6 - The Lovers Tarot Card
The Lovers is tarot card number 6, although it is the 7th card of the Major Arcana because the 1st of the 22 Major Arcana cards is number 0 (The Fool).
The Lovers card often depicts a naked couple surrounded by other symbolism.
It is a joyful card that is usually a welcome sight in a spread
and can be pertinent in a reading concerning romance, though this is not necessarily the case.
More generally The Lovers tarot card represents the duality between
the masculine and feminine aspects of a situation or issue,
or of ourselves. The concepts of 'masculine' and 'feminine'
need not be interpreted literally. They may represent traditionally
'masculine' and 'feminine' traits, interests, or emphases.
The Lovers tarot card can also refer to the notion of 'the whole being greater
than the sum of the parts'. That is, a strong couple or partnership
can offer more to the world than is possible for the same two
individuals could if acting seperately.
Some specific terms associated with The Lovers Tarot card include:
- love
- partnership
- romance
- communication
- trust
- beauty, and
- perfection
It is rare for The Lovers tarot card to have negative meanings.
Note: The image of this tarot card shown on the right (above-right) is from an early French tarot deck that has been made available for general use via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. This shows a distinctly different style of illustration from that of modern tarot decks but is of historical and artistic interest.
More about the Major Arcana
The cards of the Major Arcana are widely considered to be the
most powerful cards in the Tarot Deck. The 22 cards of the Major
Arcana tell a complete story when arranged in upright and numerical
order (beginning with 0 - The
Fool then progressing through the sequence of Major Arcana cards until 21 - The World).
This is a story of personal development and enlightenment
that is sometimes referred to as "The Fool's Journey".
Some texts also include meanings for "reversed
cards". These are for the situation in which the cards are shuffled in both
order and orientation. The theoretical advantage to this is that
it effectively doubles the number of possible "cards" in
the deck from 78 to 156. However, in terms of the calculation
of obtaining results according to chance alone, it is not a simple
mathematical doubling because once a card has been drawn it cannot be drawn again in the opposite orientation in the same reading.
Click here for more Major Arcana cards