6. The Lovers

Choose love What does ‘love’ mean? This card asks you to really examine your ideas about the meaning of love, and how it is expressed in your life and in the world around you. It can represent romantic or sexual love, sure, but also platonic, familial, asexual, friendship, self-love, community love and love as an active principle that, as the saying goes, “makes the world go round”.

Love is a verb. It is an active, evolving thing. It is something that is best understood in the way it is expressed. So, how do we express love? How do you express love? How do you find it, and invite love into your life? Think about acts of kindness, tolerance, and generosity that show you that you are loved. The respect you show, the way you hold space for folks you love. The compromises and sacrifices that necessarily arise from any partnership, those you make, and those that are made for you.

Because the other important concept in the Lovers card is choice. It is asking you to choose love, to make heartfelt, loving, compassionate choices.

Think about how falling in love makes you want to be your very best self. It brings out all of this creativity and kindness and romance in you, as you want to show your lover/s the very best that you can be. Love draws out the best in each of us. The Lovers is also about dualities and multiplicities. Partnership – of any kind – based on love becomes more than the sum of its parts. We find roles for ourselves within our relationships, and become part of something bigger – it is us, the other person/people, and the energy of the relationship itself.

Advice from the Lovers The Lovers card asks you to choose love, to make heartfelt, loving, compassionate choices. If the Lovers appears in a reading about a difficult decision, the answer is always: do what is the most loving. It is bringing you encouragement and support to make brave, heartfelt choices. To do the right thing, according to your heart. It reiterates what I said before: Love is a verb. Love is a feeling, but what matters more here is what you do with it. How you express it.

How, also, do you love yourself? Enough to come out? Enough to show yourself compassion and stop beating yourself up? Enough to take that printmaking class you know would make you so happy? It’s a simple card, asking you to choose. To listen to your heart, and to follow. Key words and concepts

• Love (of all kinds)

• Making heart-centred choices

• Doing the right thing

• Compassion

• Partnerships and relationships

• Self-love

• Being your ‘best self’

Some common symbols

• Roses (love!)

• Angel (transcendence, choosing a ‘higher path’)

• Any two or more parts creating a whole representing a sense of completion