8 of Cups; The Darkness of Finding Yourself
8 of Cups invites us to leave behind everything that doesn’t serve us anymore, but how easy is it to shed off the deep layers of our existential core?
Eight of cups is more than just turning our back to what already exists and search what serves us and what doesn't. 8 of Cups is a card of leaving all the layers that form our current self to embark on a challenging journey of finding our true form.
The guy in the original tarot decks is neither happy to stay nor happy to leave. Have you ever felt like that? Like having it all and still not being able to feel content in your own skin?
There can be many reasons for this feeling, including again, the way our personality has been formed. Some say our whole personality is formed by a bunch of trauma responses, which makes you then wonder.. who are we really if we take away these responses? If that is also true in a percentage, a person who has tried to be successful their whole life as a traumatic response to their parents who were expecting too much of them, they have apparently built a world that serves the trauma or the expectations, but not their soul purpose.
Or having a loving relationship or even family but still experiencing this eternal void swallowing up every other feeling inside, while feeding only from sorrow and grief and getting bigger and bigger as the years go by. What could we be grieving eternally? The loss of our innocence? Our early years where love was in the realms of Gods and Kings and now things have gotten too much...adult style? (Peter Pan complex or eternal child complex is a trauma response, by the way. The Eternal Child embodies a Peter Pan complex, refusing to grow up, embrace the responsible life of an adult and determined to remain young in mind, body and spirit).
Ladybug needs to leave from the coupling scene. She probably cannot find her true soulmate because she is not her true self. She is a human disguised as a ladybug.
In any case, the meaning of all these feelings is that what exists on the side of the cups is not wrong. This is why we need to temporarily remove ourselves from the picture and find out why, how and when we stopped being in tune with the world we have built for us.
This card is especially accurate in the Tarot of Mystical Moments deck. Ladybug needs to leave from the coupling scene. She probably cannot find her true soulmate because she is not her true self. She is a human disguised as a ladybug. She has tried so hard be a ladybug that she believed it was actually her reality. She needs to shed the non-real layers or those that don’t serve her purpose anymore, in order to enter her true form and accept it, and only then she can find her own soulmate/form true and healthy relationships or be part of the community (soulmate can be a union and harmonious relationship with our own past, our own shadow, our own core).
If you are feeling this way, know that you are not the only one. The card exists for a reason: others feel or have felt this way. These layers or coping mechanisms, in psychological terms, are an essential part of our survival. We always have unresolved issues with our past Self. And when the card comes up, it is time to deal with it.
Danai Siamou-Kaarakainen, Psychologist/ Psychotherapist