Cult of Tarot Forum

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

(back to finish with symbolism interpretation as I'd promised myself)

In Qabalah, the traditional Tree of Diagram has three pillars with Kether (Divinity made manifest) on top of the central just above Chokmah to the right with all the esoteric attributes of Yang/Force/Masculinity and Binah to the left with all the attributes of Yin/Form/Femininity. This is well represented in The Lovers. The tree behind the male figure has twelve flame-like fruit. He is looking at the woman but not towards her face, towards her naked body. The tree behind the woman has the forbidden apples and the serpent whispering into her ear while she looks upwards towards the archangel who holds one hand over each of them in a gesture that both seems like a benediction but also a puppet master to me. The archangel is serene and genderless.

The archangel's hair is both firey and earthy, while it has the gold of divinity as skin color with the gold disk of heavenly light arrayed behind it. Its wings are the deep red of passionate intensity but its robe is the grey worn by the Hermit and others that symbolizes austerity and occult (hidden) wisdom to me. The fact that it has no legs, seems to manifest through a cloud hints to me that it is meant to be viewed as not of the earth whatsoever and pure spirit. The cloud might have the attributes of Da'ath, the Abyss since so much of this card has Qabalic symbolism and mirrors the traditional Tree of Life glyph.

The mountain in the back rises high but its not perfectly centered. Both human figures have their open hands pointed down, the woman's left hand seems to me to be summoning up the mountain in creatrix symbolism to me. I think its significant that the two human figures have their fingers raised towards the earth, the archangel has theirs towards heaven.

To me the symbolism of this card is about the inner process of the sacred marriage and the sublimation (transformation) of the sexual energies that is required for this inner union. As is - on a deeper level - the story of Adam and Eve.

The man on the TdM card has to choose between sex (his left hand is on the genital area of the woman), or God (his right hand is on his belt, he is restraining his urges)



On the RWS card Eve stands in front of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the tree we see the serpent trying to seduce her to eat the forbidden fruits. When the kundalini energy is used for sexual activity, it is the serpent that seduces and incites ‘evil’ (i.e. the animal drives). The Tree of Life, which Adam stands in front of, is full of flames; a reference to the kundalini fire. The angel gestures with his arms that Adam and Eve have a free choice between the two trees.

https://www.anne-marie.eu/en/tarot-6-the-lovers/