The Classic Deck
Six of Cups in the 1909 Rider–Waite
The deck most readers start with — and the one our meanings are built on.
Affiliate link · how it supports SolsTarot
✦ A candle for this card
Ships within Canada only
Amber Vanilla by Feu&Co
Warm, golden and tender, for the heart-centred questions the Cups bring with Six of Cups.
Soy waxWooden wick≈ 50 h burnMade in Montréal
−10% with code MAUDED15, applied automatically
Not in Canada? See the international pick · All Feu&Co scents
Affiliate link · how it supports SolsTarot
✦ A candle for this card
Ships worldwide
An amber and vanilla candle
Warm, golden and tender, for the heart-centred questions the Cups bring with Six of Cups.
Soy waxWooden wickWorldwide
Any candle you love works too · In Canada? See our Canadian pick
Affiliate link · how it supports SolsTarot
✦ Minor Arcana · Suit of Cups · VI ✦
Six of Cups
“Some gifts are given before we know what they are. We spend a lifetime unwrapping them.”
General Meaning
The Six of Cups is a journey back — to innocence, to simplicity, to the places and people and feelings that formed us. In the Rider-Waite-Smith, a child hands another child a cup filled with white flowers in a sheltered garden; a hooded figure walks away in the background, releasing the past into the hands of the present.
The six cups are filled with flowers — a gift freely given, uncomplicated by expectation or condition. This card speaks of reunion with someone from the past, a return to one’s roots, the healing comfort of nostalgia, or the simple joy of giving and receiving without agenda.
In Love & Relationships
A past love may reappear, or a current relationship may be enriched by revisiting shared memories and the tenderness of its early days. The Six of Cups in a love reading often carries a quality of gentle, uncomplicated affection — love without the armour.
In Career & Purpose
Work that connects to childhood gifts or early passions. A return to an old career path or collaboration with someone from your professional past. What did you love doing before you were told it wasn’t practical?
Spiritually
The inner child appears here. Healing work that involves revisiting early experiences with compassion and gentleness is powerfully supported now. The Six of Cups says: the child within you still has something to offer the adult you have become.
Reversed Meaning
Living too deeply in the past — nostalgia becoming a way to avoid the present. Or a refusal to draw on the wisdom of past experience. The reversed Six of Cups asks you to honour memory without letting it hold you captive.
Advice
Return to the places that shaped you — not to stay, but to remember who you were before the world complicated things.
✦ Six of Cups Combinations
When Six of Cups meets another card, its meaning deepens. Explore its most powerful pairings:
✦ Written by
Maude
Tarot reader, writer and creator of SolsTarot, in Québec. Every card, combination and ritual on this site is written here, for you, from the Rider-Waite tradition.
✦ Everything here is free ✦
Keep your sky
Every reading on SolsTarot is free, and it will stay that way. The Keepsake Birth Chart, a book and a framed chart made from your own sky, is the only thing we sell.
The Keepsake is optional, paid once · Ko-fi from $3, if you simply want to say thank you