The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory. - Truman Capote
Spirit has a sense of humor to move from the Nine of Swords' worry and insomnia into the Lovers. Sleepless nights and difficult attachments often stem from love or the perversion of love. We worry. We toil. We obsess, but the root of the Lovers is nothing like worry and toil. It is absolute trust in the Divine and further in the divinity of love and the possibility of connection with another human being. This week, we revisit the Major Arcana with a card most people want to draw--the Lovers.
As we begin to take in the images of the Lovers, we are greeted by two naked people, Man and Woman, standing under Archangel Raphael. Is it Adam and Eve? The first couple? The tree of knowledge stands behind the woman with a snake coiling around its trunk. It reminds us of the No. 15 card of the Major Arcana, the Devil. So, the Devil lingers in the idyllic scene of the Lovers. It is so intertwined with the Devil card, you almost cannot mention one without the other. In fact, just because one wants the Lovers doesn't mean one should get the Lovers. We often draw the Devil when we are trying to will the Lovers to come.
Notice the similar composition and images between the Lovers and the Devil.
The two cards have very similar layouts. If you look at the Devil card, you notice that the figures on the front are the same as the Lovers. Archangel Raphael presides over the healing of the two Lovers on the No. Six card, while the fallen angel Lucifer presides over the couple on the Devil. Archangel Raphael's hair are leaves, while the pentacle sits on the head of the Devil--both are earthly symbols that mean two entirely different things. The Devil is about attachment to the material, while the leaves represent a kind of harmony with nature and Mother Earth. In this way, the two cards represent two sides of the same coin--love. The Lovers is the ideal love, the blessed love, the harmonious soul mate relationship, while the Devil represents the perversion of love, obsessive love, the attachment to the material, or the superficial, the fear of love, the lack of personal power (this powerlessness comes to represent addiction in the Tarot, also you can see that the female figure has a tail of grapes, meaning she is attached to wine), and of course, addiction. Juxtaposed with the Lovers, the Devil teaches us what love isn't. Or maybe even it is a warning about what love, selfish and self-serving without Spiritual connection, can become.
The Lovers depicts what Marcia Masino calls the mystical rite of Kything, which means to "appear without disguise." Their nakedness represents the absolute vulnerability that becomes the couple's greatest strength. Ms. Masino says "kything is a method of spiritual presence whose purpose is to bring about a loving spiritual connection, union or communion between two or more persons without the spoken word."
The sun shines over the whole scene. There are no secrets, no mysteries, no shadow issues going on. This person who you pull in the Lovers is your soul mate, your twin flame, your partner, your other half. And I think it is important to mention that Archangel Raphael is present in this card. He is the Archangel of Healing and Health. He blesses the two, helps them heal their wounds, nurture their past aches to move into a new spiritual awareness. By our openness with another person, we begin to bear our soul to the Divine. We allow trust to be our guiding force. It is easy in the throes of love, after all, to believe in God and the Divine. Fate, God, Divine pathways and connections, it all makes sense.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and this card is about the beauty of that human experience. The mystery of love enlivens us, invigorates our souls, makes us feel the absolute amazing sensations of being human 100 times more intensely. We are human, and it is beautiful. This is what our experience in a body teaches us. To be present. Remember the heart chakra, after all, is the gateway to Spiritual connection--the bridge between the material concerns of the lower chakras to the spiritual issues of the upper chakras. It is here that we learn to unite them, because in romantic love, we bring together all the lower chakra issues--Security from the Root Chakra, Sexual satisfaction from the Sacral, and Courage and Strength from the Solar Plexus with the Upper Chakra issues--Listening and Speaking the Truth of your Soul in the Throat, Seeing and opening to your Soul Path in the Third Eye, and finally, opening the connection to the Divine in the Crown. We play all this out through our Heart Chakra in the Lovers.
The presence of the angel is not a mistake. There are six archangels in the Tarot, and they appear in the Major Arcana. This is the ideal, then, the oneness of this trinity--the Lovers--Two Humans and the Angel, symbolizing the Divine. We invite God into our partnership and we are granted a lifelong relationship. It is the power behind healing, as Archangel Raphael reminds us.
A great affirmation for this card might be:
I open my heart to loving, being loved and trusting in love.