Minor Arcana, Cups
Six of Cups
memory, childhood, kindness, nostalgia
Upright
In an old garden, an older child hands a younger one a cup full of flowers. Waite calls this a card of memories and past happiness, and also gives another reading: new knowledge and new surroundings.
Hearing from an old friend or thinking about your home town can bring real comfort. Let it inform what you do next. Ask what you loved back then, and find one way to bring that into your work or your week.
Reversed
Reversed, the card faces forward. Waite reads the future, renewal and things arriving soon, the garden left behind for whatever comes after it.
Living in old stories can delay a decision about a move or a new relationship. Put one keepsake away and make one plan with a date in the coming month. Memories can stay where they are while you go ahead.
A card is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
In Waite's words
Upright: A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as—for example—on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.
Reversed: The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part 3, on Wikisource. The meanings above are by Cast & Chart.
Card art by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.