Writing about 6 of cups is like writing about vanilla ice cream or mulled wine. It would be useless trying to understand it if it fails to go straight to the heart.
Nonetheless let us start with the obvious aka Book T.
“AN Angelic Hand, as before, holds a group of stems of water-lilies or lotuses, from which six flowers bend, one over each cup. From these flowers a white glistening water flows into the cups as from a fountain, but they are not yet full. Above and below are Sun and Scorpio referring to the Decan”, Mathers kindly informs us.
The Crowley-Harris image will do on this occasion, as it is an exact reproduction of what Mathers & Co. wrote, even though the Hermetic one is even more beautiful than this, but cannot be found online
Waite’s simplification is also quite relevant, white liquid being replaced with similarly white flowers. Kids exchanging flowers in the schoolyard, giving each other all they’ve got, their most sacred treasures. Innocence/nostalgia has thus become a common motif. At the same time, Waite reminds us, this could be a promise of certain future events. In other words, a transgression of the familiar is what we’ve been offered, something easily subject to idealisation. We do idealise past loves and we do idealise new lovers if the feelings are beautiful enough. Quite intensely so too, thanks to the Sun in Scorpio ruling this card.
So, what exactly happened or what is about to happen?
In an Iching vein, let us also remark that in the preceding card, 5 cups, all of the cups were empty, no beauty to be had, no solace, nothing to satiate the thirst for a certain warmth, a certain kind of beauty that penetrates every particle of our being and starts flowing, leaving us floating on air. And now here it is. Or was. Some people say memories are “the present of the past” in the sense that the past is unfolding in the present in moments of recollection and nostalgia. What we have is the gift of beauty and the gift of floating on air. We long for it if it is no longer there, yet it remind us of the possibility of beautiful feelings and the possibility of people we have these feelings for.
The meanings of 6 cups in a reading are all more or less similar, depending on the question and the surrounding cards:
– the “souls in love” scenario, a compulsive connection between souls
– intense longing for someone who is no longer there
– tenderness to the point of feeling incomplete without the object of the tenderness
– “boy meets girl”, innocuous uncontaminated feelings, an instant need to be around each other, because see above, the souls fell in love before the boy and the girl realised what happened. Emotional intimacy settled in before it was reasonable. The white flowers growing in the schoolyard in fact represent the transparent white liquid that flows in the hearts keeping them warm. Hearts full of soul, so to say.
Scorpio doesn’t rule out the possibility of sex, it rather invites it. But still this kind of sex has a certain hue of innocence, a considerable element of adoration and idealisation, mutual or not depending upon the question and surrounding cards.
At a certain point in time I also took note of the sentinel’s figure in the background of Waite’s version (yes, it is right there, on the left). This is almost as if he was there to protect the kids in the foreground, as if they had nothing to be afraid of. God does protect their tenderness, at least for now.
Deviant Moon goes on to even further deploy this theme of protection and “protected-ness”. Kids are shown watching a Punch show. To be more precise, a scene between Punch and the Devil. A popular version of a Punch and Judy play runs as follows: Punch kills his wife Judy, then kills whoever comes to arrest him, basically kills everyone and finally when the Devil comes for him, Punch kills the Devil. Punch himself is a derivative of Pulcinella, an Italian commedia del’arte character, commonly associated with the carnavalesque culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which is loosely translated as the culture of laughter/joy/celebration (at this stage I guess it might be relevant that the Golden Dawn name for 6 of cups is the Lord of Pleasure). The Devil can’t have us while we’re like this. While we’re poignantly innocuously in love. Because Punch will kill him, God won’t let him have us. And the Devil is a wooden puppet anyway, nothing like Trump no. 15, and Punch will kill him and he will keel over, how can he possibly have us?
And finally just because I love Miss Polly Jean, let her sum it all up
At the end of this burning world
You’ll stand proud
Face upheld
And I’ll follow you
Into heaven or hell
And I’ll become
As a girl
In the desperate kingdom of love
Jill's Tarot Space 