Skip to content
Mystorae

Six of Cups

A card the source ties to memory and the past, especially childhood happiness that has since moved on, alongside an alternate reading of new people and new surroundings.

Upright

  • memory
  • childhood
  • the past
  • nostalgia
  • things that have vanished

The source ties this card to looking backward: happy feelings that belong to an earlier time, like recalling childhood, rather than something being enjoyed right now. That backward-looking quality is the primary sense given. A second, opposite reading is also recorded in the same source: instead of the past, it can point to new company, new understanding, or a new setting, pictured as the same children now playing somewhere unfamiliar to them.

Traditional meaning.

Waite calls this a card of the past and of memories, of looking back as on childhood: happiness and enjoyment, but happiness that comes from the past rather than the present, things that have vanished. He notes an alternative reading that reverses this sense entirely, giving new relations, new knowledge, and a new environment, with the children shown at play in an unfamiliar place instead.

Symbolism

Six children stand in an old garden. Their cups are filled with flowers rather than any liquid. The scene is Waite's own gloss on the card image and is offered with the two divinatory readings above as its meaning: one of remembered happiness tied to what is gone, and an alternative in which the same children appear in surroundings that are new to them.

In this context

A relationship
In the source's primary sense, this can reflect warmth remembered from earlier in a relationship or from before it, rather than something being lived out currently. The alternate reading in the same source points instead toward new acquaintance or connection in unfamiliar territory.
Something about myself
The source frames this card around looking back on childhood and on happiness that has passed. One way to sit with that is noticing what from earlier life still shapes a sense of contentment now, and what has genuinely moved on.
transition
Waite's two readings sit in real tension here: one describes a pull toward the past and what has vanished, the other describes new relations, new knowledge, and an unfamiliar setting. Both are given in the source without one replacing the other.

Sit with this

  • Does this card's pull toward the past feel welcome to you right now, or heavier than that?
  • If this points instead toward new relations or new surroundings, what might that be referring to in your life?
  • Is there a particular happiness from childhood or earlier years that came to mind on drawing this?

Reversed

  • the future
  • renewal
  • what is coming
  • presently

Waite's own words for this reversed position are few and forward-looking: he speaks of 'the future,' 'renewal,' and something that will 'come to pass presently.' He does not spell out whether this is a welcome renewal or simply a change that is due. The traditional reading stays deliberately open here rather than promising a particular outcome.

Traditional meaning.

Waite's reversed meaning is brief and points forward rather than back: 'The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.' Where the upright card looks toward a garden of the past, the reversed reading turns the same scene toward what is ahead, naming renewal and imminent arrival without describing what form that renewal takes.

Symbolism

The imagery Waite records is shared with the upright card: children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers. Waite does not give a separate reversed image, so the reversed meaning re-reads this same picture, a settled, childlike scene of abundance, as pointing toward what is about to unfold rather than what has already happened.

In this context

Something about myself
Renewal named without detail can be read as room to define, for yourself, what in your life feels ready for a fresh phase, the source names the theme but leaves its content to the reader.

Sit with this

  • What would renewal look like for you right now, if you had to name it?
  • Is there a part of your life that already feels like it is turning toward something new?
  • Waite leaves this meaning open, what do you find yourself wanting it to mean?

Sit with this

Each meaning is written by us and grounded in A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), which is in the public domain. Nothing appears here until a person has read it.

Draw a free card

Source: Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), public domain. Six of Cups (p. 76). Knowledge version 0.1.0.