Minor Arcana · Cups · water
Six of Cups
Six of Cups in tarot is a card of nostalgia, warm memories and innocence.
Key meanings
- nostalgia
- warm memories
- innocence
- tenderness
- childhood
Six of Cups upright
Warm nostalgia and a pure heart: sweet memories and simple kindness.
The shadow side
Slipping off into a warm 'once upon a time' when life is calling you into today.
Six of Cups reversed
Getting stuck in the past, idealizing 'how it used to be,' an unwillingness to grow up.
Six of Cups as the card of the day
Today your heart leans back toward the past, toward simple joys and a sweetness where everything felt warm and kind. Let yourself have that tenderness, like a sip from a childhood cup. These bright roots are good to draw from, as long as you don't move in and live there.
The question this card asks
What warm memory feeds you, and could it be quietly keeping you in the past?
Six of Cups: yes or no?
yes
Six of Cups is warmth and familiar faces from before. Yes, gently.
The scale runs from yes to no through three middle steps, and the water in this card lands it on yes.
One card only leans on a closed question, and here it leans through its theme of nostalgia. Pull your own card →
Every card is a mirror, not a verdict. Walk the other arcana and listen to what they say together.
✦ See all 56 Minor ArcanaFAQ
Good card or bad one - what is Six of Cups (water)?
The deck holds no plainly bad card. The themes here are nostalgia and warm memories, and whether the card falls kind or hard is set by your question and by the position it lands in, upright or reversed. I am not here to frighten you.
Major arcanum or minor - and what does water say about Six of Cups?
Minor, suit of Cups (water). The fifty-six minors are the deck's daily life and the twenty-two majors its great turns, and this daily life moves with water.
Which cards stand next to Six of Cups in the suit of water?
Five of Cups comes before it in the suit and Seven of Cups after. The fourteen steps go from Ace to King, and each of them is coloured by water.
Reversed, does Six of Cups (water) mean the opposite?
Set the right way up, the card speaks of nostalgia and warm memories without a mute on it. Reversed, the card holds the same theme with the brake on, and water shows where the movement jams.