The Sixes

The Sixes are the sixth card of each suit of the Minor Arcana. They come straight after the Fives, and most readers see them as the answer to the Fives' trouble: things settle again, help is given and received, a way forward opens. Where Four was stability that stood still, Six is a balance that has been won back — steadier for having been tested.

What the number means

Six is an even number, and in the rhythm many writers point out, the even numbers settle what the odd ones stir up. The Sixes are moments of harmony and exchange:

• The Six of Wands is victory: a rider crowned with laurel, cheered by a crowd, recognition after effort.
• The Six of Cups is sweetness and memory: two children sharing cups full of flowers, kindness, the past remembered.
• The Six of Swords is passage: a boat carrying people across calmer water, leaving trouble behind.
• The Six of Pentacles is giving and receiving: a merchant weighing out coins for those in need, generosity and fair exchange.

In each suit the Six shows something restored — pride, innocence, calm, fairness. Readers often ask of a Six who is giving and who is receiving, since balance between people is part of the number's meaning.

In the Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn placed the Sixes in Tiphareth, Beauty, the sixth sephirah and the centre of the Tree of Life, the sphere of the Sun. Book T reads the Sixes as "definite accomplishment, and carrying out of a matter" — the point where a thing actually comes off.

Each Six takes the middle ten degrees (10°–20°) of the fixed sign of its element, its second decan.

Every one of the four titles is a success or a pleasure, which matches the modern sense of the Sixes as the easier cards of their suits. Crowley's Thoth deck calls them Victory, Pleasure, Science and Success.

The Major Arcana of the same number

By number the Sixes echo VI, The Lovers — union, harmony and a choice made from the heart; the lesson on the numbers mentions this link. Readers who add the digits of larger numbers also pair them with XV, The Devil, the shadow side of attachment. The link is a modern numerological one rather than a Golden Dawn attribution, but it frames the Sixes' question neatly: is this a balance freely chosen, or one held in place by something else?

Several Sixes in one spread

The traditions gave each count its own meaning:

• Waite: four Sixes mean "abundance", three "success", two "irritability". Reversed, four mean "care", three "satisfaction", two "downfall".
• The Golden Dawn's Book T: four Sixes are "pleasure", three "gain and success".

On three or four Sixes the two lists broadly agree — success, abundance, pleasure. In modern reading, several Sixes tend to describe a period of recovery and goodwill: things easing after strain, help arriving, relationships rebalancing.

In a reading here

When a spread is interpreted here, two, three or four numbered cards of the same rank are picked out as a pattern and given Waite's meaning for that number and count. A pair is noted only in a spread of seven cards or fewer, where it is rarer and says more.

Related

• Numbered cards (pips)
• The Fives
• The Sevens
• The Lovers
• Six of Swords
• Tree of Life