I came across a post on a FB page regarding the LOVERS card from Tarot of the Golden Dawn, which was confusing to the person who posted it and they asked for help making sense of it, in regards to it’s definition. While I was writing my response, I had an aha moment that helped me resolve a long standing sticking point I always had with this card.
The Lovers card has been one of my hardest cards to reconcile the ascribed meanings, with the title. The word Lovers is so loaded and the way I would define the word is not the definition of the card. To add further confusion, many decks illustrate the Lovers with lovers, often in a passionate embrace. But the meaning of the Lovers card is not relationship but rather a crossroads, a choice, perhaps a moral one, between a desire and an obligation. The high road or the low. Perhaps the message is stepping up in relationship (whether romantic or otherwise). How important is the relationship to you. A relationship is asking something of you, are you willing? Or is it asking too much of you or something inappropriate? Sometimes our relationships ask more than we can or should give. Sometime what is being asked is perfectly reasonable and we are just not willing. 💡 That’s what I am missing when reading this card. It’s not just a choice. Do I get cable, or do I save the money? Do I go to night school or keep working this job? No. It’s more about choices within relationships. Even within a work relationship, it’s asking you to step up or don’t and face the consequences. Alternatively, it could be asking you to compromise yourself, and face potential consequences, or walk away and maintain integrity. Egads. I just solved my own boggle.
As to this particular Lovers card, the naked woman represents the vulnerable relationship. It needs something. The serpent is the something, the threat to the relationship, the ask. It’s the moral or immoral choice, the compromise, healthy or otherwise. Is the relationship worthy of stepping up and slaying the dragon? Slay the dragon=quit that job and move to the different town to be with lover, or slaying that dragon = don’t have that affair or slay that dragon=go in on that business partnership (or maybe that business venture is asking you to commit fraud for gain and thus, you throw down the sword and walk away and the dragon eats the relationship)
As I contemplated this revelation, I wondered what that might mean for someone who’s question was not about a relationship at all. I realized a valid relationship, when this card comes up in a reading, can be the relationship you have with God, or higher power, or higher self, or Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder, your moral compass, your conscience. This choice or crossroad isn’t just a choice between two mundane options. This card is bigger than that. It’s moral. A compromise, perhaps too compromising? As querant, the decision is yours.