Another eight to study. Eights are when we have opportunity for stability, insight, pausing before climbing that last hill but with some valuable perspective to help guide us.
This is a call for healing attention. You are asked to see how clearly you can view situations, especially your role in them, and see how far you can move forward from where you are now. When I see this card lately, I feel that it is a call for healing attention. I use that word attention specifically. I no longer believe that we are Healed End of Story. Healing is a constant process. In our dominant culture, we want everything to have finality. We want gold stars and stamps of completion. But the reality is that life is an unfolding process. When we heal, we must know that we are committing to a lifelong process. Fortunately as we heal, we do make progress. This card is all about making progress in our healing.
So when you see this card, know something needs healing attention right now. Know that the work you’ve done for healing has made a difference. But the situation now needs new attention and new points of focus.
When using this card, I invite you to use that phrase: healing attention. That allows yourself or your client to know that this is a process. It is a journey and not necessarily a destination as much as we want it to be.
When we see this card we know that opportunity is in front of our nose and we must strike while the iron is hot. We also must be prepared to move at a speed that we might not feel accustomed to. And as we move quickly, we must stay laser-focused. So we’re being asked to do an awful lot using a lot of energy at once.
The figure here is alone and usually this card depicts groups, specifically nuclear families (because we all come from a normal one of those!). And when we see the look on her face, there’s complexity there. It’s not the pure joy we usually see depicted on groups of loving people. More on that in a bit.
Some depictions of the six of cups invite us to consider our childhood or look at our past through the lenses of nostalgia or innocence. The Six of Cups can sometimes represent the idea that we are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. But I especially like this representation of the Six of Cups. It invites one to go deeper and consider how our Roots impact us. What threads from our past and our ancestors’ paths root us now? This can be rooting that is grounded. But it could also be rooting that keeps us from growing. It is probably a mixture of both. Consider the rainbow of colors that make up the roots in this image. They invite us to consider the complexity of what makes us who we are.
This is never a card anyone likes to see in a reading but it reflects a common human experience and one needed for growth. The cups have spilled and are empty. Outside we see that the storm is still brewing. It’s not as strong but it’s still going. This lets us know that the situation is not over yet.
insight * clarity * compassion 