MAJOR ARCANA
The Lovers Tarot Meanings
The Lovers Tarot card is most coveted by those looking for positive news for their romantic lives. However, as the card of Gemini, The Lovers is more about the relationship with the self than your relationships with others.
The most well-known meaning of The Lovers in tarot, is, of course, romantic love, however, there is a lot more to it than just romance.
With Adam and Eve representing our internal feminine and masculine energies, The Lovers Tarot meanings can be turned inwards, giving us a better look at our own energetic balance. It allows us to assess how we honour both the divine masculine and the divine feminine energies that we all have inside of us.
The Lovers Upright Meanings
The Lovers Tarot card in the upright position can not only mean that romance lies ahead, but it can refer to love in all its many forms. This card is also associated with the zodiac sign of Gemini and so there is a duality to its meaning. It can be about choices of the heart and having to make the right decision, even if you don’t want to.
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Love
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Good decisions
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Virtue
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Harmony
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Balance
In the upright position, The Lovers may be an indication that there’s a big decision to be made that probably won’t be easy. This card can often symbolise a push and pull between our vices and our virtues and having to decide whether to give in to temptation or pull ourselves a way to do the right thing.
Of course, in some cases it can indicate a deep and spiritual love between you and another person, it just depends on the other cards that surround it in the spread.
The Lovers Reversed Meanings
When The Lovers are in reverse they can symbolise a lack of harmony, making a bad decision, or needing to focus more on self-love than romantic love right now. Some of the key meanings of The Lovers in reverse are:
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Conflict
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Vice
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Lost love
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Bad choices
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Self-love
The Lovers in the reversed position usually means that the energy of the card is more internal than external. This means that we may be struggling with an internal conflict, where our head and our heart are at odds with each other. It can also show a need to reflect our love internally, so instead of looking for someone to fall in love with, we need to first learn to love ourselves completely and without judgement.
Reading The Lovers in a spread
The Lovers are one of the tarot cards that have a bit of a reputation, even people that don’t read tarot have heard or seen The Lovers card. It’s often depicted as a card of romantic love, but its meaning goes a lot deeper than the superficial meaning society has given it. When The Lovers appear, it is easier to position it as a card that is referring to our internal world. In fact, we can say this about any major arcana card. It is a card about our own inner harmony, balancing our vices with our virtues and growing into a fully fleshed-out being with their own opinions and views of the world.
Remember, we’ve just passed through The Hierophant in order to get to The Lovers, so we’ve just been questioning the world and our place within it. Keep that in mind when you’re exploring what that might mean for this card. Let’s move to take a look at a few ways we could frame this card to help us unravel The Lovers deeper meanings.
The Lovers as an Invitation
I always view The Lovers Tarot as that first step into adulthood and being a human being with their own unique views and beliefs. This can be an uncomfortable and awkward stage to be in, just think of it as the adolescence card and you’ll start to feel The Lovers energy a bit clearer. As an invitation, The Lovers may ask you to take a look at your actions in alignment with your freshly created values.
For The Lovers, this invitation could be the following:
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An invitation to look at the decisions we have made in the past and assess what the root cause of that decision was. Was it a good decision, or a bad one and why do we feel that way?
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An invitation to assess our vices or bad habits and decide whether they are in balance with our virtues
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An invitation to decide whether there are areas where we could create more harmony and balance
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An invitation to assess where our priorities lie and whether we are allowing our emotions to overpower our mental clarity
The Lovers as Sage Advice
There’s a lot we can learn about ourselves from The Lovers as it is a card that asks us to focus inward again and take responsibility for our own thoughts, actions and beliefs. It can often offer seemingly vague advice, this is because The Lovers are more about guiding you on your own self-exploration, rather than handing you the answers you’re seeking out.
Some advice The Lovers may offer is:
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To work on identifying your vices and virtues so you can build or develop your self-control
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Not everyone deserves your love and attention, but you will always be on hand to offer it to yourself whenever you need it most and you should accept it without self-doubt
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Always keep your morals at the forefront of your actions and make sure the two are always aligned in order to soothe the soul and do what you feel is right
The Lovers as a Lesson
With The Lovers there is obviously a strong lesson in love on offer. It may not be romantic love, in fact, more often than not it isn’t about romantic love. One of its biggest lessons is self-acceptance and learning to balance the parts of ourselves we may not like, with the parts we love and embrace.
Some lessons that The Lovers may offer you are:
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To see how both your light and dark personality aspects work together to create one whole unique person
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That you will inevitably make mistakes and do things you regret, but you must always follow that with self-compassion, critical thinking and self-love
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Nobody is perfect and that is completely normal
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Life is filled with highs and lows and it’s up to us to figure out the best ways to navigate those moments
The Lovers as a Redirection
The Lovers can be a big wake-up call for those that struggle with self-expression, self-identification and self-love. Often The Lovers appear when we need to refocus our priorities and see ourselves from a third-person perspective. We may need to step out of our own bodies in order to see clearly what is happening.
As a redirection, The Lovers could symbolise a need to:
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Practice self-forgiveness in order to move forward
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Choose the path that your conscience is telling you is the morally right path to take
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Let go of what you think things should be and accept what they are
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Focus on finding value from within rather from external sources
The Number Six
The number six in numerology is all about balance and more importantly, harmony. The Lovers embodies harmony, it is the representation of two halves of the same whole coming together to find completion within each other.
When we look at the number before this – number five – we talk about humanity and the very core of what it means to be human. Moving on to number six we add another pillar and expand on that humanity to further cover love, compassion and service to others.
Astrological Gemini
The Lovers astrological sign is Gemini, known as ‘the twins’. Again we see this idea of duality and two halves making a whole. The sign of Gemini is known for having dual personalities. The person you get one day may not be the same as the person you get the next. The Lovers are exactly the same.
I like seeing The Lovers as the time in life where we start to develop a private and social self. For example the person you are with your friends may have different personality traits to the person you are at home with your family.
The Lovers Archetype
Of course The Lovers falls mainly into the ‘Lover’ archetype, but I also always get a little sprinkle of the outlaw archetype in there as well.
As we saw in The Empress, the Lover archetype is all about intimacy. This doesn’t always represent romantic intimacy however. It could be something as simple as accepting the different parts of yourself in order to understand exactly who you are, what you want and what you stand for.