cups · 6
Six of Cups
Lord of Pleasure
The Six of Cups tarot card meaning runs through both orientations: upright, nostalgia, childhood memories, innocence; reversed, stuck in the past, naivety, moving on. Below, its imagery across the Rider–Waite–Smith, Thoth, and Marseille decks, and what the tradition’s writers said about it.
- Element
- Water
- Planet
- Sun
- Zodiac
- Scorpio
- Numerology
- 6
- Timing
- Scorpio season; cyclical; nostalgia seasons (autumn).
Upright
- nostalgia
- childhood memories
- innocence
- reunion
- the pure heart
- gift-giving
Reversed
- stuck in the past
- naivety
- moving on
- released childhood patterns
Six of Cups Tarot Card Meaning
Upright
[object Object]
Reversed
[object Object]
The image, three ways
Rider–Waite–Smith
A small child offers a cup of flowers to a smaller child in a pleasant garden courtyard. Five other cups, each filled with flowers, stand around. The setting is innocent, golden, dreamlike.
Four ways a reversal speaks
After Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals (2002)
01 · karmic
The childhood pattern reappearing; ancestral wound active in the present.
02 · shadow
Idealized past covering harder truths; nostalgia as protective distortion.
03 · blocked
Stuck in nostalgia; refusing the present because it doesn't match the remembered.
04 · returning
Someone or something from the past actually returning, with the gifts and the trouble both.
What the tradition says
Aleister Crowley · 1944
The Book of Thoth
Pleasure — Sun in Scorpio; the radiant feeling within depths.
Rachel Pollack · 1980
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Pollack reads the Six of Cups as the gift from the past — childhood remembered without the romanticization, or an old friend reappearing carrying something the seeker had forgotten was important. Innocence here is recovered, not preserved.
Mary K. Greer · 1984
Tarot for Your Self
Greer's instruction for the Six: recall a moment from age 5-10 when you felt fully yourself, and identify what about that moment you have stopped allowing. The card returns access to the inner child as resource, not regression.
Eden Gray · 1960
The Tarot Revealed
Gray reads the Six as nostalgia, old memories surfacing, sometimes a gift from the past arriving. Often a friend or family member reconnecting after long silence.
Shadow
The infantile; the one who refuses to grow up; nostalgia as escape.
More from the suit of Cups
Six of Cups combinations
Bring this card into a question
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