Minor Arcana, Cups
Eight of Cups
leaving, decline, perspective, search
Upright
Under a watchful moon, a cloaked figure walks away from eight stacked cups toward the mountains. Waite says the decline of a matter, or the discovery that something thought important matters little.
Consider this card when a job or relationship looks fine from outside and feels finished from inside. Ask what the stack of cups still gives you. Leaving can be a sensible choice, and so can staying with changed terms, provided you decide on purpose.
Reversed
Waite turns this one fully around: great joy, happiness and feasting. The traveller may be coming home, or deciding the table was worth staying at.
Before you walk away from a team or a partner, check whether the good has been there all along. Book a dinner, take the day off and enjoy what is still on offer. Then see how the question looks.
A card is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
In Waite's words
Upright: 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.
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part 3, on Wikisource. The meanings above are by Cast & Chart.
Card art by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.