The 2 of Cups is not always a positive card.

What makes you decide the wingéd lion's head is a chimera? Waite breaks his general obscurantist uselessness to describe it as "above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head" in his Pictorial Key To The Tarot.

I also feel compelled to point out that the lion in the original editions of the RWS is red, rather than orange or yellow. I am pretty sure this was a deliberate choice on Pamela's part; there's a specific meaning to that in alchemy, along with a deep rabbit hole of looking at other symbolism of "a wingéd thing above a stick with two coiled serpents". You may or may not laugh out loud when you look at this card and finally see those meanings (possibly because you've triggered some of the internal processes they refer to, however briefly); I certainly did.

/r/EsotericOccult Thread Link - youtu.be