I often match up individual tarot cards with music, but rarely do I find a song that encompasses a journey across multiple cards as elegantly as Morrissey’s “Let the Right One Slip In.” This simple, joyful song rests on the turning point of the Eight of Cups, pointing back to the Seven of Cups and forward to the Nine of Cups. The first three lines alone map out the path:
Let the right one in
Let the old dreams die
Let the wrong ones go
The Seven of Cups is all about spinning out fantasy after fantasy until you no longer know what dream to chase or how to go about making it real. You’re stuck in your daydreams, lovely as they are. Even if these dreams are achievable, your time and resources are not infinite. Sometimes the Twos of the deck ask us to make a choice, but here you are presented with a wealth of choices, not all of them viable or healthy. So you examine them, weigh the pros and cons, change your mind again and again, and don’t get anywhere. And not everything we dream about would be good for us. These are the “old dreams,” the “wrong ones.”
So you have to let them die. In the Eight of Cups, you recognize deep in your heart that something is not right. In a cycle of Ten, Eight is hard place to come to that realization. You may have built up these dreams or relationships over time, only to realize that they are not working for you anymore. Maybe they never did. And so even this far along the path, you have to “let the old dreams die” and move on. The Eight of Cups warns us against the sunk cost fallacy — the idea that if you’ve put this much time and effort and energy into something, you’re in too deep to get out now. If you abandon ship, all of that time was wasted, right? So you stay and waste more and more time. The Eight of Cups tells us that it’s never too late to leave something that isn’t right. The old dreams, the wrong ones, “cannot do what you want them to,” and “they do not see what you want them to.” It’s a stern but gentle truth: this isn’t going to work. Move on.
I often find the Eight of Cups evokes a somber, even mournful feeling. It can be painful to move on from something you once loved. You might still love it, your heart heavy in your chest even as you turn away. The beauty of “Let the Right One Slip In” is the sheer joy in the music, as if the singer is hurling themselves toward the Right One with open arms. Even if it hurts, even if it’s hard, this moment is good. In turning away from the old dreams, you turn toward the new ones. In letting the wrong ones go, you make space in your heart for the right one to slip in. This is the Eight of Cups as a celebration of what’s to come.
In the Nine of Cups, the “Wish Card,” you finally find that place of happiness and contentment. This is where the song leaves us, with the ecstasy of emotional fulfillment. It’s a joy so fierce it’s almost feral. It’s the rightness of the Two of Cups, but at the end of a long, long search.
Let the right one slip in
And when at last it does
I’d say you were within your rights to bite
The right one and say, what kept you so long?
What kept you so long?
Being a horror nerd, I can’t help but touch on the Swedish novel Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist and the 2008 film of the same name directed by Tomas Alfredson. In Let the Right One In (which is indeed named after the Morrissey song), a young boy named Oskar meets his mysterious new neighbor, Eli. Oskar is a lonely child, relentlessly bullied. Eli is lonely too. After all, being a 200 year old vampire trapped in a state of arrested physical and mental development would be pretty isolating. At first, there is a Six of Cups childlike sweetness to their shy courtship, which functions as a tender haven from their difficult lives.
Before meeting Eli, Oskar dreams only of visiting vengeance upon his tormentors. Before meeting Oskar, Eli seems to dream only of survival. But within one another, each finds something they didn’t know they were missing. They offer one another unconditional acceptance, and companionship, and love. But each has to make the dangerous choice to let the other in. After learning the truth, Oskar has to trust Eli, who could easily kill him. And Eli, who is much more vulnerable than she seems, has to trust Oskar.
In the following scene from the film, traditional vampire lore sets the stage for a crucial emotional turning point. Oskar, still processing the news that his friend is a vampire, tests Eli. Eli can’t come in without an invitation. Oskar refuses to give one, while still non-verbally challenging Eli to enter. Eli could turn around and leave. Instead she crosses the threshold, and her vampire body begins hemorrhaging blood. “You can come in!” Oskar cries, enfolding Eli in a gentle embrace as the bleeding subsides. For both of them, the moment marks a turning away from fear, from the safety of loneliness, and a turning towards what could be. Each of them makes the choice to trust the other, to open themselves to the possibility of harm that always accompanies love.
Without giving too much away, the film ends in a Nine of Cups haze of contentment, a moment of warmth glowing at the heart of a Swedish winter. It’s not quite a Ten. There’s a trail of bodies behind them, and the future is precarious. But for the moment, there is safety, and love, and the fulfillment of dreams so precious the characters didn’t know they had the right to wish for them.