The Lovers as feelings toward someone??

[Richard]

No:

"This card represents sexuality and other forms of love."

- Robert M. Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, page 197.

To each their own Tarot.

Fer cryin' out loud, people - MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!

A helluva lot more fun.

Robert M. Place also has written that A. E. Waite had no interest in the Minor Arcana, which, in effect, has been disproved by Mary K. Greer's article in the 2006 Llewellyn's Tarot Reader. Wikipedia says that bears can't climb trees. (Okay, so I made up that last one.)

 

[tarotcognito]

Well, I posted that quote from Mr. Place not to make a point about who is "right" and who is "not" in this thread, but simply to illustrate what this entire forum and website are about: that the Tarot is a personal journey and each person will relate to each card in his/her own way. I have had the Lovers come up as sexual love. I have had it pop up as a choice. I have had it pop up to signify other things. To ME, it's ENTIRELY about CONTEXT.

To each his/her own Tarot.

PS: nn, I haven't forgotten I owe you a reply to your pm about the Wand courts. That is coming over the next couple of days.

 

[tarotcognito]

Robert M. Place also has written that A. E. Waite had no interest in the Minor Arcana, which, in effect, has been disproved by Mary K. Greer's article in the 2006 Llewellyn's Tarot Reader. Wikipedia says that bears can't climb trees. (Okay, so I made up that last one.)

Richard, I love your posts and am still your most fervent forum groupie.

I love polar bears (I'm Canadian, eh!) and I love trees. Especially sequoias. Big sequoias.

Bigger is better.

What is this thread about, again...

 

[novenovembre]

Richard, I love your posts and am still your most fervent forum groupie.

I love polar bears (I'm Canadian, eh!) and I love trees. Especially sequoias. Big sequoias.

Bigger is better.

What is this thread about, again...

About snakes being innocent and not evil, I think.....

PS Thanks, I'll wait for your reply....

 

[Richard]

Richard, I love your posts and am still your most fervent forum groupie.

And you're by far my favorite groupie of them all (not that I really know of any others).

 

[Chiriku]

Right back atcha, Lokasenna.

novenovembre, to answer your question: different religious traditions take different views of the stories and parables in the Bible. Perhaps there are some Jewish and Christian traditions that view the "temptation" in the Adam and Eve story as largely sexual in nature--I cannot speak for them.

The Western Protestant tradition on which I cut my teeth does not generally view the temptation as sexual, or the resulting infraction as sexual. In my tradition, the Adam and Eve story has more to do with the Tower of Babel and other stories in which humans seek to have out-of-bounds Knowledge--not of sex but of G-d.

The great offense that Adam and Eve committed was not in lusting for one another or other humans but in not trusting God and in daring to grasp Knowledge that was denied them by Him. Now that we mention it, it's not too far off from the view of the sin of divination in the eyes of many Evangelical Protestant Christians.

In my conversations with people who have studied the story at a deeper level than I have, the concept of Choice (specifically, Choice as intersecting with Love)indeed plays a large role here. "True love requires choice." Although I believe LuzBlanca was speaking of human, romantic love in their posts above, the posts did intimate something in which I believe: that love often implicates choice where infatuation, a fancy, or a sexual impulse do not.

According to this interpretation, God wanted Adam and Eve to CHOOSE to love him (and trust him). The Knowledge forbidden them became a sort of barometer of their love and trust, because it forced them into a position in which Choice was central. They could not merely worship adoringly or blindly; with their agency, they were forced to contemplate, to consider and to Choose.

Although the story is a handy metaphor for sexual temptation--and certainly, in the Western world, has become shorthand for it, with people associating the phrase "forbidden fruit" with sexual temptation--many scholars within the religious tradition I came of age in (and in other Christian traditions) do not interpret the story to be about sexual temptation.

That is my answer to your question.

As to the debate here over The Lovers card itself and how to interpret it in a reading, why such angst over the fact that several people have expressed an interpretation different than yours? As I, Lokasenna, and others in the thread have stated, it is a fact that there are many competent readers in the world and that many of them take divergent views of cards' interpretations.

There are some people who routinely see The Tower as sexual and others who absolutely despise assigning sexual characteristics to this Trump. There are some (me included) who tend to see the Trumps as greater lessons/challenges that are not usually correlated to individual people/character types or mundane events and others who delight in coming up with lists of literal interpretations for the Trumps (e.g. The Tower as last night's orgasm; Temperance as a bartender; etc.)

