The Lovers as Ultimate Potential

Rachx

Not a teacher or spiritual leader. A "Matchmaker." Everyone goes to someone to help them find their perfect match somewhere along the line. The College kid goes to a counselor to help them decide on a major that is right for them; the young person searching for work goes to another expert to find them the perfect job. You go to a real estate agent to help you find that home you'll love and want to live in forever. People even go to dog experts to help them find the perfect pet--the one that's just right for them.



Matchmakers are more than those who just find you the right partner.



These aren't spiritual leaders who guide a person through difficulties, nor a teacher who give students lessons so they can become whatever they're trying to become. These are people who figure out *who you are* and *what you need* to be "whole." To be all you were meant to be. And they connect you up with that thing or activity or work or person.



They are matchmakers.



I love this idea of the "matchmaker" in lovers because it stresses the element of decision making. Lovers can be a card of deciding whether or not to go for the "match"offered by the matchmaker. It makes spiritual sense to me now of how this card fits within different contexts! So in the real estate example; the client needs to decide if they are going for the house suggested, in the college kid example he needs to decide if he will take up the suggestion. So metaphysically speaking deciding to accept that which may make the person whole. Thank you Thirteen for the insight xxx
 

Trogon

I don't know for sure if it will help. But another thing I feel about The Lovers (especially the RWS and it's clones) is the pursuit of enlightenment. It had come up in a reading several years ago and ended up in my journal. The triangle of the Man/Woman/Angel pretty well describes a path. The Man representing the Conscious Mind, the Woman representing the Subconscious Mind and the Angel representing the Superconscious. So, the Conscious Mind must go through the Subconscious to connect to the Superconscious. They can also represent the Body-Mind-Spirit connection in the same way.
 

Thirteen

I think we're quibbling over semantics at this point.
Would you say we were arguing over semantics if you'd said: "... wouldn't the 'matchmaker' be...Someone like a plumber or a hairdresser?" :D Because I've had plumbers and hairdressers who've been great matchmakers. "I know a person with dog..." or "I know a place that's opening up..." Things that have led to true love. But that doesn't make them "matchmakers" by way of profession and training. Ditto with teachers and spiritual leaders.

Which is all to say, any individual, in any profession, can be a matchmaker (be the angel of inspiration there) at any given time. But if you're taking about advising someone that their potential is in matchmaking, then you need to think of how this person might train and study to do this. Sharpen their talents as it were. Learning to be teacher or spiritual leader won't help sharpen their matchmaking talents any more than becoming a plumber or hairdresser. But there are careers that will sharpen those talents, and allow them to do matchmaking as a profession.

If you're going to look at that angel and say "this is what you have the potential to be" then, yes, we need to quibble. Because a math teacher isn't there to find you a boyfriend. And a yogi isn't there to find you one either, even if, as people who know you, they may be able to do so. ;)
 

headincloud

The Lovers is traditionally a card about moral choice. RWS deck the burning tree behind the man with 12 glowing flames is the tree of life whilst the fruit bearing tree behind the woman is the tree of knowledge and it's fruits represent sexuality - fornication, desire and temptation of the physical senses, which lead to human suffering.

The tree of knowledge represents the desire for sensation thus represents the primordial choice - to eat of the fruits and know sexuality and therefore know suffering or to ascend up the Tree of Life towards God.

The male figure in the card is the mind and rationality, the female rep heart and emotions and the choice is between mind and heart with ethical implications.

In one sense it's about love versus lust, immaculate sexuality versus fornication, the person will choose what complies with his/her ethical standards and the lovers implies a moral duty to choose wisely thus achieving union. Often comes up when we face a choice between two paths, one wilfully hedonistic or one grounded in a sense of ethical duty so we're wrestling with the devil.

I can see where you're coming from with the blending and balancing opposites to achieve union, like the ancient art of Tantra or simply the love that unites all of humanity through integration of masculine and feminine polarities.

As a life path card these issues may be a running theme in the sitters life but the potential is there for achieving union. On the good side this card indicates affections and desires on a high moral, aesthetic and physical plane, on the bad side inherent in the upright orientation there may be unfulfilled desires, sentimentality and indecisiveness.

5W I'd suggest an inner battle and the devil should be clearer now.
 

wheelie

Ha-ha :laugh: The Devil is a matchmaker, too.

Those lovers in card 15 are enthralled to each other's bodies, celebrity, success, money, or whatever. Or even just addicted to each other: C.S. Lewis writes that when Love becomes a god, it becomes a demon. Because another person is NOT all that completes any of us, unless we are co-dependent.

Any imbalance or addiction can apply, though, I guess.
 

