AUTHOR’S NOTE: For those unfamiliar with archaic music-industry jargon, “b/w” (“backed with”) referred to the frequently inferior song on the reverse side of a 45-rpm record that stood in stark contrast to the “hit” on the front side. In this instance it is being applied to the reversed orientation of the card in question.

As a life-long student of the esoteric tarot that originated with Etteilla in the 18^th Century and evolved over the next 100 years via several Continental occultists into the seminal work of the 19^th Century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its 20^th Century offshoots, I still scratch my head whenever I encounter the persistent and popular interpretation of the 6 of Cups as nostalgia for one’s childhood or at least for a previous state of contentment.

I view the Waite-Smith version as one of Pamela Colman Smith’s “canned narrative vignettes” that doesn’t square with the original Golden Dawn source material (even though both Waite and Smith were members of the Order), while the presence of children on the card strikes me as a “red herring” similar to the puzzling heart on the mentally-attuned 3 of Swords. Neither the Golden Dawn’s Liber T tarot curriculum nor the later Book of Thoth mentions nostalgia; Waite seems to have tapped into the writing of Etteilla or one of his followers (Orsini, LeMarchand) who attributed “pleasant memories” to this card, and Smith added the anecdotal specifics.

In the Golden Dawn canon, the 6 of Cups was presented as the “Lord of Pleasure,” which was applied in a straightforward manner to the “commencement of steady increase, gain and pleasure” (in a word, satisfaction) with no whiff of discontent. (Aleister Crowley termed it “one of the best cards in the deck.”) My opinion of Waite’s “nostalgia” is that it hints at wistful, bittersweet remorse or regret over a condition that can no longer be accessed directly to either relive its delights or redeem its shortcomings. The aphorism “You can never go home again” is pertinent to this state of rueful disquiet. We tend to filter these episodes through a golden haze of elapsed time that makes them seem more desirable with each retelling.

“Pleasure” past, present and future seems like a more reliable way the read this card because it requires no anecdotal manipulation. (Assuming that one’s childhood is invariably worth revisiting seems naive to me, so I can’t buy into the RWS image as cheerful.) The meaning of the number Six is “harmony” (technically “harmony restored” after the disruption of the Five) and the suit of Cups has to do with one’s emotional and social well-being; together they imply comfortable circumstances with no need to pine for something that can’t be recovered. I say “Just enjoy it while it lasts, don’t analyze it.”

When the 6 of Cups is reversed, it can indicate that even simple enjoyment can’t be achieved without making adjustments to our expectations. It may become a case of “a little goes a long way” (or so we can rationalize) or the proverbial value of a “bird in the hand.” We must content ourselves with what we can extract from lean times on the emotional front and let our idle fantasies go. This abstemious attitude isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it can keep us from mooning over something that is out of reach. In such cases it is usually more reasonable to seek gratification in small ways than to wait for a “big pay-off” that never comes.

A different viewpoint was offered by Etteilla acolyte M.M. D’Odoucet, who considered the reversed 6 of Cups to represent “the Future” (the upright orientation was “the Past”), so in the Etteilla universe we might interpret the reversal as showing “pleasant intimations of future conditions.” In line with the paragraph above, when this card is reversed in a reading we could apply the old aphorism “Take the cash and let the credit go” by cashing in now and not waiting to see what happens down the road. But I tend to prefer the Golden Dawn’s perspective across the board.

For a thorough discussion of all four Sixes, see the following links:

What About Those Sixes?

Tarot 101, My Way – Minor Arcana: The Sixes