It should not be such a point of anguish that some or even many people take a different view on The Lovers than you do. I'm sure you will continue to interpret it as you see fit and, if you are an otherwise "good" reader--astute, emotionally intelligent, good with ideas and words, etc.--you will continue offering excellent readings to your querents that give them much useful food for thought.

 

[Chiriku]

The idea that the snake in the garden was the devil is also a non-biblical misconception which has doomed the innocent snake to constant persecution and physical harm.

Yes, and it also subtly reduces the theme of Choice and agency in the story. "The devil made me do it." I think the story is much more powerful without a devil-figure egging on the human.

The sign of The Lovers is Gemini, the Twins, mutable Air (referring to the intellect), ruled by Mercury (The Magician). Sex is more within the purview of Fire (the human spirit, the will, desires), Water (the emotions and feelings), and Earth (the physical body). Sex may be compatible with the intellect, but it is not a consequence of the intellect. I.e., sex is not the "meaning" of The Lovers Tarot card. This does not mean that love and sex are unrelated, nor does it mean that The Lovers card pertains only to Platonic or spiritual love (whatever the heck that is).

I happen to agree with all this, at least when I am reading within an esoteric (usually Golden Dawn-inflected) framework, which is often. I like to adapt my interpretory "lens" when reading with a deck that is either pre-esoteric (i.e. historical) or which follows a particular "system" the creator made for their deck.
.

 

[novenovembre]

There is absolutely no anguish or angst in my realization that people disagree with me, Chiriku, just surprise at the fact that a 5.000 year-old archetype of sexual love means something different to so many people......I don't expect anyone to change theri mind, just like I won't change mine....and not out of spite for LRichard or anyone else, but because, although I find all their ideas really interesting-including yours-they haven't convinced me about the core issue.....but that's fine, we're not here to win or lose a war, to use Lokasenna's "metaphor".....

 

[Zephyros]

The Lovers is one of the most complicated and obscure cards, as most Air cards are. The point I see is that, although I could drone on and on about alchemy and Qabalah and astrology (what little I know of it) although it could mean straighforward sex, that is but one of a a great myriad of larger significances. To eschew those, in my opinion, is to lose a huge amount of personal development connected to one of the most important cards. If I had to arrange them in order of importance it would be the Fool, Justice and the Lovers, in that order (all three, incidentally, Air cards).

A discussion between an occultist and an intuitive reader is doomed to failure, because personal interpretation can be used to justify anything, and can't be argued with.

Meta discussion aside, the idea of the Lovers is union through separation in one of its most abstract forms, and sex is but one way humans achieve that union, but there are many others, most far more mundane. However the Lovers is a card denoting the basic machinery of the universe in terms of anything that happens, happens as a result of two opposites annihilating each other.

Now, don't take me at face value, because the following will sound strange, but there is a point (I hope). If I am holding a pen, the Lovers would show I am "making love" to it, outpouring my own creative power, separations between me and the pen are destroyed (it becomes part of me) and together, we create something else, namely, writing. If I throw a ball, I am outpouring my "love" to it (creative force) and something new is created, inertia. The most basic spiritual mechanics of having sex and throwing a ball are exactly the same, as anything that happens is an act of Love. So, to say it is about sex is true, provided you're talking about having constant sex every second of your life with the entire universe. That, contracted into the mundane, in a reading could mean sex, but not just that.

Even the story of the apple illustrates this, but that's for another thread, which I would be happy is someone were to start.

 

[novenovembre]

The Lovers is one of the most complicated and obscure cards, as most Air cards are. The point I see is that, although I could drone on and on about alchemy and Qabalah and astrology (what little I know of it) although it could mean straighforward sex, that is but one of a a great myriad of larger significances. To eschew those, in my opinion, is to lose a huge amount of personal development connected to one of the most important cards. If I had to arrange them in order of importance it would be the Fool, Justice and the Lovers, in that order (all three, incidentally, Air cards).

A discussion between an occultist and an intuitive reader is doomed to failure, because personal interpretation can be used to justify anything, and can't be argued with..

I totally agree there. And (again, ) I NEVER said the Lovers is JUST about sex. (LuzBlanca noticed that, thank god) If I over-emphasized the sex it's probably because everybody else denied it. And if I seemed too aggressive or strong in my argument, well that must be my rising in Leo and Moon in Aries-for those who believe in astrology.....