Six of Cups
Fixed water: alchemy, memory, distillation
FIVE OF CUPS
The Five of Cups contains Scorpio’s watery depths. In the Modern Witch deck there are three cups spilled on the shore, the liquid seeping into the sand. But behind the figure, safely protected by their body, two cups remain upright, intact. Perhaps they are looking wistfully out to the ocean, mourning what has been lost, or perhaps they are calmly watching as the liquid mingles with earth, sea, and sky.
T Susan Chang:
The 'philosopher's stone,' it was said, could transform any substance into gold.
I believe something similar is happening here in the heart of the Scorpion. The present is transforming into the past, taking on value as it passes from awareness to memory. Famously, the 6 of Cups signifies nostalgia; the light is flattering when we look back from our own sunset hours - as if our hearts place a golden filter of affection over the past. In turn, everything we created in life - affection, resentment, love, longing, hatred - carves the hearts of those we knew, coloring their pasts, altering their futures. That's the gift one person gives the other in the 6 of Cups. The point isn't the flowers, but the memory of receiving them.
Austin Coppock:
The dynamic suggested by the children is identical to the alchemical
process of mutual distillation, wherein the matter passes back and forth between one alembic and another, growing increasingly rarefied and potent. The laboratory technique of mutual distillation can be embodied, as well.
– Austin Coppock, 36 Faces
Ali A. Olomi: They will find wealth when they are aligned with their blessings and when upon a righteous path. Gold will come their way and they shall hold on to it.
Plant or flower: Rosemary (remembrance)
Cut flowers and cut herbs – from T. Susan Chang –
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
‘Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.’
Planet: Sun, Jupiter.
Tarot: 6 of Cups
Key themes: Nostalgia,
SCORPIO I + FIVE OF CUPS
This card correlates with the first decan of Scorpio. You can learn more about the decans here. And you can find out how I am working with these micro-zodiacal containers here.
Notes: 6 of Cups. This atmosphere relates to the card of love, nostalgia, childhood. It is a gift passed between two people – something unexpected but shared. Safety, security, but also a sense that this could be an illusion.
is what is being given too good to be true? Is the gold only on the surface? Is the golden light something that has been added to nostalgic memory?
The poison cure, pharmakon, something where a therapeutic dose is quite close to a toxic one, and that can directly relate to a drug but also an experience, a way of understanding life. adrenaline - a little can be enlivening, a spur to creativity and a lot can be aralysing or dangerous. everything valuable has the potential to be a poison cure - we can’t have one wihtout the other. TSC on light and shade.
Ritual: Visualise drinking from a cup and not knowing what is in it. medicine, psychedelic, herbs. What happens when you take the risk. what does it feel like. what happens when you drink from the cup? The dynamic suggested by the children is identical to the alchemical process of mutual distillation, wherein the matter passes back and forth between one alembic and another, growing increasingly rarefied and potent. The laboratory technique of mutual distillation can be embodied, as well.
– Austin Coppock
It speaks to a moment in the Sun where we merge with another and alchemize into something else entirely and in doing so, we become whole. This doesn’t necessarily mean merging with another human, although it certainly can be. Instead, it oftentimes looks like an all-consuming passion that both drives us and breaks us. Creatives are no stranger to the harrowing realities that can arise out of dedication to one’s craft — the gut-wrenching process of putting the deepest parts of your soul into something and then sending it out into the world. It is deeply vulnerable and that is precisely what we encounter in this face. It’s a vulnerability that is born out of a desire to be known, seen and affirmed. When the thing we desire desires us back, there is no greater feeling in the world, and when it doesn’t… it can destroy us (rather similarly to the nature of Libra II).
– Kira Ryberg
TAROT PROMPTS
Where are you concentrating on loss in your project?
Where are their hidden protections for your project?
What makes your appetite sharpest when you think about your creative work?
What do you need to mourn and let go back into the ocean?