Minor Arcana, the Cups

Eight of Cups

The Eight of Cups, which Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909, shows a man in a long red cloak walking away from eight gold cups stacked by the water. Leaning on a staff, he heads into rocky hills under a moon with a face, its eyes closed, and water runs between the rocks below.

What Waite wrote it means (1910)

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.

Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 210. Read it in the chapter

A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, under-taking or previous concern.

Waite's description of the card, from the same book.

What's in the picture

The moon. The moon is drawn twice over: a full yellow disc, and inside it a thin crescent, as if it were full and new at once. A calm face with closed eyes looks down from it, toward the cups.
The walker. He has his back to us, fair hair showing above a long red cloak. He is already past the cups and stepping up onto the rocks, bent forward a little with the climb.
The staff. In one hand he holds a long, thin staff, planted ahead of him on the rocks. He carries nothing else.
The red boots. Under the cloak his legs are pale, in red boots, one foot raised to the next step.
The stack. Five cups stand in a row along the bottom and three more stand on top of them. All eight are the same plain gold, and none has fallen or spilled.
The gap. In the top row there is a space between the second cup and the third. Waite does not say what is missing; he wrote only that the man "is deserting the cups".
The water. A strip of grey-blue water runs between the cups and the hills, broken by dark stones and pale rocks, with the cups lined up along its near edge.
The hills. On the left a green peak rises over the water, and on the right a dark mass of rock. He walks toward the dark one, away from the moon's side of the card.

The card in brief

In the deck: Card 44 of 78
Arcana: Minor Arcana, Cups
Number: Eight
Element (Golden Dawn): Water
Astrology (Golden Dawn): Saturn in Pisces
Title in Book T: Lord of Abandoned Success
Drawn by: Pamela Colman Smith
Planned by: Arthur Edward Waite
Published: London, William Rider & Son, 1909
Scan: Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons

In the old books

Book T (1912)
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 latter are not yet filled. The three uppermost are quite empty. At the top and bottom of the card are symbols ♄ and ♓︎.
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.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), p. 192. See the source
Papus (1892)
Partial failure of love. Love only partially succeeds.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 313. See the source