The Eight of Cups shows a figure with their back turned to eight… well, cups. In Rider-Waite-Smith-inspired decks, it depicts a man hiking away and leaving the cups behind. Really, it’s a very simple, elegant way of portraying exactly what the Eight of Cups means: turning your back on something and moving on.
Few cards in tarot are entirely negative. Even The Devil can stand for earthly pleasure, and The Tower is the destruction that makes room for something new. The Eight of Cups is no different, really. It’s a letting go, but it’s a letting go of something that should be let go of.
I’m almost done with the Dedicant Path work that I’ve been working on for nearly two years now, delayed by a few health- and moving-related hiatuses, and further slowed by a self-imposed language study. Oddly enough, it’s not that I’m so close to finishing that I feel like I want to change direction. Not entirely, but enough.
My ethnic and cultural background is very mixed. (The only thing any of my ancestors have in common is that, from Russia to Canada, they all seemed to love the cold. When a handful of them ended up in Tennessee, the next generation wound up in New York. We are not a warm weather people.) I originally wanted to choose Ireland as my cultural focus, but began doubting myself — especially when it came to studying Gaeilge. So many other people focus on Irish paganism, and probably better than I. So, I changed. Now that I’m almost finished and ready to complete the writing assignment, I feel like doing that was a betrayal, of sorts. Is it dishonoring my ancestors to feel like it was too difficult, and I wouldn’t be as good at it as other people? How would I be bad at it, anyway?
So, after months of study, I’m changing my mind again. I don’t think I can confine myself to one cultural focus, though I need to for the purposes of finishing this right now. I might be terrible at remembering where to put the síneadh fada (counting Gaelige, only two of the languages I’ve studied even use diacritics — and I wasn’t much good at remembering the other one, either), but favoring the gods of some of my ancestors over the others would be a mistake.
You know, I almost miss the days when it seemed like I pulled nothing but Aces. They were less heavy.
Marble Crow 