The Lovers (VI): Tarot Card Meaning

Upright

A choice made with the whole of you.

Every real choice is also a disclosure. Pick one of two roles, two cities, two people, and you have told everyone watching what you value more — including the person you did not pick, and including yourself.

That is the weight on this trump, and it explains why the deciding takes so much longer than the deliberating. The options were compared weeks ago. What has not happened is being willing to be the sort of person who chose that.

Upright, the card says the disclosure is survivable and probably overdue. Nobody has ever thought less of a person for choosing clearly; the contempt, when it arrives, is always for the hedging.

Reversed

A self split between two directions.

Reversed, a self split between two directions. Not usually because both are equally good — they rarely are — but because committing would settle a question about your own character that you would rather leave open.

The tell is what you say out loud. Somebody in this position describes both options generously and neither one specifically, because a specific description of the one you want is already the decision, and it can be quoted back at you later.

So the verdict inverts to no, and it is not a judgement on either option. It is the plainest thing the card ever says: nothing has been chosen yet, so there is nothing here to answer yes to.

Yes or no

Upright

Yes

Reversed

No

Upright, yes, and a demanding yes: yes if you will also say out loud which one it is. Reversed it turns to no — two options kept alive at once is not a decision, and there is nothing there to affirm.

Where the card comes from

The third figure, and who it is looking at

The Rider-Waite puts the angel Raphael above the pair, arms open, lit and benevolent, with a serpent in the tree behind the woman and a burning tree behind the man. It is a scene of blessing with a warning hidden in the foliage.

Ours keeps the figure and takes away the light. It is a black winged shape across the moon, and you cannot tell whether it is presiding or waiting. That ambiguity is the more honest picture of what it feels like to make a binding choice while somebody is watching.

The snake is not in a tree here. It is on the ground to their left, coiled, offering nothing. White roses grow through dry thorn. There is blood where they are standing.

And their hands are not merely held. A short chain runs between the two wrists. Binding yourself to one thing costs range of movement, and the painting declines to hide that, without ever suggesting it is a mistake.

Gemini, and a card of union filed under air

People expect a card about union to be water. This one is air, because the sign is Gemini, and the filing is not a slip. Air is the element of distinction: sorting, comparing, telling this from that.

Which is exactly right. Feeling can hold two people at once without any difficulty at all. A decision cannot, and this trump is about the second one.

Zayin, and a title about a voice

The letter is Zayin, a sword — an odd assignment for a card most decks illustrate with two lovers, until you remember what a sword does: it makes one thing into two. The Golden Dawn title is Children of the Voice Divine, and a voice picks one word and abandons every other word in the language to do it.

Six

Six arrives after the upheaval of five and before the victory of seven. It is the number of alignment: parts that were at odds arranged into one shape. What the arrangement never advertises is that something was always left out of it.

Read the lore for The Chariot (VII)

In a reading

As a Daily Card this is rarely about another person. It usually marks one small thing you have deferred because picking it means letting the other thing go.

In a three-card reading, behind you it points at an old decision still shaping the present. Ahead of you it is not a forecast of meeting anybody; it is a date in the calendar for a choice.

Common questions