Charlie Brown

But if you're taking about advising someone that their potential is in matchmaking, then you need to think of how this person might train and study to do this.
Well, that's not anything even remotely close to what I'm doing at the moment but I appreciate the admonition in so far as it's motivated by a concern for the querent.

I think there are certain things I'm not articulating clearly here and I think there are also certain inconsistencies in what I hear you saying (which may, of course, be different from what you've said). You've said here and in your card description page that the kind of choices in The Lovers aren't necessarily about a romantic parter but you're also dismissing my thoughts (in part, I think, because I haven't been especially good at articulating them) because a plumber isn't going to find you a girlfriend. If the two figures are Adam and Eve then the winged figure, whoever it is, isn't the matchmaker because it was gød himself who gave Eve to Adam. The understanding I'm developing at this moment is more like your phrase "angel of inspiration"-- someone who can help a person discover their truer selves so that they can make the truer choices.
 

Charlie Brown

The triangle of the Man/Woman/Angel pretty well describes a path. The Man representing the Conscious Mind, the Woman representing the Subconscious Mind and the Angel representing the Superconscious. So, the Conscious Mind must go through the Subconscious to connect to the Superconscious. They can also represent the Body-Mind-Spirit connection in the same way.

That's nice imagery. When you say 'superconscious' is that the same thing as what Freud calls the superego? I've never really studied much of that and wasn't quite able to grasp (in the little gloss of Freud that I had) quite what the super-ego was. Is it like our sense of moral regulation that tempers the desires of the ego and quells the fears of the subconscious?

RWS deck the burning tree behind the man with 12 glowing flames is the tree of life
If that's the Tree of Life (and that makes sense if Eve is by the Tree of Knowledge) then do you know why it has 12 flames? I know very little about that end of things, but isn't the Tree of Life generally presented as having 10 parts?

I can see where you're coming from with the blending and balancing opposites to achieve union, like the ancient art of Tantra or simply the love that unites all of humanity through integration of masculine and feminine polarities.

Thanks. I appreciate the picture you paint about The Lovers and explicitly moral choices. Do you see that as something specific to the RWS (since you based most of your explanation on its imagery) or is it something you feel is inherent to all/most versions of the card. At first blush, I'm having a hard time unifying the idea of moral choice with the idea of making choices that are true and authentic to an individual. That seems to imply that people are inherently moral at their core, which is a hard sell for me.

C.S. Lewis writes that when Love becomes a god, it becomes a demon.
That's a GREAT quotation. I've never read that before.

Because another person is NOT all that completes any of us
Jerry McGuire disagrees (rofl)

Any imbalance or addiction can apply, though, I guess.
I think Robert Plamer had a song about that.
 

wheelie

I just finished the chapter on The Lover card (TdM) in Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

The anonymous author really focuses on Eden, both the choice of 2 and the perfect unity of 2--but mostly on the temptation. She or he says the temptation is to naturalism, to lust for the physical world, doing everything through natural means, the will to power and to rely on self rather than grace.

In this interpretation, the card is all about true Love with a capital L: Agape, brotherly love, godly love, chastity!

The author charts Hermetics through Paradise Lost and then Paradise Regained when Christ is tempted in the desert in three different ways.

It's a pretty dense read but is on page 123 of the linked document above.

Also here are some of the C.S. Lewis quotes about love (mostly Eros or physical love) becoming a demon when we make it a god: http://whatcslewissaid.com/love-gone-bad
 

Charlie Brown

Thank you for the resources, Wheelie. There's a lot to get through. If the meanings weren't so multi-valent and open, I suppose it would just be an oracle deck :)
 

Trogon

That's nice imagery. When you say 'superconscious' is that the same thing as what Freud calls the superego? I've never really studied much of that and wasn't quite able to grasp (in the little gloss of Freud that I had) quite what the super-ego was. Is it like our sense of moral regulation that tempers the desires of the ego and quells the fears of the subconscious?

[caveat; I am not a psychologist - I'm basing this off of some very eclectic reading and my own meditations among other things.]

I've gotten the term "superconscious" from some book or other, so that's what came to mind when I wrote the note in my journal. I guess a better term is Collective Unconscious. This is apparently a term coined by Jung and refers to the shared unconscious that we all have access to. The linked article is on Wikipedia and says things a lot better than I. Another way I have of thinking of it (which, admittedly, may be mistaken) is the Divine Consciousness. So, basically, we're seeking a path to enlightenment through our own subconscious - which is, I believe, how we reach these higher planes when we meditate.

If the meanings weren't so multi-valent and open, I suppose it would just be an oracle deck :)

You said a mouthful there. :D