Eight of Cups in 6 decks
The same card as 6 decks draw it, five and a half centuries apart. What stays the same is the card’s core; what changes is where a reading can find something new. The meanings are written for the Rider–Waite–Smith picture; the descriptions here are of each deck’s own. Not in Oswald Wirth, which has no Eight of Cups card.
Side by side
Choose any two decks and read the pictures against each other.
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A cloaked figure with a staff walks away from eight stacked cups, climbing toward barren hills under a moon that also shows a face in eclipse. The cups are neatly arranged, with a gap in the top row where one is missing. The figure does not look back.
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Eight yellow goblets are arranged three at the top, two in the middle and three at the bottom. A central stem bears red tulip-like flowers above and below, a blue star flower in the middle, and blue flowers reaching out to the sides on curling stems. Numeral VIII at both sides.
Marseille number cards are read through their number and suit; the written meaning here gives the scene the Rider-Waite-Smith card adds.
Rider–Waite–Smith
Pamela Colman Smith, 1909
A cloaked figure with a staff walks away from eight stacked cups, climbing toward barren hills under a moon that also shows a face in eclipse. The cups are neatly arranged, with a gap in the top row where one is missing. The figure does not look back.
Tarot de Marseille
Lequart, Paris, 19th century
Eight yellow goblets are arranged three at the top, two in the middle and three at the bottom. A central stem bears red tulip-like flowers above and below, a blue star flower in the middle, and blue flowers reaching out to the sides on curling stems. Numeral VIII at both sides.
Marseille number cards are read through their number and suit; the written meaning here gives the scene the Rider-Waite-Smith card adds.
Tarot de Viéville
Jacques Viéville, c. 1650
Eight cups: three across the top, two in the middle and three across the bottom. Curling stems bearing grey leaves and blue four-petalled flowers wind between them, around a red lozenge and a red pointed leaf at the centre.
Viéville number cards show only their suit symbols; read them through number and suit, with the written meaning as a guide.
Visconti-Sforza
Bonifacio Bembo, c. 1450
Eight gold goblets with blue bands stand in three rows: two at the top, then two rows of three. Blue and red flowers and small green sprigs fill the spaces between them. Green vines edge the cream ground within a red border.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck the number cards show only their suit symbols, and the trumps are unnamed and unnumbered.
Sola Busca
c. 1491
Two naked infants stand on a purple cabinet, one tugging a red cord and one handling round lidded jars. Six more jars hang from the cord or lie heaped on the ground below. The numeral 8 is at the left.
Soimoi
Mike Koz, 2025
Seen from behind, a man in a red kimono with a strap across his back walks away along a dark bamboo path under a red crescent moon, carrying one white cup in his hand. Six white cups are stacked in a small pyramid on a rock at left, and one more lies tipped on the path. Two dark tanuki-like animals watch from the shadows, and red leaves blow past.