Major Arcana · 6
The Lovers
L'Amoureux (Tarot de Marseille) · Gli Amanti (Italian tarocchi) · Children of the Voice; the Oracle of the Mighty Gods (Golden Dawn)
A man and a woman beneath a great angel, a tree of fire behind one and a serpent-wrapped tree behind the other. In the Waite–Smith tradition the Lovers stand for union, attraction and choices made from the heart.
Upright love · union · choice · harmony · values · attraction · partnership
Reversed disharmony · imbalance · indecision · misaligned values · temptation · separation
- Astrology
- Gemini
- Element
- Air
- Hebrew letter
- Zayin
- Number
- 6
- Golden Dawn title
- Children of the Voice; the Oracle of the Mighty Gods
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
The Lovers is the tarot's card of deep connection and of the choice that connection demands. In the Waite–Smith tradition it signifies love, harmony and the meeting of opposites, but also a decision that expresses who one really is.
Love and relationships: strong attraction, a meaningful partnership, or a turning point at which two people choose each other. Readers also take it as a reminder that lasting love rests on shared values, not only on desire.
Work and money: partnerships, collaborations and agreements entered with conviction. More broadly, a choice between paths, best made according to principle rather than convenience.
Advice: let your choice reflect your values. The older form of the card, which shows a youth between two women, makes this plain: the card is as much about deciding as about loving, and about owning the consequences of the decision.
Reversed
Upside down, the Lovers describe union under strain. Readers speak of imbalance between partners, communication that has broken down, attraction that is not matched by commitment, or temptation pulling against loyalty. The theme of choice may appear as indecision, or as a decision made against one's own values.
Outside love, it can point to a partnership whose terms no longer suit both parties, or to inner conflict between head and heart.
Readers who do not read reversals — and many do not — look for these cautions in the other cards drawn with an upright Lovers.
The image
Smith shows a naked man and woman standing in a bright landscape, under the outspread wings of a great angel with flaming red hair and purple robes, who appears from a cloud with arms extended in blessing. Behind the angel blazes a large sun. Behind the woman grows a tree bearing fruit, around which a serpent winds; behind the man stands a tree whose branches end in flames. Between them in the distance rises a single tall mountain. The woman looks up toward the angel, the man looks toward the woman.
History
The earliest tarot Lovers show a courting or betrothed couple, sometimes under a blindfolded Cupid — a picture of marriage or courtly love. The Tarot de Marseille's L'Amoureux has a young man standing between two women, one perhaps older and one younger, while Cupid aims his arrow from above. Later writers read this as a choice between vice and virtue, or between mother and bride, and the card took on its meaning of decision.
Waite and Smith replaced this scene with an image of Adam and Eve in Eden, a change Waite explains in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) as a picture of human love before the fall, under the watch of a guardian angel he identified with Raphael. The Golden Dawn attributed the card to Gemini and the letter Zayin.
Symbolism
The two trees are the Tree of Knowledge, with its serpent and fruit, and the Tree of Life, whose twelve flames are often linked to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The man looks to the woman and the woman to the angel, which many readers take as a ladder from the conscious mind to feeling and from feeling to the divine. The mountain stands for aspiration or the heights that union makes possible.
Six is the number of harmony and reciprocity. Gemini, the twins, ruled by Mercury, gives the card its theme of pairs and of communication. Zayin means "sword", sometimes read as the discernment needed to choose; the Golden Dawn placed the card on the path from Binah to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life.
In a reading
In relationship readings the Lovers is one of the strongest signs of mutual feeling. With the Two of Cups it emphasises partnership; with the Hierophant, formal commitment; with the Devil, the line between love and compulsion. In a non-romantic question readers often read it simply as "a choice that matters", and ask the querent what values are at stake.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination — Robert M. Place, 2005
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — Rachel Pollack, 1980
- A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism — Helen Farley, 2009