The atlas

Eighty-five shapes, A to Z. Each entry says what the shape is read as, and where the accounts part company it says that too.

Where it sits

The same shape is read one way at the rim and another at the base, so the entries say where. These are the places they name, and each is marked wherever it turns up.

At the rim: Soonest. Read as what is nearly here.
High in the cup: Close, and already moving.
Near the handle: Yours: your house, your people.
Opposite the handle: Someone else, or somewhere else.
At the base: Furthest from now. Behind you, or a long way off.

Acorn
Small, with a great deal folded inside it. The acorn belongs to a plan at the stage where telling anyone about it would sound foolish.
Anchor
Steadiness, and the question of whether you chose it. High in the cup it means security. Sunk to the base it means being held somewhere you have stopped wanting to be.
Angel
Help that arrives from outside your own effort — the sort you did not arrange and may never be able to account for afterwards.
Apple
Knowledge and appetite in one shape. Something is wanted and available; whether wanting it is wise, the cup leaves to you.
Arrow
Direction, already chosen. This is the moment after the decision, not before it.
Axe
Work you will have to do yourself. An axe promises a clean ending where a slow one would have been kinder.
Baby
New life in the plainest sense, and responsibility arriving whether or not anyone planned it. It will ask more than it looks like it will.
Bear
Strength that does not hurry. Facing you it protects. Standing in the way it obstructs. The weight is identical; only its position changes. Near the handle that strength is in love; opposite the handle, it is wanted at work.
Bell
Announcement. Whatever this is, other people will hear about it at roughly the moment you do.
Bird
News, and often news from far away. Turkish columns are warm about it — a small, pleasant bird is good tidings — but one gives a large bird of prey as news that costs you. On the saucer they part company: one reads a bird there as a marriage and a child, another gives the saucer no separate business at all. The English tea-leaf books, a different practice, have it as a lucky sign and make a flying bird speedy news. At the rim the news is close. At the base it is delayed — still coming, and needing longer.
Boat
A crossing you make yourself, close in, with the far side already in sight. Short water, and no crew to answer to.
Book
Something to be learned. Open, the knowledge is available to you. Closed, somebody is keeping it.
Bridge
Two parts of a life that had been managing separately, joined by something already built — and built by somebody else, before you needed it.
Butterfly
The state after a difficulty, not the difficulty. Readers handle this one gently for that reason.
Candle
Hope being tended. Not luck: a small light kept going on purpose, which means it could also be let go out.
Cat
Independence, and the sense that you are not being told everything. Whether the cat is a friend or a warning is a question most readers leave open.
Chain
A bond that holds. Whether that is connection or constraint turns on whether you want to be held, and the cup is famously unhelpful about it.
Circle
Completion when the loop is clean. When it is not, something has come round again that you thought you had finished with.
Clock
Time as pressure. The matter will not wait, and delay has quietly become one of the options you are choosing between.
Clouds
A situation you cannot see the whole of yet. This is uncertainty and not trouble — it may resolve either way. Near the rim the confusion is passing quickly. At the base it lingers.
Coin
Money, plainly. Usually a particular sum rather than prosperity in general — something countable, arriving.
Cross
Two paths meeting, or a weight carried. One tradition gives it as burden and another as decision, and a cup does not always distinguish them.
Crown
Recognition, granted by other people rather than taken. This is a reading about how you are seen.
Cup
A cup inside the cup: the capacity to take something in. The follow-on question, which readers usually ask aloud, is what you would fill it with.
Dagger
Sharpness at close range. Words more often than events, from someone near enough to know exactly where it would land.
Dog
Loyalty. Somebody is on your side and did not need to be asked, and this is about the plainest good sign the canon has.
Door
An opening with a condition attached. A door is not an invitation; somebody still has to walk through it.
Dove
Reconciliation. Which means the symbol carries a quarrel behind it — you do not reconcile with people you were never at odds with.
Dragon
Something large enough to be worth fearing, and a reward that will not come cheaply. You do not come out of it unchanged.
Egg
Potential, still closed. Viable, not yet begun, and waiting on whether you are ready to begin it.
Elephant
Patience that pays, and a long memory. Nothing about this situation has been forgotten by anybody.
Envelope
A message already sent. Something has been written and is on its way to you now.
Eye
Awareness — yours of a situation, or somebody else's of you. Readers rarely agree on which, and the cup seldom settles it.
Feather
Something carried on air. A message from a distance, and a weight lifting off whoever was carrying it.
Fence
A boundary, and the useful question is who put it there. Protection or limitation, depending which side of it you find yourself standing on.
Fire
Energy that transforms and does not ask permission. Contained, it is passion. Loose, it is damage. Near the handle the passion is in love.
Fish
Abundance, and one of the warmest readings in the cup. The Turkish columns do not quite agree on why: one gives a fish as a healthy and happy life, another simply as wealth. Both tie it to effort rewarded rather than to luck arriving. A large fish is taken as the better omen.
Flower
A gift or a kindness arriving. Its beauty will not last indefinitely, and that is part of the symbol rather than a warning attached to it.
Fork
