The 78 Cards
Six of Cups
Minor Arcana, the suit of Cups, the Six. Element: water.
Memory, childhood, and kindness freely given.
The picture
In a courtyard of old stone buildings, a boy in a red hood leans towards a smaller child and offers her a cup filled with white flowers. She wears a red headscarf and a white glove. Five more cups of flowers stand around them, four in a row at the front and one on a stone pedestal marked with a shield bearing an X shaped cross. In the background a figure walks away.
Upright
Six is harmony restored, generosity, and give and take. In Cups, it is the simple kindness of a gift from one heart to another.
This is the card of the past and of childhood. Old memories, an old friend back in touch, a visit to the place you grew up. The feeling of being small and safe, and of someone looking out for you.
Look at what the boy is giving. A cup of flowers. Nothing expensive, nothing clever. He bends down to the little one's height so she can take it. That is the generosity of the Six: giving at the other person's level, with nothing asked in return.
The card also asks you to remember the child you were. What did that child love before anyone told them what to be? Some of those flowers are still worth picking.
Reversed
Reversed, I read this card as too much, or as turned inward.
Too much is living in the past. The good old days polished until the present can never measure up. Holding on to how things were, or to how a person used to be, when both have moved on.
Turned inward is the memory you keep to yourself. Sometimes that is a childhood that was hard to look at, and the flowers are difficult to reach. That is worth gentle attention, and sometimes help, when you are ready.
To tell which, notice what a memory does to your day. If it sends you back to the present warmer and kinder, it is working for you. If it keeps pulling you away from the life in front of you, the past has too much of the room.
When it turns up
What small kindness could you offer someone this week, at their height?
Six of Cups has also been a Tarot Card of the Week. Read that post to see the card at work on a real week.
If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.
Related pages
The Number 6
The 78 Cards
Every card in the deck, upright and reversed.
See every page and post in the Contents.
The Members area has songs, Moon pages to print, the Sunday article a day early and a first look at new Library pages.