot, writing, seasonal practice, and somatic inquiry through readings, classes, and audio reflections.
Anna Rose Stabler Anna Rose Stabler is an illustrator whose work centers symbolism, still life, and narrative imagery. Her practice explores how meaning forms through visual language, material, and seasonality.
