Six of Cups
The Six of Cups is the card of two children in an old garden, one handing the other a cup of flowers. Readers traditionally take it as nostalgia, childhood and simple kindness. The Golden Dawn gives it the Sun in Scorpio.
- Suit
- Cups (Minor Arcana)
- Golden Dawn
- Sun in Scorpio
- Upright
- nostalgia, childhood, kindness
- Reversed
- living in the past, moving forward
Upright
Memory runs through this card. Readers see nostalgia, childhood, old friends and the uncomplicated kindness of a gift given for no reason. Waite links it to the past, to things that have vanished and to memories. It is often read as a visit home, a reunion, or a gentleness in someone that reminds you of being young and cared for.
Reversed
Living in the past is the risk readers name here, holding on to how things were instead of how they are. The reversal is also read the other way, as the choice to move forward, leaving a childhood town or an old story behind and letting the present take its place.
In love and at work
Old flames and first loves are part of this card, so readers apply it to romance as sweetness, innocence or an old connection returning. In professional questions, it is read as returning to a craft someone loved early, working with children, or leaning on long-standing colleagues who share your history.
In the picture
In a garden before old stone buildings, a small boy leans toward a smaller girl, offering her a cup filled with white star-shaped flowers. Other cups of flowers stand around them. In the background a guard with a spear walks away. The setting is a courtyard that looks centuries old.
In a Caelumia profile
When Six of Cups comes up upright in a Caelumia reading, it counts toward these themes for that day, alongside the rest of the profile: Nurture, Emotional depth, Play.
Sources
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Waite's own guide to the deck he designed with Pamela Colman Smith, with each card's divinatory meanings.
- Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (1890s, published by Israel Regardie in The Golden Dawn (1937 to 1940)). The source of the planetary, zodiac and elemental attributions of the cards.
Updated September 28, 2026.
See it in your own profile
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