Element: Water
Imagery: A cloaked figure walks away from stacked cups beneath a moon.
General Themes: Emotional departure, seeking deeper fulfillment, release.
Eight of Cups Upright
This is a heavier card because it demands a time of introspection. Where the Seven of Cups was about cutting through illusions in the outer world, especially in terms of the seemingly limitless options for your path, the Eight of Cups is about acknowledging what’s missing in your life.
In this card, a figure walks away from eight stacked cups. The second row of the cups shows a blank space. Clearly, something is missing. Here, it’s okay to mourn what you don’t have. The ache is a necessary part of growth. If you suppress it, you only feel the longing more deeply.
So it’s time to do a little soul-searching. This isn’t a card of dissatisfaction, like the Four of Cups. Rather, it’s about appreciating what you have, even as you long for more. You can feel whole where you are and still want that next part of your life to blossom. But you have to feel the longing deeply in order for that energy to move.
Explore new horizons, either literally in the life you create or metaphorically by sitting with the emotions you haven’t always let yourself feel. What do they tell you about your capacity for experiencing a full and vital life? Even these hard emotions are proof of our profound capacity for connection and expansiveness. The figure here moves on from the cups before him in search of what he’s missing. You should too.
Eight of Cups Reversed
This reversal hits hard. It’s time to give up lost causes and empty nourishment. Things that may have once nourished you no longer do, and that’s okay—to everything there is a season and all that. This card can also appear when you’ve been giving a lot of time and energy to a person or situation, only to realize that it will never be what you want it to be. The only solution is to stop giving it energy and see where the road takes you next.
This is an important time to explore what fulfillment means to you. It can mean various things to us at different times in our lives. We tend to fixate on external markers of fulfillment, like a job promotion or a new house, but internal ones are just as important. Think of waking up ready to greet the day or feeling connected to yourself and others throughout the day. Those are types of fulfillment too.
This isn’t a time for lots of social activity. Answers can be found in solitude, when you let yourself feel the hard stuff and then find a way forward. Remember, feelings are gifts: they tell us when we’re moving in the right direction and when we need to make adjustments to realign with a more vital path.
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