SIX OF CUPS
Rider–Waite–Smith (1909)Key themes
Memory · Past happiness · Familiar surroundings · New connections
Card meaning
The Six of Cups concerns happiness connected with memory, childhood or a familiar setting. An earlier experience may continue to shape what feels kind, enjoyable or worth preserving in the present.
A separate historical reading turns towards new relationships, knowledge and surroundings. These are different possibilities rather than a single story: the card can invite attention to what is being remembered or to the experience of becoming familiar with somewhere new.
Key themes
The future · Renewal · What comes next · An approaching inheritance
Card meaning
Reversed, the Six of Cups directs attention towards the future and what is approaching. The emphasis shifts from an earlier experience to a stage that has not yet become part of memory.
An additional traditional association concerns an inheritance. This need not become a prediction of a gift; it can bring attention to what may be passed on and how an emerging situation differs from the past that helped shape it.
Image description
In a courtyard enclosed by old buildings, a larger child offers a flower-filled golden cup to a smaller child. Four more cups stand in the foreground and another rests on a stone pedestal. A small figure carrying a staff walks away at the far left.
Symbolism
- Offered flower cup
- — A gesture of goodwill within a shared setting.
- Two children
- — An encounter associated with childhood, learning and familiarity.
- Flowers in the cups
- — Pleasure expressed through something living and carefully presented.
- Old courtyard
- — A place that can suggest remembered surroundings or inherited habits.
- Departing background figure
- — Life continuing beyond the central exchange.
Card advice
Take what is useful from a memory, while allowing a present relationship or place to develop on its own terms.
Based on A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). Modern English adaptation — At Madame Shirley’s Table. Illustrations: Pamela Colman Smith (1909). Scan restoration: Steve P.