Jan 10 | 2023 — The Lovers
How was your Monday? Yesterday’s card was the Page of Swords, and I definitely felt the influence as I did a lot of communicating (lots of calls and training at work, as well as quite a bit of writing) and launched my Medium account.
Today’s card is The Lovers. I know what you’re thinking: “Yasss, nookie night!” But don’t worry — I’m not here, scrying into the nooks and crannies of your bedroom activities. (I’m too busy harvesting souls for Satan with my Tarot, if you recall.)
The Lovers card is much deeper than just dancing the sideways mambo. It’s certainly about unity and coming together (obviously), but it’s also a card about choices and personal values, about good and evil, and looking at the high road vs. the low road. The symbolism in the original Rider-Waite-Smith (RSW) deck is rife with Christian iconography: Adam & Eve, The Tree of Knowledge, The Serpent, The Peeping Tom angel (and the little volcano/mountain in the background that may or may not be erupting — and I’ll let you use your imagination for interpretation…). So yes, on the surface, the intended meaning of The Lovers is the connection between kindred spirits. But what of the Tree of Knowledge, The Tree of Life, and the serpent? How does that fit in?
My personal take on this is that we are faced with significant choices that ultimately shape who we become. We begin to choose a values system when we are young (mid-to-late teens), and these values get put to the test as we go through life and ultimately define our personal sense of morality. What is right? What is wrong? Who does it affect? How do you fare with temptation? How does it affect your relationships? And what about that erupting volcano…?
Message of the Day: If this were a traditional full-spread Tarot reading, and I pulled The Lovers, I would most certainly suggest some sort of harmonious union between two people. Depending on the position in the spread, this could obviously be romantic, but it could also be professional or even therapeutic. The idea here is that you are meeting or interacting with a kindred spirit. But when we look at The Lovers from a self-reflection perspective, I think about the things that happened to us when we were younger that have shaped us and our personal values into who we are today.
Ya know, some of us had shit childhoods. Abuse, neglect, misguidance, being forced to wear corduroy — all things we may have experienced that we absorbed into part of who we are at some level that has contributed to the unique shape of who we are. Racism, homophobia, religious extremism, mistreatment of women, substance abuse: these are things that become normalized in a family setting and become behaviors that are repeated (if not enforced) in adulthood (I mean, if I see another bumper sticker that says “Babies, Bibles, and Bullets”…).
So while this depiction of The Lovers is distant from the “kindred spirit” approach, it’s important that we take the deeper meanings of values and choices into consideration and look at how they impact our relationships. Not just our personal, intimate relationships, but our relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and people we only associate with briefly.
But what do we do when one of our values is out of sync with The Universe. How do we recognize that this is a part of us that needs to change? The modification of a value system can be wildly difficult. Taking the supremacy out of a racist, for example, would be a herculean task for sure. And if it’s something that they have been indoctrinated with since childhood… time and a willingness to change would have to be at the forefront.
So what values are we openly displaying and what values are we passing on to those around us? What do you do when someone offends your sense of values? Do you attempt to persuade them to change or do you distance yourself? How have your sense of values affected your ability to form new relationships? Is there something in yourself that needs to be changed?
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