6 of Cups

  • Arcana Minor
  • Suit Cups
  • Figure on this site An old memory
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

Tarot cards began in northern Italy around 1440, as playing cards with an added set of trump cards. The four suits were already old by then. The Latin suits (cups, coins, swords and batons) came into Europe in the 1370s from cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada, where the equivalent suits included polo sticks, which Europeans turned into batons.

Numbered cards in early Italian decks were usually plain pips, with no scene. One report on the Visconti-Sforza Six of Cups, painted by the workshop of Bonifacio Bembo around 1450 and now in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, describes six cups set symmetrically on an ornamented ground of vine scrolls and small flowers, with no people. That description comes from a minor website and should be checked against the card itself or a museum record. The image of children and cups that is now familiar is from 1909, not from the fifteenth century.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

In the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for A. E. Waite, the Six of Cups is a scene: two children in an enclosed garden, one handing the other a cup. The cups hold flowers rather than wine, and an adult walks in the background. This is a change from the plain pips of older decks, where the numbered cards did not show a story.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

The Golden Dawn, a late nineteenth-century occult order, gave each Minor Arcana card an astrological attribution and a title. The Six of Cups became “Pleasure”, tied to the second decan of Scorpio, ruled by the Sun. These are later additions and have no connection to the card’s fifteenth-century origins.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: comforting memory, useful nostalgia, drawing from the past, gentle continuity

An old memory, returned to deliberately, can offer real comfort, a reminder of how things have felt good before and could feel that way again. This is nostalgia used well: as a resource, not a replacement for the present. Draw from it what's useful, and then come back to now.

In general: A memory or past experience offers genuine comfort and useful perspective right now. Let it serve you without dwelling there.

In love: Remembering an earlier, simpler version of a relationship in a way that reminds you what's worth preserving in it.

In work: Drawing on a past success or lesson that genuinely informs the current situation in a useful way.

Reversed

Keywords: avoidance through nostalgia, stuck in the past, present neglected, comfort as escape

Nostalgia substituting for a present that needs your attention turns a useful resource into an avoidance strategy. If you're spending more time in the comfortable memory than in the harder, more relevant now, the comfort has started costing you something. Visit, but don't move back in.

In general: Time spent in comfortable memory has started substituting for engagement with a present that actually needs attention.

In love: Idealizing how things used to be in a relationship as a way of avoiding how they actually are right now.

In work: Referencing past methods or successes as a way of avoiding the harder work of adapting to current circumstances.

Draw a card for a reading · How to read cards together · Reversed cards

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