Love IS a Choice!
But when I've searched past discussions here, many of you seemed to think that The Lovers is ALWAYS about a choice needed to be made, and never depicts a happy or sensual relationship. Which strikes me as odd...I think it has to at least be considered as one of the meanings of the card.
You're presenting this as "either/or" (either it's "LOVE!"--with hearts, flowers and wedding bells) or it's "choices" which you seem to be taking as meaning a choice of what to wear in the morning ("Do I wear the red sweater or the green? Boots or tennis shoes?") It's NOT (Let me repeat that several times: it is not, it is not,
IT IS NOT) either/or. Love IS choices. Even "LOVE" with hearts, flowers and wedding bells. You have to make choices to find love, get love, have it and keep it. Or you do really imagine that the "positive" version of the Lovers card means that you don't have to make a single choice? Not even choose to say "yes" when he asks if you want to marry him?
History of the Card: originally it was called "The amorous one." Meaning, singular, "The Lover." A person who falls in love. And the picture was a guy with cupid and a woman. I.E. cupid deciding (
choosing) who should love whom. Later on it was called "Love." Just that. Love. And it often pictured a man with two women--one woman the matchmaker (cupid again, only an Earthly version--choosing who should be with whom). Some of the images suggested a man picking between two women (
making a choice). One pretty, one not, and the idea that "Love," true love, is not tricked by what is on the surface. It makes the right choice. And finally you get Waite with his weird Garden of Eden image and the angel. The idea being that Eve came from Adam, and the Angel represents that Gemini "twin-ship." Which is that the "soul"
chooses that which it recognizes as belonging to it. It's missing part, it's other half. Hence, the "Love" card becomes the "Lovers" because the two must be together in order to complete each other.
Thus the card is the *soul's* choice. What choice does your SOUL make. You see that puppy in the window and why must you have THAT puppy? There's a whole litter there, but only one puppy is YOURS. Why did you decide that? How did you make that choice? Your SOUL made that choice.
And that is "love." The Soul's Choice. The card has always meant: knowing what is the "right" choice to make you feel whole, complete, fulfilled. But that doesn't mean it's going to be an easy choice. You ask, "Can't it be positive?" and Wind says, "Can't there be a card about Love?" that's positive? And I say, there is.
The Lovers is it. It is about Love. And it can be very positive, as when you find that perfect puppy who will be your best friend forever. But positive DOES NOT MEAN SIMPLE. Which was Grizabella's astute observation. It doesn't mean you get to live happily ever after, the end, no problems, no issues, no complications. Your puppy will chew up your favorite shoes, will get sick and cause you grief, will need training, may growl at every man you bring home, and is going to be an issue when it comes to that new husband who will need to learn to get along with the dog as the dog needs to get along with him. And kids if you have them. Life isn't always negative. But it
is complicated.
Always. And LOVE--that choice which has you jumping into the deep end, maybe giving up all else and wading blind into an unexpected future, is the most complicated of all.
It may be the most wonderful, most positive thing that ever happened, complete with hearts, roses and wedding bells. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Choices like this never are, and they wouldn't have any real meaning to them if they were. Yes? THAT is why the Lover's card is a card about choices. Not whether to wear boots or tennis shoes, but the hardest choices you make in life. The ones where your soul knows what it wants, but it's going to change everything if you go along with it. That's Love.