Six of Cups
The Six of Cups dives deep into themes of childhood nostalgia, introspection, and emotional retrospection. It touches on the intricate relationships with one's past, the innocence and naivety of youth, and the practice of finding and caring for one's inner child. The card encourages looking back to move forward, blending memories with growth and maturity.
Keywords
Personal Introspection
This may be the most personally intimate card I have made for the deck, and it's a little funny that of course it is the Suit of Cups that has brought up such emotional introspection in me. Most of the cards have some kind of personal hook, something that I relate to in their meaning. It's a narrow, focused lens that helps me see the whole of the card and interpret it as I wish. And I’ll be entirely honest, some cards I feel a lot more deeply than others, and some I understand a lot better, while others I'm still learning about even after having painted my own version.
Struggle with Connection
But the Six of Cups had me stuck. None of the representations I saw really spoke to me. I knew more or less what the card was meant to represent - childhood memories, nostalgia, dwelling on the past, innocence, naïveté—but I had a difficult time connecting with it. In that, I think, I discovered my own personal block. Like so many people, but especially queer and trans people, I have a complicated relationship with my childhood. Being an immigrant is another factor. I came to the U.S. when I was thirteen and my childhood was quite literally left behind with all the physical attributes of it that couldn’t fit into the two suitcases I was allowed to take on the plane.
Reflection on the Past
I have a tendency to overthink things in my life, but when it comes to the past, I tend not to dwell and to move on as a kind of safeguarding mechanism. I don’t block things out and I do not repress—they’re there, and I try to see them for what they are. But I’ve always prided myself on being able to just set things down and leave them there while I kept going forward, because I thought this was a sign of strength and maturity. Sometimes it’s served me well, other times not so much.
Inspiration from Others
Right around the time that I was trying to parse all this out and come up with some kind of idea for the card, one of my favorite witches and tarot readers, Angeliska Polachek, wrote a beautifully insightful series of posts first on Instagram and then on her own blog about the practice of finding and caring for your inner child. Her writing touched me on a profound level, and I went digging through my memory box, which still houses the very few things I saved from when I was a child in Russia. I found an old blue plastic toy donkey that waddles across any smooth surface when you pull on his string very gently, my old homework book from 5th grade, and some old family photos. In one of them, nine-year-old me is standing outside on a sunny late summer morning in my orange flannel nightgown, hair ruffled with sleep, cradling a butterfly in my hands. I’m staring at it in open-mouthed rapt wonder. I remember that morning very clearly. I was staying with a friend of my mom’s in her country house in the Ukraine (my mom was divorced and working all the time, so I got passed around quite a bit between friends and grandparents). There was a big pile of fruit and vegetables we just picked from the garden, and a butterfly landed in my hands. I look like a happy kid, all things considered, and I was.
Card Representation
This memory was ultimately the inspiration for this card. The practice of finding that child you were and being nice to them when it’s hard to be nice to yourself—because they’re young, they don’t know any better and they need you. John Singer Sargent’s “Carnation Lily, Lily Rose” is one of my favorite paintings, and this image of tender reflection on childhood and its purely magical moments was another inspiration. In the end, I am really happy with the resulting card. It speaks of childhood, nostalgia, reunions (whether they be bitter or sweet or maybe both), naïveté and innocence, of looking back in order to move on. The garden that serves as the backdrop for the Six of Cups is similar to the one I drew for the Sun-also a card representing a child. There are some parallels between that Major Arcana and this Minor card, and I like that one represents the world in sunlight, while this one basks in the intimacy of twilight.
Fyodor Pavlov tarot
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