6 of Cups
The 6 of Cups is the sixth numeral card of the Cups suit in the Minor Arcana. After the rupture represented by the 5, the number 6 tends to bring a point of rebalancing — here, tied to memory, the past, and simple affection.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-22
Historical fact
Before 1909, the 6 of Cups was typically a plain card, showing six cups with no scene. Pamela Colman Smith introduced, that year, the scene now associated with the card: two children in a walled garden, exchanging cups filled with flowers. This specific composition, with its childhood atmosphere, did not exist in earlier decks.
Interpretation — Rider-Waite-Smith / Golden Dawn
Waite associated the card with happiness coming from the past — memory, things that are gone but still bring comfort. In the modern reading, the 6 of Cups is associated with nostalgia, childhood memories, innocence, reunions, and gestures of generosity between people with a longstanding bond. Reversed, it can indicate excessive attachment to the past or difficulty moving forward.
Interpretation — Thoth (Aleister Crowley)
In the Thoth/Golden Dawn system, the 6 of Cups carries the title 'Pleasure,' with an emphasis on simple, present satisfaction, rather than necessarily being past-oriented — a reading close to, but not identical with, the nostalgia emphasized in the Rider-Waite tradition.
Curiosities
- Art historians including Stuart R. Kaplan trace much of the visual inspiration for Pamela Colman Smith's Minor Arcana scenes to the Sola-Busca tarocchi, a 1491 Italian deck — the earliest known tarot to illustrate every numeral card with a narrative scene rather than plain suit symbols — which Smith is believed to have studied before designing the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
- The Golden Dawn assigned each of the 36 numeral Minor Arcana cards (2 through 10, across all four suits) to one of the 36 decans of the zodiac — a system dividing each sign into three 10-degree segments that originated in ancient Egyptian astronomy and was later adopted by Hellenistic astrology, as in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos.
This section presents one tradition's interpretation, not a verifiable fact.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the 6 of Cups mean in Tarot?
- In the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, it is associated with nostalgia, childhood memories, and reunions — moments of simple affection tied to the past.
- Does the 6 of Cups always indicate a fond memory?
- In the traditional reading, yes — it's generally a card of emotional comfort. Reversed, however, it can signal excessive attachment to a past that no longer serves, rather than simple positive nostalgia.
Sources
- Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City (1980).
- Arthur Edward Waite. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910).
- Aleister Crowley. The Book of Thoth (1944).
- Stuart R. Kaplan. The Encyclopedia of Tarot (1978).