Six of Cups

▲ Upright Meaning

The Six of Cups is nostalgia, innocence, and the sweetness of memory - the heart turned tenderly toward the past, toward childhood, simple kindness, and the gifts freely given. After the Five's grief comes the gentle comfort of remembrance and the return of innocence. To draw it is to be touched by the past in a kindly way: a reunion, a happy memory, a moment of uncomplicated generosity and warmth. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck a child offers a cup filled with flowers to a smaller child in a sunlit, old-fashioned courtyard, cups of blossoms arranged around them. The exchange of flowered cups is the giving of simple kindness and the sweetness of innocent affection; the children are youth, memory, and a time before the heart was guarded; the secure old courtyard is the safety of the remembered past. It is the warmest and most tender card of the suit, emotion at its most innocent. As a Six, it carries the numerology of harmony restored after the Five's crisis - balance regained, here as the gentle peace of memory and kindness. The Marseille pip, read by number and element, speaks of water settled into a calm, sweet flow. Six is the number of reciprocity and harmony; in the watery suit it becomes the giving and receiving of innocent affection, the comfort of the familiar past, the kindness that asks nothing in return. The esoteric traditions title it Pleasure - the Sun in Scorpio, the warmth and joy of the Sun softening the deep waters of Scorpio into gentle delight. Crowley's Thoth Six of Cups shows cups full and balanced in steady pleasure. Etteilla and the cartomancers read it as memories, the past, childhood, things that fade, and sometimes the arrival of someone from the past. The common thread is nostalgia and innocent kindness - the tender sweetness of memory and generous affection. In a reading the Six of Cups counsels the gentle embrace of happy memory and the offering of simple, generous kindness. It favours reunions, the comfort of the familiar, the recovery of innocence and play, and acts of giving that expect nothing back; it often marks the past returning in a kindly form - an old friend, a cherished memory, a childhood place. Its Sun-in-Scorpio warmth resonates with the gentle, reflective light of the waning moon. It reminds the querent that the past can be a source of comfort and that kindness freely given is among the heart's purest pleasures.