Tarot: Six of Cups and The Lovers manifesting in the Minors

That's the trouble with being in one of those phases where you go into accelerated occult learning mode, the universe throws so much at you in one go that it's difficult to keep up. And not only that, but the lessons are related to each other, at least in the rather strange interconnected world of the magical person.
Hard on the heels of the 6 of Pentacles as my daily draw comes the 6 of Cups. What the 6 of Pentacles had for me on this time round was that it is a card of balancing, accounting, and obviously for us English speakers accounting has a specific connotation of making the books and money balance, hence the scales which occur in the RWS depiction of the 6 of Pentacles. The connection between that card of and the 6 of Cups is that this card is also indicating a sense of balancing and accounting for me.
As usual, book definitions first. I find Etteilla's keywords for this card particularly interesting: right way up it means the past, and reversed it means the future. The past, of course, suggests reviewing what has happened in the past, and this card therefore has an implication of learning from the past in order to reframe the future. You will of course note that I don't do predictive readings as such; I'm a witch, not a fortune teller, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a little thing like Fate dictate what happens to me.
Of course the necessity of examining the past is never a comfortable one. I have been told in the past that I have a bias towards interpreting this card in a 'reversed' sort of way anyway. I personally tend to think of it as the 'get in the car, I have candy' card, which is about as reversed as you can get, and sure enough I find that whenever anyone is screwed up by their past this card will occur in a spread. Take Zippy, my erstwhile 'manager', for example: it is amazing how often the subject of incest comes up in her conversation, and this card will always appear in any spread about her. I'm using her as an example, because she continues not to learn from previous experience and is hell-bent on trying to play happy families with her obviously gay husband and her repeated failed attempts to have the happy family life she craves.
I use her as an example to bring up the point of this card for me. The reality is that family life (and the watery, emotional accounting which this card implies will take place in the context of some sort of family for everyone) is often not happy, and unfortunately our society makes it difficult for us to come to terms with this fact. 'Honour your father and mother' says the Bible, and unfortunately this tenet is often understood in the light of the Christian imperative to forgive, so that it can be unconsciously twisted so that abuse is ignored or swept under the carpet.
For me this card has a very clear message of 'honour your father and mother', but I have picked up the Biblical precept and run with it to a place which a lot of people wouldn't like. To honour your father and mother means not to forget the legacy they have left you. Not just in a cerebral way of thinking about it (more a swordy sort of thing) but in a way which acknowledges the emotions as well. Sometimes this legacy will be a difficult one, even if it doesn't include stuff which the world would necessarily consider abuse. They f!ck you up, your mum and dad, and this is the card which indicates a need to acknowledge that, or the fact of it happening, or the fact of having worked through it and sitting with it.
The sixes for me all involve this element of stopping and thinking about it: not surprisingly since they relate to the Major Arcana VI: The Lovers, which traditionally shows three figures rather than the two idyllic figures depicted in the RWS tarot. The third figure is the mother in law, and this card traditionally indicated a decision, specifically the sort of decisions young adults make in deciding to go off on their own to make their own family. Traditionally the card places it in the context of a young man deciding between his mother and his lover (and I will leave the complex relationships and emotions which could be indicated by this dynamic to the reader's imagination). The six of Cups comes into play here, because while we humans all make our own mistakes in addition to repeating some of the ones ingrained into us by our parents, there is an element in this card of learning from the past, coming to terms with it in whatever way the querent is comfortable with, and not letting the past influence the future. This is the way to move on from my sense of discomfort with this card: I have been reading it in a context of being f!cked up by your parents and winding up living in a way which was dictated by the past. To move on, you have to sit with the past, learn from it, but not let it dictate the future.


Image credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovers