Eight of Cups

Identity

Symbols

• Eight Stacked CupsA neat completion — yet the top is missing one, the shape not yet round. It reminds him this is not yet home.+

  Waite has him desert 'the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern', a list running from joy to business. Book T names what he walks from 'Abandoned Success' (Saturn in Pisces' first decan, in Hod).

• The EclipseThe moon revealed and hidden at once — the exact shape of a mind that knows and does not yet know.+

  A lunar eclipse can occur only at full moon, when Earth's shadow passes across the disc. The drawing gives a similar doubleness, a crescent set inside a full circle; read as an eclipse, it is a full moon caught while being covered.

• The StaffWhat the night walk leans on — an admission that support is needed, and that the road will be long.+

  In Exodus 12:11 the Passover is eaten 'with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand', the dress of people about to leave. Here the staff is the one thing he carries; the cups stay behind.

• The Distant MountainsA destination with no name — only altitude.+

  Waite's practical reading is 'the decline of a matter', yet the drawing sends the walker upward, toward rocky heights. The decline belongs to the matter he leaves behind; the ground he takes rises.

• The Empty Ninth PlaceHe leaves room for the cup not yet found — this departure is not the end.+

  Five below, three above, and a gap in the upper row: the one break in an orderly build. Later readers take it for what the cups lacked; counted as a ninth place, it points to the Nine, whose cups stand along a curved counter.

• The Red CloakRed, not mourning black: whoever leaves here still carries heat.+

  With his back turned, the cloak is most of what the picture shows of him. Waite gives him 'a dejected aspect', but the face that would show it is turned away; the dejection has to be read from his back and the folds of cloth.

• Water Below the CliffsThe suit's own element, left on the low ground as he heads for the heights.+

  The Golden Dawn sets this card in the first decan of Pisces, so a suit of water meets a sign of water. The picture answers with water lying low beneath the cliffs, and he walks away from it, toward rock.

Story

The eye starts at the stacked cups in the foreground and finds them already left: a back is turned to them a short way off, and it is moving. From there the picture draws away, past the walker toward higher ground, under a moon that is full and partly covered at once. Seen only from behind, he leaves the viewer standing with the cups to watch him go; he does not look round, and no one in the scene calls after him. The departure is already under way, and the picture gives no reason for it.

Correspondences

Elemental Dignity

Shadow

Related Cards

The Hermit

Five of Cups

Six of Swords