Six of Cups: tarot card meaning

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Six of Cups upright means: 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.

The picture

“Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.” A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1910

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.

Waite's additional meanings: Pleasant memories.

Reversed

The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.

Waite's additional meanings, reversed: Inheritance to fall in quickly.

In one line

Memories: old joys looked back on. (Esbat's own summary of Waite's meaning and picture.)

Where it sits in the deck

The Six of Cups is the sixth card of the suit of Cups, one of the 56 Minor Arcana. The other Sixs: Six of Wands, Six of Swords, Six of Pentacles.

In Esbat

Esbat deals a card of the day, face down until you turn it, and holds all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. The Six of Cups can be shared as a picture. All 78 tarot card meanings.

Sources

Meanings and picture descriptions: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), public domain, checked against the Wikisource transcription. Picture: Pamela Colman Smith, 1910, public domain. Like the app, this page records what the book says; it does not promise outcomes.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Esbat: Tarot & Book of Shadows, on Google Play

A card of the day, face down until you turn it, and all 78 cards in the 1910 pictures with Waite's meanings, upright and reversed. For Android.

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