The Lovers: Where Choices Lead

By C. Minelli

In my early exploration of the tarot, I found The Lovers to be one of the most challenging cards. It didn’t appear for me as often as The Empress or Queen of Cups. I can count on one hand in the last decade or so of it coming out to play. I primarily work with renditions of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck and the artistry and symbolism – layered with my own intuitive interpretations – often lead to frustration. Some decks focus on the literal romantic meanings of The Lovers, different decks mentioned choices, and a few others mentioned both! At times, the images didn’t match well with the definitions that came along with them and the definitions didn’t fit the theme of the question I was asking – or at least it seemed that way. In readings regarding career and finance The Lovers just didn’t jibe. A workplace romance was not the issue at hand and it certainly wasn’t the outcome. The meaning that did fit was the choice I had to make to either stay where I was working currently or make a move to leave. The Lovers made me ask questions in terms of where I wanted to see myself in the coming years career wise and if my current situation provided opportunities to get there. It reminded me of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” where the narrator struggles making a choice in which road to take and the effects their choice will make. The inevitable crossroads moments that life throws at us every so often can have make-it-or-break-it stakes, causing a lot of confusion, frustration, and anxiety. In Tarot, The Lovers represent the innumerable crossroads moments we face in our lifetime and remind us that we are catalysts for change through the choices we make. 

While the possibility for a multitude of meanings in the same card from different artists is one of my favorite things about Tarot, it can be incredibly overwhelming. In Yoshi Yoshitani’s Tarot of the Divine, a woman is seen embracing a beast. The beast is not restrained; no chains or shackles to be seen. The woman is at peace and does not show signs of distress or uncertainty. Instead, she looks content and loving as she cuddles her counterpart, and at first glance one could mistake this illustration for Strength. The artist’s definition attached to this card denotes romance, attraction of opposites, and the harmonization of our inner dualities. They also mention that this pair “...heralds an important crossroads” (Yoshitani, 10). I do agree that the placement of the human and beast together represents the communion between our two sides, the controlled persona and our wild instincts, in order to achieve balance. This card is full of love and harmony which creates a lack of tension. A time of decision making is often a time of uncertainty and upheaval due to unknown change. There’s no disruption to this couple’s peace. Flowers are blooming and the tower situated behind them stands strong. There’s no movement. These two are stationary in their embrace, already having come to an arrangement – a decision has already been made and tranquility continues. 

When it comes to choice, there’s a moment where we pause and weigh options. Sometimes this pause is quick when we know what we want. At other times, this point of suspension can be prolonged and weighed down with anxiety of unknown challenges. Let’s go back to Frost’s poem. The narrator is met with two different directions to take when they get to a certain point. Frost writes, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler…” (Frost). Met with two different directions, the narrator agonizes over which direction to pick and bemoans that they can’t take both roads at the same time while remaining unchanged. They try to see as far as they can down one trail before it makes a turn, blocking the end from view, and start going down the second trail only to double back and hover at the starting point. This individual is moving in agitation due to the inability to explore both options at once without consequence. Their anxiety stems from the fear of commitment to the unknown change that they know will inevitably come about when they eventually make that final decision to move forward. In D. J. Conway and Lisa Hunt’s Celtic Dragon Tarot The Lovers depicts an earth dragon and a water dragon pining for each other despite coming from different worlds. These artists liken The Lovers to the harmony between the analytical and the creative parts of ourselves as well as the difficulty of sifting through logic and emotions in order to make decisions. I find that the tension created between these two figures stemming from their differences gets us closer to the choices aspect of The Lovers. While they bask in their infatuation in the novelty of their relationship at present, a moment of reflection will be necessary. They will need to decide – make a choice – if this relationship is going to be something worth pursuing in the long term and if the benefits outweigh the challenges. 

