08. Eight of Cups
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Number: 8
Card Title: Eight of Cups
Esoteric Title: Lord of Abandoned Success
Numerical Keywords: 8: Intellect, Progress, Science
Numerical Attributions: Mercury, Orange, World, West
Intelligence: Perfect Absolute Intelligence
Element: Water (cold, wet)
Elemental Keywords: Love, Container, Emotions
Elemental Attributions: West, Fall, Twilight
Astrological Attribution: Saturn in Pisces
Dates & Timing: February 19 to February 28
Qabalistic World: Hod in Briah
Translation of World: The Splendor of Creation
Suit Color: Cups - Blue
Keywords: Temporary Success, Diminished feelings, instability, and loneliness.
Ill-Dignified:Refusing to move on. Wrong decision, Clinging to the past, Abandoning a valuable relationship.
Interpretation: Handwriting on the wall. Leaving material success for something higher. Love only partially succeeds..
Reversed Interpretation: Having trouble letting go of an unsatisfactory relation ship or leaving one too soon. Contemplating a move. Trouble with commitments or intimacy.
Rider-Waite Imagery
The picture shows a person walking away from 8 cups. This person has crossed a small body of water (emotions) and is walking up a hill. He is wearing a red top (passion) and green tights (heart) and brown shoes (practicality). This represses a fundamental desire for a meaningful existence (red top). The action of leaving is motivated from listening to his heart (green tights). The shoes are his practical nature this needs to be done. There are small islands in the water. The moon (the subconscious) hangs sky is dark blue (intuition). There are two mountains looming in the background. The mountains represent peaks to climb, an aspiration for something better.
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern. Divinatory Meanings: The card speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical–giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty. In practice, it is usually found that the card shews the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence–either for good or evil. Reversed: Great joy, happiness, feasting.
4 Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
Eight.–Marriage with a fair woman. Reversed: Perfect satisfaction.
The Recurrence of Cards in Dealing
In the Natural Position: 4 Eights = reverse; 3 Eights = marriage 2 Eights = new knowledge.
Reversed: 4 Eights = error; 3 Eights a spectacle; 2 Eights = misfortune.
The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus; tr. A. P Morton, [1896]
Signification of the Four Series of Minor Arcana in the Divining Tarot
CUPS. Preservation. Love. Instruction.
EIGHT. Partial failure of love. Love only partially succeeds.
The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]
Meanings of the Cards
42. Eight of Cups.–A fair Girl, Friendship, Attachment, Tenderness; R. Gaiety, Feasting, Joy, Pleasure.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Pisces II
A man carrying burthens [burdens] on his shoulder, and well cloathed; it hath his significion in journeys, change of place, and in carefulness of getting wealth and cloaths:
Picatrix the Goal of the Wise by Ghayat Al-akim
Book "T" The Tarot
XLII. The Lord of Abandoned Success
Eight of Chalices
A WHITE Radiating Angelic Hand, holding a group of stems of lotuses or water-lilies. There are only two flowers shown, which bend over the two central cups, pouring into them a white water which fills them and runs over into the three lowest, which later are not yet filled. The three uppermost are quite empty.
| U | U | U | ||
| U | U | |||
| U | U | U |
At the top and bottom of the card are symbols Saturn and Pisces.
Temporary success, but without further results. Thing thrown aside as soon as gained. Not lasting, even in the matter in hand. Indolence in success. Journeying from place to place. Misery and repining without cause. Seeking after riches. Instability.
Hod of HB:H (Success abandoned; decline of interest).
The Angels ruling are HB:VVLYH and HB:YLHYH.
Often the General signification of the Majority of a particular suit and of the particular signification of the either 3 of 4 cards of a sort in a reading:
- A Majority of Cups Pleasure, merriment.
- 4 Eights Much news.
- 3 Eights Much journeying.
