I recently read that over 50% of all tarot readings are about relationships and that rings true in decades of reading for both myself and other people. Most of those relationship readings are about actual or potential romantic partnerships, about sex, attraction, marriage, fidelity/infidelity, and all the good, bad, and ugly that people in love say or do to each other. It's all complicated.
The Lovers Card is not one of my five favorites, but gosh we have spent a lot of time looking at each other. Its a complicated card because its about love and choices, often choices between types of love or different people we love (including our partner and ourselves).
The Seven of Cups is about making choices but generally smaller, easy ones. The Lovers to me embodies making the hard and definitive choices that effect not just ourselves but at least one other person in a really big way. Usually it appears in situations where there are two people either in a relationship or possibly about to start one and the querent wants to make the right choices in what they do. This card never tells me as a reader by itself what their options is or what the best or the outcome. I need context for all of that from the querent and the rest of the spread.
There are eight kinds of love according to the Greek philosophers and I have found this to be true in my own reality. Very simply put, they are:
Agape — unconditional, spiritual/universal love.
Eros — romantic love & lust
Philia — loving affection and admiration for friends and things we associate with our happiness
Philautia — self-love and self-respect
Storge — love of family and personal support networks
Pragma — patriotism, brand loyalty, duty/obligation coming from the heart
Ludus — the urges that make us flirt, joke, play with certain people without actual erotic desires
Mania — obsession, co-dependence, the love that creates stalkers and (possibly) victims of long-term consistent domestic abuse
When The Lovers card comes up in readings for me, at least one of these forces are in play. Actually, in all readings for me, at least one of these forces is in play, but with The Lovers, that force or forces = really critical to what is going on in what the querent feels and why they are asking the question they are asking.
I haven't even touched on the RWS specific symbolism and how all of this ties into the three figures but I think I will pause there today and give someone else a chance to build on what I've written and/or delve into card imagery first. I hope to be back tomorrow either way
