Where Spirit Weighs Like Water

Decan Path- Cancer III-Four of Cups

Overwhelmed and emotionally spent, I turned to the image of the Four of Cups from the Somnia Tarot. Its visual struck a chord deeper than words—a figure burdened with buckets, crossing wet ground beneath a brooding sky. It mirrored how I felt: not simply weary, but steeped in the gravity of meaning. This piece is a reflection born of that encounter.

Four of Cups from The Somnia Tarot by @nicolasbruno

The Four of Cups from the Somnia Tarot reveals me in stark honesty. I see myself stooped, trudging through sodden ground, bearing the yoke of emotional labor across my shoulders. These buckets, these Cups, are not passive symbols. They are weight. They are history. They are love and duty and ache and inheritance.

This is not apathy. This is sacred exhaustion.

I have carried what was mine and what was not mine for a long time. Some burdens belong to my lineage, ancestral grief woven into muscle memory. Some are from my present—my home, my kin, my choices. Others, more elusive, are the unprocessed remnants of past selves. I do not abandon these burdens—I choose to carry them, not out of martyrdom, but from a place of clarity. I know now how to discern: what is mine to hold, what is mine to heal, and what is mine to hand back to the earth or to spirit.

The ground beneath me is wet, resistant, threatening to consume each step. I know this place well. The emotional terrain where each forward motion pulls me deeper into stillness, where the effort to feel becomes its own form of drowning. But I am not defeated. I am not stuck. I am immersed.

I used to mistake this moment for stagnation. Now I see it for what it is: an initiatory descent. This phase is part of my sacred shift, the transformation that demands my full participation. I am not The Fool at the start of a journey. I am The High Priestess on her Chariot, veiled in intuition, armored in silence, moving through the inner terrain where true direction is born.

Yes, I grow weary. But this weariness is fertile. It asks me to listen. It tells me that every drop in these buckets is a story. Every burden is a vessel. Every moment of seeming monotony is a space where spirit is whispering: Do not rush. Look deeper.

There is a sky above this scene—stormy, heavy, hiding things I cannot yet see. I know it holds messages. I know gifts are waiting behind the clouds. And I also know this: when I pause, when I breathe, when I remember the dignity of this slow becoming, I begin to see the shape of those hidden offerings. They’re not obstacles. They are answers wrapped in fatigue.

The Four of Cups is not where I stop. It is a rite of passage. A cup of shadow, yes—but also a chalice of deeper knowing. I am laboring not out of habit, but out of devotion. I am moving through emotional weight not to collapse, but to prove to myself that I can. That I already have.

I do not drop these Cups. I sanctify them.

This is not reflection. This is embodiment.

This is not stagnation. This is soul endurance.

And from the bottom of the last Cup, I draw the Moon—not just as light, but as mirror, memory, womb, and portal.

I meet myself there.