MINOR ARCANA

Six of Cups Tarot Meanings

The Six of Cups is that feeling of home, of grounding, and of emotional support that we all look for from the people and places we surround ourselves with. It is an achievement in the realm of emotion and for many of us, this means happiness, contentment, and taking care of our inner selves.

It’s no surprise then that the Six of Cups can often be attributed to our inner child and how we tackle our role as both the parent and the child. Often when the Six of Cups appears in a Tarot reading, we are directed to that inner child and what it’s trying to tell us.

Six of Cups Upright Meanings

In the upright position, the Six of Cups focuses on giving ourselves the self-care we need and creating that warm fuzzy feeling that allows us to feel safe and secure in our own space. Some of the key meanings of the Six of Cups are:

Nostalgia
Recuperation
Innocence
Inner child
Belonging

The Six of Cups makes a lot of sense when you pair it up with the previous card, the Five of Cups. In the five, we are faced with an emotional blow that we have to make the decisions to heal from, it’s very much an open wound. The Six of Cups is our retreat so we can create space to do this healing, we surround ourselves with things that bring us joy, to help support us on this painful emotional journey.

Six of Cups Reversed Meanings

In the reversed position, the Six of Cups can hint that maybe we are giving our inner child too much control. Our inner child is having a tantrum and we are struggling to soothe it. Some of the main reversed meanings of the Six of Cups are:

Naivety
Unrealistic
Grudges
Maturity
Independence

Sometimes the things that happened to us as children can manifest in our adult lives. It could be trauma from neglect or abuse, a specific event that happened that changed your beliefs about yourself or changed the way you see the world. With the Six of Cups in reverse, we have to face the repercussions of these things, we start to approach adult problems from a child-like perspective and it creates chaos both internally and externally.

Reading Six of Cups in a Tarot Spread

The Six of Cups is often a sign to show ourselves some love and just enjoy the good things that we’ve got on offer to us at the moment. Some keywords I always keep in mind with the Six of Cups is home and family, because it’s a cup card it doesn’t refer to these things in the physical sense, it’s more about the feelings that these things can inspire.

It’s ultimately a card about emotional comfort and feeling a sense of belonging. It can also be a sign to open up to those closest to you and practice a more vulnerable way of being.

Six of Cups as An Invitation

The Six of Cups when read as an invitation invites us to feel the love, feel the warm home comfort feeling and allow ourselves to really sink into it. Take some time off from planning and working through the never-ending to-do list, take some time for yourself.

For Six of Cups, this invitation could be the following:

An invitation to spend time with your family
An invitation to think about what the perfect home life feels like to you
An invitation to connect with your inner child and check-in
An invitation to assess where your inner child may be taking over and causing issues within other areas of your life

Six of Cups as Sage Advice

There’s something very grandmotherly about the energy of the Six of Cups and this shows in the advice it can offer up.

Some advice Six of Cups may offer is:

Home is where the heart is
Memories of good times are just memories, reflect on them, find joy in them but don’t live in them
You are always allowed time to yourself in order to reflect and recuperate from the crap life throws at you
If we don’t take care of our inner child, our external adult will pay the price

Six of Cups as a Lesson

Lessons that the Six of Cups revolves around are about creating comfort for yourself and working on deep inner healing. If you get the Six of Cups with The Moon for example, then it’s time to learn about who your inner child is and what they are going through.

Some lessons that Six of Cups may offer you are:

A lesson taking care of your inner child and identifying what it needs
A lesson in what you need in your life to feel settled and content
A lesson in what it means to belong
A lesson in being an adult and when it’s ok to let that big kid come out to play

Six of Cups as a Redirection

Often the Six of Cups will appear to redirect us when we’ve completely lost sight of our inner child. Right now I’m thinking about all those movies of people who value their career over their personal lives and the journey they go on to rediscover what brings them true happiness. That is Six of Cups redirection, reminding us of what is really important in life.

As a redirection, Six of Cups could symbolise a need to:

Take a step away from the grind to immerse yourself in life and the things that make you feel joyous
Decide what takes priority in your life, rather than constantly just trying to push forwards no matter what
Let go of grudges that cause you to feel angry or frustrated, it’s all in the past and there’s no need to poison the present with it

Cups

The cups are the rulers of our emotional, intuitive and connected selves. It helps us to process emotion, share it with others and draw from it in order to receive intuitive messages.

The cups help us to better understand our emotional selves, especially as it can be a very unpredictable and often irrational part of the self. The cups allow us to break down the emotions and see what the root cause is.

Water

The element of air plays a role once again in this Sword card. We are once again focusing on our mental space, looking for ways to leave old beliefs and thoughts behind.

The element of air can help blow away anything that no longer serves. We also see the element of air at play in the Rider Waite-Smith card in the choppy waters under the boat and moving away into smoother, calmer waters. This represents a slowing of this air element giving us a chance to breathe and process.

Sixes

The sixes in numerology refer to success, achievement and in many ways, long-term growth. As the number six is double that of the collaborative number three, we double that energy to give us a huge amount of growth and support that will continue to provide structure for us long-term.

The Six of Cups in particular refers to that growth, showing us how our past can support our future or even affect it in ways we wouldn’t expect.