“The pen marks the page. The decision marks the soul.”
If the Chariot tarot card is about a journey and the decisions made along the way, then the Lovers tarot card is about the decision(s) that set that journey into motion. To what does the Querent commit themselves and was the choice ever theirs to make in the first place?
Despite the name of the card, the main purview of the Lovers card is not a matter of blind devotion, naïve infatuation, or destructive obsession, at least when presented openly. Instead, the Lovers card represents those moments in the Querent’s life where they must make a choice that will forever change how they go on with the rest of their life, even if that change was desired. It could be the choice to commit to a relationship, an offer of employment, a college enrollment, the care of others, to purchase a home, an initiation into a religion or private community, or to abstain from them all. The Lovers tarot card is as much for personal involvement as it is against it.
Personal context will determine if the presence of the Lovers card is desired or not. For those querents whose lives were heavily determined by their parents’ choices and actions, the Lovers card will feel deterministic and unassailable. For those querents who have been free to create their life’s path, the Lovers card will feel like a gamble and a checkpoint for them to stop and consider the potential consequences of their actions.
In a single card reading, the Lovers card will generally answer “Yes/Go” for simple questions and “Wait/Think” for more complicated concerns. An impatient card, it responds “Immediately” for timing concerns, but leans more towards a daytime event unless a nighttime event is more dramatic.
In multiple card readings where the Lovers card is the focus, look to the supporting/clarifying cards around it to give nuance to the choices that the Querent is facing. Remember that not engaging a topic is an active choice of rejection. Even an “irrelevant” card has something important to contribute to the discussion.
In multiple card readings where the Lovers is an assisting card, it is a prompt to the Querent to consider why they are considering this matter in the first place. Is this something that truly requires the Querent to commit themselves so thoroughly? Would it be better if the Querent limited their involvement in the thing rather than trying to take it over? If the Querent determines that yes, this is worth their involvement, then they should be prepared for this topic of the query to become a permanent installation in their life.
If the card is ill-aspected in the reading, or the deck is read with reversals, the Lovers card becomes a token of rejection and greed. It warns that the Querent is proceeding without performing due diligence and is taking their preconceived notions as all but completed. It also warns that the Querent is taking a partnership for granted, be it a personal relationship, business dealing, or a vital piece of equipment that the Querent would not be able to complete their duties should it fail.
If the reversed Lovers card is describing the Querent, then they need to have a good long sit with themselves and consider if they are fixating on some aspect of their life, personal or business, to the detriment of themselves and their other commitments. This can warn of obsessions, of being taken advantage of by a bad actor in their life, or of holding on to old equipment longer than its useful life span because “it still works, mostly”. At worst, it can describe a relationship that long ceased to be, but the Querent is still holding on to the memory of it as if it is still in the present.
Even if the Querent did not have a choice in accepting or refusing the matter, they still have a choice in how to begin working out the consequences. It is still in their ability to make the best of a bad situation or to permit a good situation to languish and fade. How they work out their responsibility is not fated but remains a deliberate choice that only they can reveal.
Next Card: V – The Hierophant – “Know what you were so you can change what you are.”
Noxporium’s Tarot Card Masterpost: 78 Tarot Cards
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