6 of Cups - Gestures of Simple Beauty
A little boy is giving a little girl a large yellow cup that holds a white flower and greenery. Both wear red hoods. Four similar cups each full of leaves and a white flower, stand in a line at the very front of the scene. One cup stands on a stone plinth behind the central child-like figure. To the left, a greyed-out person holding a staff can be seen walking away and along a stone path. The whole scene is taking place in the centre of a town surrounded by closely built yellow buildings. The sky is clear and light blue.
IV of cups from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot
If you’ve been following this monthly article over the last few months, you might have picked up that this month, and the last 2, I’ve drawn 6’s - the VI of swords in July, the VI of pentacles, early this August, and now for the second full moon in August, the VI of cups. A pattern that can be interpreted as a collective.
Three 6’s in a row seems significant enough to capture my curiosity and inquire into it. Moving beyond the stability-rigidity of 4’s, and the change-conflict in 5’s; the winter season of 6’s can suggest a return to some harmony-indulgence.
How are you being encouraged to be harmonious in body (pentacles), mind (swords), and heart (cups), as theme for the last few months?
Alejandro Jodorowsky sees 6 as signifying beauty, so there’s also a quality of receptivity, being pleased, and aesthetics when bringing harmony to body-mind-heart. Taken from the stance of beauty then, you could re-read the messages of the previous 2 months, integrating another layer of meaning.
What practices, attitudes and connections can you encourage that help you to soften, take in and appreciate your current circumstance.
How might you reinterpret ‘success’ from this receptive and aesthetic frame?
This month specifically, beauty is here by way of an unconditional gesture and offering from another. Because it’s cups, this means the sharing is heart-based, feelings, and relational. Here the cups overflow with lovely greenery and pretty pure white flowers suggesting sweetness, simple joy and pleasures.
The offering and receiving then between the children suggests a simple bond, even exchange of love, that’s gentle and without demand or conditions. It feels like a “I like you … will you be my friend” moment.
What relationships in your life feel effortless?
Can you just enjoy and accept these as they are?
Traditional readings of the 6 of Cups card are often interpreted as nostalgia and sentimentality; where the scene being played out in the centre with the pair of children symbolises a figment of memory belonging to the grey figure. Moments of reminiscence can feel warm and fuzzy and offer ease and pleasure.
And then also, living in the past and longing for a time-gone-by can have its unique problems. My daughter who is now nearing 20 years old, and has been living away from home for almost 2 years recently shared how she’s grieving for her childhood. She misses the simplicity of being a little girl. For her, the nostalgia elicits grief. Normal feels for this time of major transition, but difficult nonetheless.
What memories from your past or childhood - are coming up for review or are influencing your current circumstances?
For some, childhood was sometimes or often difficult, and the memories can be painful. Or at least, the difficult memories interfere and dominate. In therpay, inner-child work has become popular as powerful process of repair. In Hakomi , a mindfulness based somatic therapy, the missing experience of being nourished when hurt, is explored by going back to a memory and interacting with a younger you, to try and enact what was missed. To offer just the right reparative words, gestures or actions. This can be as an adult you, or a therapist, who enters the memory, and takes on the role of a “magical stranger”.
What is a memory that keeps coming up for resolution?
What is the ‘missing experience’ that child-you needs? What words or gestures might transform that memory into an experience of beauty and healing?
In a session with a healer I see often, a familiar memory of a singular traumatic incident of physical abuse and shaming arose. I’ve worked with this moment before with different people using different modalities, and each time a little more resolution occurs. This time, in active imagination, that moment was revisited with me as an adult re-entering the memory, to offer the missing experience child-me needed; of being soothed, understood and loved in a simple embrace. I could feel her-my child body as I held her-me. I could feel her-me relax, slow down and soften as I stood, hugged and whispered the perfect words of care, soothing, affirmation and love in her-my ear.
Much love,
Mendy