Waite took a lot of liberties when he designed his deck with Smith which is reflected in its descendants. So how do we reconcile The Lovers crossroads moment with its proclivity towards romance and relationships? Rachel Pollack, the amazing woman that she was, writes that the moment we start asking ourselves what we want and deciding what’s best for us usually corresponds to the time we start to sexually mature. In other words, puberty. We all remember puberty. For me, it was a time where I fought a lot with my parents over stuff like having a later curfew, dying my hair, borrowing the car, and demanding more space and privacy. I was becoming independent. We start to play around with our personhood and identity when the hormones start going haywire and little by little we leave the safety of the nest to explore the outside world. Interactions with our peers can open us up to new ways of thinking or doing things in comparison to what our parents taught us and spark opposition to authority. Nowadays, social media adds an extra layer of exploration and opens up the world even more. With this exploration comes challenges to what we’ve been taught and throws us in an explorative phase where some are comfortable with differences and challenges to their ways of life whereas others double down and deny any other path. Eventually we settle into adulthood (whatever that means) and the hormones become at least a little more recognizable; but that doesn’t mean the exploration stops. It doesn’t mean challenges to our thinking stop, nor do our challenges to authority stop.

While a lot of things come back to sex and reproduction, I would like to broaden The Lovers’ meaning of choice. When Waite designed the Lovers he wanted it to reflect how love and sex function in our daily lives where connections to others help us reach new levels of enlightenment. Pollack comments that sexual awakenings push us to reach for connections with others to create loving experiences. I agree that loving others and seeking out relationships adds to our fulfillment and helps us add another layer of our understanding of life. But before we love others, it’s important to love ourselves. Part of loving ourselves — finding ourselves attractive — is going through self-assessment. The Lovers encourages us to examine what we value and asks us to challenge what we’ve learned and how we’ve behaved so far. Pollack writes, “In card 6 the individual emerges, a true personality with its own ideas and purposes, able to make important choices based, not on parental orders, but on its own assessment of desires and responsibilities” (Pollack, pg. 60). Self-examination is in fact a challenge to the status quo. It requires a willingness to look at aspects of the self  in a non-judgmental way, casting off worry of whether or not a habit or philosophy is socially palatable. When we judge, we are more likely to shy away from aspects of ourselves that we don’t like instead of acknowledging them and giving them space to express themselves. Looking at ourselves objectively can be daunting as I found the nastier parts I don’t like about myself — judgmentalism, self-pity, and physical insecurity to name a few — lurk at the surface, making delving into the deeper parts of myself more difficult. However, I found that once I looked at these darker traits and thought about why they were there and where they came from, it was easier to work with them. Judgment transformed into discretion and intuition and self-pity turned into self-advocation. Physical insecurity is still a work in progress. 

The Lovers offers an opportunity, a pause, to ask ourselves what we will carry into the next stages of our life and what we will leave behind. We can choose to live a life that has been designed by societal norms and traditions or we can choose to go in a different direction. In the very last verse Frost writes, “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (Frost). Frost does not specify if this reminiscence by the narrator is filled with contentment with their choice to take the path less traveled or of regret. Looking back on growing up and the decisions I made, I often think “Thank the Goddess I was a weirdo”. But while I was in the thick of it — before I reaped the results and rewards — I was fucking miserable and filled with doubt. Choosing to go against the grain can be rewarding. However, there will be times where we feel isolated and wonder if we’re making the right decisions or if our ideas will be successful. The thing is, no one definitively knows if their decisions are going to work out. At the end of the day, we’re all just winging it and hoping things don’t go to shit.  

The question becomes, do our choices hurt someone else? Do they deny someone’s right to exist peacefully with dignity, including ourselves? If the answer is yes, then some inner work might be necessary because odds are those harmful philosophies were not originally there – we don’t come out of the womb ready to cast judgment and misery on others; that’s learned. If the answer is no, then we need to evaluate whether or not our choices are worth pursuing in the face of outward criticism. And that’s hard…but it’s doable. The good news is we have historical cycle breakers – Rosa Parks, Hedy Lamarr, and Martin Luther King Jr. to name a few – who made decisions to think differently and live outside the norm to show us that new ways, different ways, are possible and can lead to the success of not just ourselves but the success of our communities. Remember, it used to be normal to enslave people and it used to be normal for men to beat their wives and children. It took generations of people saying “I don’t want to be treated this way” and generations of people saying, “I don’t want to hurt people this way” to create societal change. The sexual proclivity of The Lovers is belied by its challenge to us to challenge ourselves. Our internal examinations have external consequences on an individual level that seeps into the collective society at large. How we see ourselves – how we treat ourselves – will often be reflected in how we see and treat others. Every path needs a leader and eventually the road less traveled doesn’t stay that way for long.