The Number 6

The nature of 6

The 6 is the number of love in its grounded, everyday form. Mother love, partner love, the love that turns up with soup. It rules the home, the family, marriage, community and service, and it is often called the Cosmic Mother, although plenty of the best 6s I know are fathers.

Its symbol is the six pointed star, two triangles laid over each other, one pointing up and one pointing down. Spirit and matter, joined by love. That is the whole job of the 6.

Where the 6 sits in your chart changes how it shows. As a Personality number, the face you show the world, it reads as warm, caring and mature, the person strangers tell their troubles to in the supermarket queue. As a Soul Urge, the inner wanting, it is the deep need to love and be loved, and to have harmony around you. Many Soul Urge 6s will give and give and call it happiness, and mostly it is.

Strengths

Nobody nurtures like a 6. It is generous, sympathetic and loyal, and it has a strong sense of what is fair. It will speak up for the underdog, often bluntly. It teaches naturally, and people come to it for advice whether it offered or not.

The 6 also has an eye for beauty: colour, music, a well made room, a garden. It is one of the money numbers, with the twist that money comes to a 6 through service to others rather than through chasing it. A 6 will nurture a small business the way it would raise a child.

When a 6 turns up as a Pinnacle, one of the four long chapters of your life, it is a season of family, home and service. Early in life it can bring an urge to marry young. Later it widens out into care for the community, and in the final chapter it usually means being surrounded by the people you love.

Challenges

The 6 can love you right into the ground. It takes on responsibility that was never its to carry, worries about everything, and can tip from caring into meddling and from devotion into martyrdom. It is big on shoulds: how a partner should be, how a family should behave. Those high ideals can make real people hard to live with.

As a Challenge number, the hurdle you are asked to get over in a given chapter, the 6 works in two directions. Some people are over responsible, rescuing everyone and resenting it. Others back away from love and commitment altogether. Both are being asked to find the middle, love that neither smothers nor disappears. Often the lesson is simply to let other people set their own standards.

The reverse side

Every number has a reverse side, the same energy turned around.
The 6 is one energy on a scale, and that energy is love expressed as care.

1. Lived well, nobody nurtures like a 6. It is generous, loyal and fair, it speaks up for the underdog, and people come to it for advice whether it offered or not. It brings beauty into a room, a garden or a family, and money tends to follow its service.
2. Overused, the 6 loves you right into the ground. It takes on responsibility that was never its to carry, worries about everything and tips from caring into meddling, and from devotion into martyrdom. The shoulds pile up: how a partner should be, how a family should behave. It rescues everyone and quietly resents it.
3. Underused, the 6 backs away from love and commitment altogether. It keeps people at arm's length, so it never has to carry anyone at all.

The smothering 6 and the absent 6 are both asking for love that neither smothers nor disappears.
Very often the lesson is simply to let other people set their own standards.
Care for them, and let them carry their own load.

For the wider idea, read The Reverse Side of a Number.

As a Life Path

A 6 Life Path is the road of the caretaker. Your life tends to revolve around home, family and the people who need you, and you probably found yourself holding responsibility from a young age.

The great lesson of the 6 is learning to receive. Most 6s are so busy giving that they do not notice their own needs have quietly left the building. You cannot pour from a well that has run dry. Learn to love yourself with the same care you hand out to everyone else, and you stop being a diminishing well and become a spring. You can find your own Life Path in the Life Path post in the daily posts.

As a Destiny

As a Destiny number, worked out from the full name you were given at birth, the 6 points you toward nurturing and service, and toward creating beauty, harmony and balance wherever you go.

Watch your choice of partners. A 6 Destiny can end up with a patient rather than a partner, and become the enabler instead of the nurturer. The other trap is damage control. When life is calm, a 6 will sometimes go looking for a problem to fix. Let the good stretches be good.

In a Personal Year

A Personal Year 6 is a year of home, family and the heart. Relationships come into focus. It is not unusual to see people marry, move house, have a child, or care for a parent in a 6 year. It is also not unusual to see a marriage that has lost its heart come to an end. The 6 has been called the number of marriage and divorce for good reason.

Give where it is needed, and check you are not carrying what belongs to someone else.

Across the traditions

In tarot the 6 is The Lovers, card VI of the Major Arcana, the card of love, union and the choices of the heart. The four Sixes of the Minor Arcana carry the gentle harmony of the 6 in different moods, from the childhood memories of the Six of Cups to the giving and receiving of the Six of Pentacles. Each card has its own page in The 78 Cards, and the links beside this page take you straight to them.

Who looks after you, and do you let them?

If you would like your own numbers read as part of a full chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
Six of Wands · Six of Swords · The Number 33 · Tiphareth, Beauty