Eight of Cups

During the final years of Francisco de Goya's life, when the artist had gone deaf and was rapidly losing sanity, he retired to his country house and began to paint on the walls. Not just any paintings -- these were a notable shift from the robust and colorful work of his earlier years. Referred to as his "Black Paintings," the new works portrayed scenes that festered with unease, lunacy, and malignant humor. Eventually both floors of his home were filled with these dark visions. Two of the most violent, Saturn Devouring His Sons and Judith and Holofernes, flanked one entrance to the house. The painting pictured here, Heads In a Landscape, reminds me quite a lot of the Rider-Waite version of the Eight of Cups. In that card, a stockpile of cups stack up accusingly in the foreground, left behind by a discontented wayfarer. In Goya's painting, your eye would like to roam the gorgeous sunny landscape, but the leering faces distract the eye, crowding up and practically pressing their themselves against the glass.

In actuality, the Eight of Cups represents an important turning point. A certain ill-fated relationship or foolish fantasy has been indulged as far as you dare let it, and the time has come to face facts, and gather the strength to walk away. The fact that your attachment is emotional, not simply practical, will make it far harder to admit defeat -- but once you do, you'll find that every grudging step moves you closer to the new world just past those hillsides which once seemed so far away. It'll break your heart to abandon that weighty accumulation of cups you'd cherished for so long, but if you're honest with yourself you'll admit that it's been a while since they brought you any satisfaction at all.

Forfeit doesn't necessarily equal failure. Goya abandoned one vision of the world for another, certainly begrudgingly and miserably. But I find this collection of paintings even more valuable and profound than his more famous work; the artist was able to communicate the changes that his heart and mind had undergone, and he painted them where he'd have to face them every single day. But the heaviness and hardship of that process is evident in every single panel. They herald a new age, but openly and bitterly mourn the loss of the old one.