The Lovers (Tarot Triptych)

The Lovers is a card of both unification and division, opposition and polarity. Each version features two lovers and, between them, Eros the God of Love. This is the image of the idiom “Opposites attract”.

In Rider, the Lovers are Adam and Eve in the Garden, still naked for they are not yet fallen. An angel emerges from clouds before the Sun, ordaining their love. Adam stands by the Tree of Life, Eve by the Tree of Knowledge, where the Serpent is laying in wait. A mountain rises in the distance.

In Thoth, we have a significantly more complex image. The Emperor and Empress come together holding hands. The Empress holds a cup marked with a dove, the Emperor holds a spear. He wears a crown of gold and has dark skin, she wears a crown of silver and has light skin. Unlike the other versions of the card, Thoth features a more extensive doubling: below them are their children, Cain and Abel. One carries flowers, the other a club, Abel touches his mothers cup, Cain touches his father’s spear. Above them, another doubling: Eve and Lilith. Beside them, a red lion and a white eagle. All stand atop a winged egg about which a serpent is coiled. In the center is a giant cloaked Hermes, hands raised as if he were puppeteering the figures below, and at his head flies the blind cupid. This is the Chemical Wedding.

In Marseille, we have three standing figures, two bear laurels, and have their hands on the middle figure. Jodorowsky rightly focuses on the profound ambiguity of the situation; are the two in laurels being married by the middle figure? Or is one unhappy with the other taking the blond for a lover? Is it something even stranger than that? This card differs from the other two in title, as it is simply “The Lover”, a singular figure. The Lover could just as well be Eros above them, flying before the Sun, ready to let his arrow loose into the situation below.

Much of the brilliance of Tarot comes down to the interaction of the four elements in the form of the suits, and the Lovers offers the most vibrant image of this. In every other card featuring the four, they are static, sitting in the corners, in their own way, but in the Lovers, they are active and chemically interacting.

In Rider, the four elements are Adam and Eve, Angel and Devil. In Thoth they are the Emperor and Empress, Cain and Abel. In Marseille it is the wreathed two, Cupid and youth. In each we have one pair of lovers, and one pair of enemies.

One can see this as the dual and the duel, the two forms of Gemini.

Is Love random and contentious as Marseille posits? Is it a divine union ordained by God as in Rider? Or is it an interaction of elements, a simple biological “chemistry”? It is all of these of course - Love is the greatest mystery and power of them all.

For most people, the experience of love is the closest to “magic” that they will experience; strange coincidences, unexplainable feelings, and exploration of the other. Even in atheistic science, it is the spontaneous attraction and unification of disparate elements that forms the universe.

This article comes at a particularly meaningful time for me. I was recently at the beautiful wedding of my dear friends Eric and Eva and at the chapel I truly saw this card, the real ritual of marriage when two become one right before our eyes. During the party, I saw a family walking to the hotel. Their little boy walked up to a beautiful antique car, a 1965 Rolls Royce, and promptly threw a golf ball at it. This is of course, what Love is all about, in that moment he was just like Cupid. Love is not kind, and often we hurt the ones we love. Heraclitus recognized that the world is a product of God, a divine child, playing with toys. Cupid is like a child making two dolls kiss, something you can see really clearly in Thoth.

When we pull this card, it may be directly about love, a relationship or a friendship, but it can also be about the resolution to a division. Alternatively, the two ‘lovers’ can be duelling, so one can be met with argument and opposition.

Dedicated to Eric and Eva