The Lovers

In a reading

• Relationships: the card says you need to choose between two partners. Or decide to take the relationship to a more serious level, make it official.
• Partnership, work: a contract on terms that work for both sides really matters here. The card says you need to make a choice — for example, between two projects, and you have to pick one of them.
• It says you need to go where your real interest lies. It’s always a harmonious collaboration — where a person likes it and feels good.

Shadow side

Codependency, fear of intimacy. A big mismatch in values with your partner. Inner indecision.

From the wider tradition

Not Tahmina’s own words: meanings common among other tarot readers, which she has reviewed and approved.

• The angel blessing them from above — a union blessed from above, help from higher powers.
• Adam and Eve, naked in the garden — sincerity, trust, closeness in its original form, without masks.
• A choice not only between people, but between duty and passion, two paths, values.
• Sexual desire, attraction, the union of body and soul.

Stage of the journey

The Lovers are card VI, the sixth step on the path from the Fool to the World. This isn’t the very start anymore: a person has gone through getting to know themselves, building their own support and forming their values. Now the stage of conscious choice begins.

What a person has already been through. Before the Lovers a person went through the Fool — dared to walk into the unknown; the Magician — realized they can act; the High Priestess — learned to hear themselves; the Empress — learned to create; the Emperor — built structure and took responsibility; the Hierophant — gained knowledge and formed ideas about what’s right and what to believe in. And here the main question comes up: “But what do I want?”

The Lovers are a card of choice, and a choice that touches your values and the direction of your life. A person runs into the need to stop living only by other people’s rules and make their own choice.

Where the Lovers lead — next comes the Chariot, card VII. And that makes perfect sense: the Lovers — I choose a direction; the Chariot — I start moving in the direction I chose. After the choice, just knowing what you want isn’t enough. You have to pull your will, your opposing wishes and your circumstances into one point and drive forward.

So the first seven cards add up to almost a little story:

• The Fool: “I go.”
• The Magician: “I can.”
• The High Priestess: “I know.”
• The Empress: “I create.”
• The Emperor: “I’m responsible.”
• The Hierophant: “I understand what I believe in.”
• The Lovers: “I choose.”
• The Chariot: “And now I move.”

The section above is the shadow side of the upright card — every card has one. I don’t read cards upside down — here is why.