Tarot Of The Day July 29, 2018 - Day 36: The Raven’s Prophecy Deck - 8 of Cups

Tarot Of The Day July 29, 2018 - Day 36: The Raven’s Prophecy Deck - 8 of Cups

I am posting a daily tarot course in a group I am a member of on Facebook ('A Kaleidoscope of Magical Perceptions' is the name of the group, please feel free to request membership - it is full of fun people and really great posts about all manner of topics) and I thought I would cross post the information here to this blog as well. Once the initial sessions of the course have passed, it will start over using a different tarot deck. The text of the thirty-sixth session follows.

The Rider-Waite 8 of Cups shows  a figure with his back turned to the cups, walking stick in hand, leaving them behind as he travels into the distance. The moon shines above, and the landscape is a rocky shore with craggy islands.  The booklet describes this scene: “A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.”

It lists the following keywords for the 8 of Cups: The card  speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical - giving joy, mildness, timidity, honor, modesty (upright,) great joy, happiness, feasting (reversed.)

Personally, I find the booklet’s keywords absolutely contradictory to the imagery provided, and have always read the card as symbolic of abandonment, and all of the emotions that go along with it. The reversal, however, I do agree with the Rider-Waite booklet on.

Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven’s Prophecy deck shows the eight of cups as four white feathers resting on the surface of still water, their reflections making up the other half of the eight.  She writes, “I chose to use an image of reflected feathers on the Eight of Cups to call back to the reflected image on the Four of CUps. Both the Four and the Eight speak to stagnation and plateauing in your relationships. The difference is that the Four represents new relationships suffering because of neglect, and the Eight represents established relationships that are simply not satisfying. The situation in many ways has become untenable, and the longer you stew in it, the more nothing happens. Those floating feathers on the card aren’t going anywhere without a wind of change.”

Maggie offers the following keywords for the Eight of Cups: stagnation, moving, dissatisfaction.

Tomorrow - 9 of Cups

***TOTD will cover the entire 78 card Raven’s Prophecy Deck alongside the Rider-Waite deck for comparison. In order to not completely burn out,  on Saturday I will break the lessons up by doing a practicum lesson. Practicum lessons will take the form of a layout or spread that I will walk you through the steps of interpretation for. After the first round of sessions ends, we will start over with a short break for a poll to be done to see what deck everyone wants to see next round. ***