A choice with two real options, which cannot be deferred by choosing neither. Standing still counts as picking one.
Fox
Somebody is not showing their whole hand. This is a caution about intentions, not about character.
Frog
A leap, and the change that follows it — the same creature learning to live in a different element.
Gate
A threshold with a keeper on it. Where a door opens, a gate lets you through, and that difference is the whole symbol.
Grapes
Plenty, shared. Celebration rather than acquisition: abundance that involves other people.
Hand
Connection made deliberately. Giving or receiving, and the cup usually says which by which way the palm is turned.
Harp
Accord that somebody is actively making. Harmony in a particular relationship rather than peace in general.
Hat
A new role, and a change in how you are addressed. It may arrive some time before it feels like it fits.
Heart
Love, and the most direct thing the canon says. Near the handle it sits close to home; at the rim it is arriving soon.
Horse
In the Turkish columns the horse asks who you are before it answers: for someone unmarried it means a match arriving, for someone married money and property. Both run in the same direction — your life moving the way it was already pointed, and moving faster. The tea-leaf books take another line, with a galloping horse as events hurrying toward you that you do not control.
Horseshoe
Luck of the protective kind. Fortune that guards, where the star guides and the coin arrives.
Hourglass
Time visibly running. Readers take it two ways: a warning against delay, and a reassurance that a difficulty is finite and will run out the way sand does.
House
Home, security, and the state of what you are standing on. At the base it points underneath the rest of your life.
Key
The answer exists and is within reach. What remains open is whether you have worked out which door it belongs to.
Knife
Separation done on purpose. Where the dagger is harm arriving from elsewhere, the knife is in your own hand.
Ladder
Progress in steps, none of which can be skipped. Every rung needs standing on before the next one will hold.
Leaf
A season turning — change that happens without anybody deciding it. Usually taken as renewal.
Lines
Journeys and direction. Straight, the path is clear. Wavering, the route will not be a direct one.
Lion
Courage being called on, and courage available to answer. Strength of character, tested rather than granted.
Lock
Something closed and kept closed. A secret if the lock is somebody else's; patience if it is yours.
Moon
Cycles, dreams, and whatever is not being looked at directly. A crescent begins a phase, a full moon completes one.
Mountain
An obstacle with a top to it. The climb is the symbol; the summit is only where the climb stops. Near the rim the obstacle is close at hand. At the base it is the long climb.
Mushroom
Sudden growth, faster than anyone expected, and quite possibly grown in the dark.
Needle
Precision, and small work that matters. Mending: a repair that is fiddly, deliberate, and worth doing properly.
Owl
Knowing something before it becomes obvious. Trust what you have already worked out, even in an unclear situation.
Palm tree
Rest after effort. Success that has already arrived, and permission to stop for a while.
Path
The road you are on. Less about a destination than about the fact that you are already walking, which most readers take to be the point.
Ring
A promise holding, a cycle closing. A ring broken at one edge is treated as its own symbol rather than as a damaged version of this one.
Rose
Love with its cost included. The thorns belong to the symbol; they are not a warning pinned onto it.
Scale
A judgement being made, and an invitation to be honest about what is actually sitting on each side.
Scissors
Editing a life: removing something that was chosen once and does not fit now. The cutting is yours to do.
Shell
Guardedness, and something worth protecting held inside it. Often, too, the suggestion that it might be worth showing.
Ship
A long crossing, undertaken for a reason that will outlast the journey. Where the boat stays in sight of shore, this does not.
Snake
Transformation, and readers genuinely disagree. The English dictionaries settled early on a hidden enemy and most sites still repeat it. Others give it as knowledge arriving before you are ready for it. Some will not treat it as a warning at all. Near the handle the transformation is your own; opposite the handle, the change comes from outside.
Spider
Patience and construction — something woven deliberately over time, with you doing the weaving.
Star
Hope with a direction in it. Guidance: a wish that also tells you which way to walk.
Sun
Clarity and vitality, a spell of things being plain to see. Most readers call it the best of the weather symbols.
Sword
Truth cutting through. The clarity is real and it will not be comfortable for everybody.
Tower
Ambition, and isolation as the price of it. Built high and standing alone, and the cup rarely says which half matters more.
Tree
Growth with roots under it. Tall, it flourishes. Bare, it is waiting out a season, which is not the same as failing.
Triangle
Three points in tension. Point uppermost, ambition. Otherwise, a third person involved in a matter you thought had two.
Umbrella
Shelter offered. The Turkish columns are warm about it — abundance, rank, a position improving — with an open umbrella the better sign and a closed one an opportunity not yet taken up.
Volcano
Something held down a long time and no longer being held. Release, not disaster, though nobody claims it will be tidy.
Waterfall
Emotion already moving, and going one way only. Whatever was being held has stopped being held.
Wheel
Fortune turning. The change is in motion, and where the wheel sits matters less than the certainty it will not stay there.
Wings
Freedom, and aspiration that has not yet been tested by flight. The lifting is intended; nobody has left the ground.
Wolf
Instinct, and loyalty to your own. Trust what you already sense, particularly about who belongs close to you.