Six of Cups tarot card meaning
Six of Cups is the card of nostalgia, innocence and kindness. Sweet memory and simple kindness. The Six of Cups reflects childhood, the past remembered fondly and generosity without strings.
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Six of Cups upright
Sweet memory and simple kindness. The Six of Cups reflects childhood, the past remembered fondly and generosity without strings.
Its three keys are nostalgia, innocence and kindness, and upright they work together. Think of in a sunlit village courtyard a child offering a cup filled with white flowers to a younger child: that is the mood Six of Cups brings into a reading. It describes what is in view now; what you do with it stays yours.
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Six of Cups reversed
Living in the past, or idealising what was. Take the kindness forward, leave the longing.
A reversed card is the same card turned around, so Six of Cups reversed keeps its keys but shows them under strain. Innocence may be held back, or kindness may be leaning too hard on everything else. Treat it as a question, not a verdict.
What the card shows
The plate shows in a sunlit village courtyard a child offering a cup filled with white flowers to a younger child, more flower cups around them, an old house behind.
In the tradition this deck follows, the plate’s details are read this way: children as innocence and new life; and the cup as the heart and what it holds. Together they are why Six of Cups is read for nostalgia, innocence and kindness.
Six of Cups in love
For a question of the heart, Six of Cups turns attention to nostalgia. It may mirror a season of innocence in a friendship or a marriage, and it asks, gently, whether kindness is being offered as well as received. As a card of Cups, the suit of feeling, love and the inner life, Six of Cups speaks of love in the suit’s own tongue.
Six of Cups in work and money
For a question about work or money, Six of Cups brings nostalgia and innocence to the table. It does not say what a decision should be; it shows where kindness is helping and where it is in the way. Cups belong to feeling, so at work Six of Cups asks less about the task than about how you feel doing it, and who you do it with.
As a question to carry
What from your past still nourishes you?
Write it down, and come back to it when kindness next comes up in your week.
The suit of Cups
Six of Cups belongs to the suit of Cups, the suit of Water, which tradition gives to feeling, love and the inner life. As a six of the suit it is a card of harmony restored, of giving and receiving.
Read with its own keys, nostalgia, innocence and kindness, it shows water at one particular point in the suit’s story. See all fourteen cards of Cups.
Draw your own cards
Reading about Six of Cups is one thing; drawing it in answer to your own question is another. Members draw from the full deck in the Almanac tarot: the card of the day, three cards, or the ten-card Celtic Cross, each card read in its place.
Tarot is a tool for reflection, not a replacement for God, prayer, Scripture or wise counsel.
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Common questions
What does Six of Cups mean in tarot?
Six of Cups is read for nostalgia, innocence and kindness. Sweet memory and simple kindness. The Six of Cups reflects childhood, the past remembered fondly and generosity without strings.
What does Six of Cups mean reversed?
Living in the past, or idealising what was. Take the kindness forward, leave the longing. Reversed, it keeps its theme of nostalgia, seen from the side where it is blocked or overdone.
What does Six of Cups mean in love?
For a question of the heart, Six of Cups turns attention to nostalgia. It may mirror a season of innocence in a friendship or a marriage, and it asks, gently, whether kindness is being offered as well as received.
