The Lovers: love or choices?

[Chiriku]

Well, you're talking esoterica to someone whose raison d'etre in the tarot is study of various historical and esoteric systems alike. Your posts on the various Golden Dawn interpretations are most needed and refreshing.

Your approach to the Majors and Minors is essentially the same as that of Rachel Pollack. Quoting from page 146 of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: "The Major cards depict archetypal forces rather than real people.......But the Minor cards show events of life as people actually live it." That's the way I see it too.

I think it's a useful distinction to draw because it adds subtlety and nuances to readings. It's sort of like the old style of music recordings, in which only certain instruments, voices or tracks were amplified, while others were allowed to be softer; the result was a nuanced, complex, layered dynamic, as opposed to the contemporary habit of remastering everything so that all voices, instruments, and sounds are equal in volume--i.e. all are loud across the board. It's a different listening experience, one that I would argue is less enjoyable.

 

[Thirteen]

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.

 

[Mulya]

Lovers could be lovers. Are they always happy lovers or make each other miserable most of the time? Depends on a reading. Cards should talk to me, and I should listen to them. Card's meanings are a orientation, a starting point, but life is bigger and much more diverse. Lovers, as any other card, each time tell different story of feelings and relationship to me.

 

[ergoneris]

For me the Lovers are not about lovers actually... nor sensuality.

I use the BoL deck and for me it goes a bit different. Actually the drawings here are self explainatory regarding the Lovers as choice interpretation. Let me paste you part of my text about the Lovers card:

In the Lovers card, we have to choose between the right or left path, and it is now that we finnally gain polarity. Until the Lovers card everyting was unpolarized, and events could be seen as negative or positive by the person experiencing the event.

In the Lovers card, in this deck, the image depicts a man between two female figures. This is very different from the traditional Lovers card which represents Adam and Eve only.

We choose the egyptian deck approach as it seems much more detailed and adequate for the meaning of the card.

The figure in the left of the male is semi-nude, trying to seduce the male to go with her. This represents the sensuality of the left path, luring us with a feast for the eyes.

In the right path we have another female figure, this time fully dressed and decorated with a snake on her forehead, meaning enlightment, and an ibis sown in her robe, meaning the spiritual path.

 

[SunChariot]

For me anyway, The Lovers is always about the Love for me, I personally do not have that meaning for it about choices. I have other cards taht can tell me that. The 2 of Swords for example is about thinking about two things or two people. Ofterh taht has to do with choiseing one of the other. Judgement also is about choices as, for me, it is about thinking over all that had past in a isutuation or between two people and deciding what to keep and what to let og of, what to keep doing in the same way and what to change.

So I am good, I don't need to have The Lovers back about choices for me. I have enough other cards that can gtell me that.

Babs

 

[PAMUYA]

Lovers: the meaning for me all depends on the reading itself and what it is saying to me at the time. The question itself is so important in a reading. Like you, I have had Lovers to mean a love triangle..I have also had it mean to be torn between two lovers(choice), and I have also had it come up as romantic "love". I do see it as a choice card, a moral choice, a choice that has to do with the heart, a loved one. I personally have not read this as a "sole mate" card, but that could change . So to answer your question love or choices, it is both a choice of the heart.

 

[wind]

However, to play Devil's Advocate, the original poster's point about why SHOULDN'T there be a flat-out Love card in the Majors (the so-called archetype cards) still holds true. These are, after all, archetypes. ETA: and The Lover is among the biggest human archetypes. And many people do, after all, use Majors-only decks, which knocks the Minors out of the running for providing us with "love."

Exactly! Love is the biggest archetype and trying to 'throw it out' of the Tarot is as silly as trying to find so many positive connotations in Tower or Death.

I feel people are more afraid of love as of death

As for 'soulmates' - I don't believe in them, a 'soulmate' is anybody with whom you feel complete, and that can be many friends, connections that you meet and make throughout life.
So, in this way, yes, Lovers can be about soul-mate, something that you feel can 'mate' with your soul If people give it some kind of huge esoterical meaning, that is their choice, I personally don't. I have had many 'soulmates', people who brought something to me to make me feel more whole, integrated and through which I also learnt a lot, especially about myself.

And that is Lovers indeed. I feel that reducing it merely to 'choice' is taking out its deepest meaning. It is something that touches you deeply.

As I said for Gemini, it is about finding your other half. But the problem is that people make such a big deal out of it, that than this resistance comes to see Lovers connected with love. Love is about connection, sharing, recognition, knowing, learning. Not an emotional roller coaster. Lovers card has nothing to do with the latter, but with the former everything.

 

[wind]

I was hoping you would come along! You make really beautiful points about this card.

Love is for grown-ups They understand that 'they lived happily ever after doesn't exist' and that LOVE is certainly NOT about that. But it is certainly a huge part of human existence and Major arcana certainly has to have a card for it. It is Lovers, indeed - in a beautful way as you described.

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.

 

[wind]

One more example - when I was asking about my job situation (I didn't have it at the time), I was getting Lovers card all the time. I couldn't understand it.
What happened was: I went to do some work for someone and this person during my work recognized that I should stay there with him on a permanent basis. He employed me, became my boss and we forged a beautiful connection. We clicked. BUT - at first, there were many struggles, a lot of conversation, talk, sharing, and A LOT of fighting. And yes, there was also the attraction, oh yes It was very difficult because he was my boss and also involved with someone else with whom he now has a family.

But we moved past the struggles, we both learnt a lot and now I have been working for him for years and we have a beautiful connection. Nothing sexual, but we share almost everything, as human beings. There is this CONNECTION and we support each other. We are partners, indeed. Probably, if we had met in different ciscumstances, we could have really been lovers as a couple.

And last time my boss said to me: I have grown spiritually because of you. I needed to go beyond my limitations to keep up with you. I became more mature.

It was the biggest compliment he could give me.
This is Lovers for me. And certainly Tarot predicted it - with the LOVERS card. It predicted the attraction - between man and a woman which was certainly there, the attraction of my boss for a potential employee (he felt I should work for him without seeing my references, without knowing anything about me), and the growth that this kind of connection brings. Talk, sharing, learning from each other.

But we are not 'soulmates', we do not have sex and we are not a couple. But Lovers we are

Lovers are two people sharing. The problem is that people connect Love with sex and marriage or commitment too easily, while it has nothing to do with that. Love is a cool, silent phenomenon of reflecting yourself in another.

 

[Richard]

......If people give it some kind of huge esoterical meaning, that is their choice, I personally don't.......

I don't think that Waite was interpreting The Lovers card as love in the usual sense. He was coming at Tarot from from the perspective of spiritual development, and that is what you have described as "huge" esoteric meaning. It may be "huge" in the sense of importance, but it is not exactly earth-shaking to discover one's inner capacity for nurture and compassion. It's sort of a hobby of mine to try to dig into Waite's interpretation of Tarot as revealed in the Marseille-inspired images used in the Rider-Waite deck. The Lovers is certainly atypical in its imagery. I'm sorry for having used the "soulmate" word. It was not intended to be taken in the usual silly way as the "perfect" mate, destined from all eternity. *barf* The reference to Gemini was with regard to bringing differing components of one's psyche into harmony.


Thank you so much, wind, for sharing your profound experience of "Platonic" love. An experience such as that is so much more profound and meaningful than the usual merely physical attraction which so often ends in an undesirable way. I suppose the ideal love experience would be would be a balance of the Platonic and the Erotic, but that seems to be denied to many of us. The ideal balance is so elusive as to be somewhat frustrating.