Tiny Tarot Story
Read a short story inspired by the Six of Cups.
Sofia tried to be honest all the time, which meant she didn’t speak much. For Sofia also tried to be kind all the time, and the two didn’t always go together. These rules were what she kept from her parents. That and the house. Her childhood, she lost when they died.
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If Sofia was going to be honest out loud, then she’d write on her dating profile that she was looking for someone who could bring her childhood back. But the past was harder to reach than an inhabitable alien planet. She had more faith in people inventing rocket ships than time machines that could return the feeling of the first day of summer.
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Still, she went looking, went on date after date. Each an unpleasant reminder of the land she’d arrived in unwillingly, simply by getting old and accumulating losses. Maybe we are born whole and the years chip us into a new form. All these men, she thought, are misshapen. And so she didn’t speak.
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Sofia met him in the park after she’d already given up. They were reading the same book: The Little Prince. He said it reminded him of the things he wanted to remember.
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Sofia asked her parents to send her a sign that they approved of this man, who seemed familiar by his second sentence. Though maybe he was the sign. For when they were together, she remembered what it was like to be cared for. She remembered their love.
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On their third date they realized they briefly lived in the same town as kids. He remembered her house, her mom’s windmill collection, her dad’s garden. Sofia didn’t say anything—she was afraid she’d be too honest and scare him away. Anyway, the feeling was understood.
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He was the time machine. The years had carved her, the losses left caverns. He saw all that and suggested they get a dog, try juggling, go on a transatlantic cruise, do it all. We can’t let life win, he said. We can’t let it make us old.
Six of Cups Musings
Reflections
There’s one distinction in the English language I’ve always found particularly poignant and helpful: The difference between house and home. And what is the difference? Well, the Highwomen’s song “Crowded Table” goes like this: “I want a house with a crowded table / and a place by the fire for everyone.” That, to me, is the definition of “home.” A house that is full of love.
Or, we can use Greek mythology to illustrate the distinction: Odysseus did not travel for 10 years—past Lestrygonians, Cyclops, Charybdis, Scylla, and more—to go “house.” He was going home. Home, not house, is what we fight for. But can we ever go home again?
Home is reached in two directions: Backwards (the yearning to go back to an idealized place of comfort) and forward (the striving to create a new one). At its best, though, home is found in the present: No need to travel. You have arrived.
Within tarot, the Six of Cups is about attempts to return, or create, home. There are many different paths a person can take. When I see this card, I think of all the different routes.
Sometimes, home is found in person, like how the Edward Sharpe and the Magnificent Zeroes song goes: “Home is wherever I’m with you.” Within the Rider Waite Smith imagery on the Six of Cups, two people—two children, specifically—stand next to each other and play. Some people in life don’t make you work for their love. They give it willingly, and in doing so make you feel swaddled and accepted. You may not have felt that as a child. And if you didn’t, it’s not too late.
Sometimes, home is found by hanging out with the inner child. Going home to yourself. Do some crafting or coloring. Watch the show that used to be on re-runs when you got home from school. Get a hula hoop (they’re fun!).
Sometimes, home is walking through places you once lived, and feeling an ineffable and specific sadness. Because while you may be back, you’ve traveled so far. Going home can be like putting your head next to the lines on the side of a wall. Only then can you see how much you’ve grown and changed.
Sometimes, home is a conversation. We can travel through time simply by spending time with people who knew us when we were younger. You know when you reunite with high school friends, and rehash specific memories about prom and eighth grade Spanish? It might not be entertaining for outsiders, but that recognition—your memories are someone else’s, too!—is renewing for you. That’s Six of Cups energy.
And sometimes, home is simply investing in our actual dwellings. The first thing I do when I move into a new place is hang things up, make it an outward representation of myself. Anyway, if you’re reading this, it’s a sign to go de-clutter and make your room feel yours.
My Moon is in the 4th house, which—if you know astrology—means the next sentence won’t surprise you. Finding home is the great big journey of my life. I mean “home” both in the metaphorical and physical senses: Finding home within myself and other people, and finding a structure where I can be comfortable.
Creating home is not a frivolous or indulgent act, but an urgent one. To think! The Odyssey, one civilization’s most enduring stories, is not about setting forth on an adventure. The adventure is a chore, performed only to reach a place where Odysseus can be at ease with himself. In the Six of Cups, we find a glimpse of that ease.
Journaling Prompts
How do you define home? Use your senses to inform your answer. What does home feel like, smell like, look like? And how does that answer compare to your childhood home?
Can home be a person? Why or why not? Who in your life has felt like coming home, and how did you know?
If you could go back to your childhood home for a day, would you? If so, what age would you choose? What day?
When was the last time you felt at home? What changes, if any, in your life can you make to get that feeling back?
If you could live in the house of anyone you know, whose would it be and why?
Start a Story of Your Own
Write a story of your own inspired by the dynamics present in the Six of Cups, starting with this sentence. If you email me your story, I’ll share it in the next newsletter.
She and her friend hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. “There’s something I wanted to tell you,” she texted her, out of the blue.
Extra Credit
Browse Architectural Digest. Choose a house. Imagine growing up there.
Reach out to an old friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, or to the person who reminds you most of your childhood self.
Read the book A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf to invest in your space and independence, or Black Swan Green by David Mitchell to return to childhood, or The Dutch House by Ann Patchett for an engrossing novel about an obsession with home.