Eight of Cups Tarot Card Meaning

Eight of Cups upright

A downcast man walks away from a stack of cups. Waite says the cups stand for his happiness, an undertaking or an earlier concern — and he is leaving it. It is honest to go when something has run its course.

Eight of Cups reversed

Unexpectedly, Waite reversed gives great joy, happiness and feasting. You may find what you were looking for without leaving — or the leaving itself brings relief.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is Eight of Cups a yes or no?

Upright: Leans no. No — the answer is to let this go and look further.

Reversed: Reversed, Eight of Cups reads as a soft yes: joy, happiness, feasting.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the Eight of Cups card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Figure walking away — Waite: abandonment of a former concern
• Stacked cups left behind — what he once valued

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: the decline of a matter; abandonment of a former concern; departure (also mildness, timidity, modesty).

Reversed: great joy, happiness, feasting.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.