cups · Minor Arcana
Six of Cups
The suit · Cups
attachment, what you feel before you can explain it
Where it sits
Something crosses over.
How this suit behaves
Slow and wide. Cups do not answer yes or no; they say how deep it goes.
Take it into a reading
Someone from your past is on your mind, and the feeling is real, not nostalgia for its own sake. You can act on it: send the message, return the thing you kept, or say plainly that you remember. What you cannot do is make the other person feel the same. Reach out because you want to, not to collect a response.
I drew Six of Cups about this relationship. What is actually stuck?
Ask this →WorkAn old contact, a former colleague, a skill you set down years ago — one of these is still live. Pick it up. Reply to the message you left sitting. Offer the help you can actually give. Keep the terms clear and the accounting honest, because fondness for how things used to be is not the same as a plan for how they work now.
I drew Six of Cups about work. Where do I move first?
Ask this →MoneyMoney tied to family or to an earlier period is in play: a loan, a gift, something shared that was never settled. Look at it plainly. If you owe, say so and name the amount. If you are owed, ask. Do not let affection stand in for a number. Settle what you can and write down what remains.
I drew Six of Cups about money. Is it actually short, or am I afraid to spend it?
Ask this →How you areYou are moved by something behind you. That is information, not a command. Let it be felt, then decide what to do with it. Carry forward what still works — a person, a habit, a way of paying attention. Leave the rest where it is. You do not have to live there to visit.
If Six of Cups is naming a state I am in, should I rest first or move first?
Ask this →Questions
What does the suit of Cups cover in Six of Cups?
attachment, what you feel before you can explain it Slow and wide. Cups do not answer yes or no; they say how deep it goes.
Is Six of Cups a good card?
There are no good or bad cards here, only which side of one you are standing on. Upright: Something crosses over. Reversed: Slow and wide. Cups do not answer yes or no; they say how deep it goes.
Where this comes from
The 78 illustrations are the 1909 Rider–Waite deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951). More than seventy years after her death it is in the public domain in the US, the EU and Japan — the licence tag on every single file was checked on Wikimedia Commons. The original scans have had their outer border and title band trimmed, and one pass of tone laid over them so they sit with the frame. The frame, the banner and the card back were made here. The reader portraits are public-domain paintings — several decorative panels by Mucha (1860–1939), plus Copernicus by Matejko (1873), The Alchymist by Wright (1771) and The Crystal Ball by Waterhouse (1902). Their licence tags were checked one by one on Wikimedia Commons too, then cropped and toned to match.
The wording on this page is editorial — this site's reading of the card, not a quotation from Waite. Waite's own divinatory meanings are in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), which is in the public domain.