VI The Lovers
Invitations
Plant Ally: Gladiolas
Crystal Ally: Ametrine
Celestial Ally: The Moon
Dating The Lovers: Let’s start small here, plan a date for yourself. Something you would want a lover to do for you. Put on an outfit that you feel so good in. Drink your favorite wine, eat something you love, graze your own skin with your fingertips, feel how you would feel to a partner. Enjoy yourself!
If you have a partner or a lover, invite them to join you next time, to witness and indulge in the ways you like to enjoy, invite them to do the same. This way you are avoiding projecting your needs onto them by providing a date catered to them. I heard a definition of flirting once that reminds me of this practice, “watching someone fully enjoy them self without feeling pressure to entertain.”
Table 49
We are kissing long before our mouths reach each other. The neon light casts a haze of rose petal magenta across our night. The clouds snuggle down on us creating a false sense of security. A feeling all magnetized lovers know, like the way a shudder can emerge from the lightest graze behind the knee.
“Cody, you are doing things to me.”
I whisper across his lip, the table presses anchor like across my chest. The moon starts peeking out, crownlike from a skyscraper radiating from the cityscape. I see it through the back of my head like a jaguar senses her mate along her heckle. I let the silver energy of her lick the nape of my neck.
“Let me be your moon tonight Joanna.”
I melt, as lovers do. Into him, not forever but definitely for this animal night.
“I brought us a treat from the lab.”
I stick my tongue out without further prompting and he places two tabs of acid just there in my mouth. And we are again locked into an eternal kiss, he flicks a tab back into his mouth and time goes to run errands while the magnets of our bodies seal.
The moon begins to do her fluttering dance for us. The Gruner turns to giggles and music imminates from unlikely body parts. We listen with our tongues and smells never tasted so good. Chemicals of delight sparkle like flint shavings over embers. Sense memories embed between my legs and and flutter all the way up through my virginia pine hair. Cody checks his watch,
“ready to go to the lightshow?”
Trying to disengage his magnet from mine for his own reasons.
“you are all the light I need tonight.”
Perhaps sensing the intensity of becoming my moon, he pivots,
“What about the actual moon?”
I gaze up to her, lights trailing and dripping, inviting,
“she can come too.”
card analysis
Two lovers kiss on a moody rooftop with a bottle of libations and a silver moon dawning among purple sunset clouds. The exchange is consuming and intimate, the participants are locked into a chemical brain bliss that strengthens with each magnetic kiss. Love and connection are not only drugs but our purpose as living beings.
The Lovers is the first card on the Fool’s journey to feature two folks, as if to bring the Fool to the maturation of accepting lovers as great teachers along the path. This card is not just about the connection but about learning HOW TO connect. It is a relational development card. Asking ‘How am I interacting with my partners? My species? With the world at large?’
“Love is touching souls.”
Know this
If the Sun is the “great cosmic lover” for Jodorowsky then for my card it would be the Moon. (the actual outer space things, not the major arcana lol) Crispin describes this as a hard card. The lovers are magnetized. It is not a matter of choice or comfort, it is a chemical passion inspired by all parties taking advantage of divine pleasure seeking timing.
What do attraction and the moon have in common? They are mysterious and yet undeniable. They glow and glitter in the night, sometimes they take your breath away. They call us close to our darkest shadows in order to learn from them. The Lovers ask us to trust the mystery, to show up to each new relationship with unconditional love and awe for the beauty of the moment.
Reversal notes
It can be easy to lose sight of the horizon and a sense of self when you’ve been locked into a gaze with a great lover. This is a mistake we all make. And it is precious and hard! There is an opportunity to remember that not all connections are meant to last a lifetime. Some are for a night, a season, or a decade. Some are for multiple lifetimes (see: The Two of Cups)!
An example of The Lovers turned shadow is the state of monogamous marriage. There are all types of compatibilities and when we try to smash one person into the role of sole receiver of all our affections and commitments, and sexual needs, things will likely begin to crumble. That is a lot of intensity pinging back and forth with plenty of room to cause fires, feel like you’ve settled, build resentments, and lose the spark that brought two people together in the first place.
The concept of choosing a secure partner rather than a chemically attractive one, because we have been conditioned to seek one long term partner to meet many needs is a unique experience to our species. The opposite is similarly rough, trying to make a life long partner out of a person who could’ve been a better seasonal lover. I am not saying folks who are safe and secure are not attractive, or that you don’t deserve respect, safety and love.
I am saying our ability to physically magnetize to someone whom we’ve chosen based on long term compatibilities instead of animal base phermonal energy has the potential to confuse the body and create yearning for greener grass, stir self doubt, or end in divorce. None of which are bad, just aspects to consider if you feel a hard feeling when this card appears in your reading.
polyamory and The Lovers
I align myself with the values of polyamory. I talk about this aspect of life on my IG occasionally. Polyamory means many (poly) loves (amory). I’ve found that the ethics and ethos of polyamory apply to not only romantic relationships but all loving relationships. Think communication, honesty, accountability, community, empathy, and safely getting your needs met.
I feel like I would be remiss in not sharing a few polyamorous thoughts right here on The Lovers! So here goes.
I literally was done writing this blog when I let my eye wander to the belly of this card and audibly gasped when I spotted the man in the backdrop of my lovers card.
I created this card nearly six years ago and have NEVER noticed him. Now, this could be interpreted many ways and he could represent many things depending on the reading but the message that came through in this moment is,
It is easy to follow the monogamous path, it is so well packed, with hardly a weed cropping up along its trail. We are conditioned for it. It is easy to be smitten and enthralled by one lover. To devote all our affections to one person, but if we panaramize our vision and allow the past loves and the passing attractions whom we dismiss due to a loyalty to the system of monogamy, what abundance could you be calling into your life?
There are in fact many examples from our human history where communal love and forms of polyamory were the norm, check out this book if you’d like to read about those!
I invite you to imagine what it would be like to invite that other love to join your lovers table. I invite you to imagine your capacity for love to expand out from your heart and drape over your life experience like dreamy purple and pink clouds.
An example a lot of polyamorists offer is, it is not questioned if you can love more than one of your children, or different beverages, or have love for many friends. So why is it that we are allotted only one romantic love? One life partner? If there were a moment to question the idea of lack, this would be a good and big place to start.
Feel into your needs and desires, let them flow from your heart and alight your feet to follow them. Let your head craft direct communications, beautiful boundaries and gobble up knowledge about the alternative loving life available to you, if you so choose.
I don’t hate monogamy, or think that polyamory is for everybody or think polyamory is a walk in the park always. I actually feel like I am in a place in life where I could practice monogamy if I wanted to because of the communication skills I have learned through polyamory. I also really despise social prescriptions that my little rebellious heart finds imprisoning.
This Tarot blog is a reflection of my personal experience and so for me, this aspect of my life is worth sharing about. I hope my sharing will offer a little advice or encouragement for navigating polyamory or ethical nonmonagamy. Here in the first leg of the major arcana through The Lovers we will just allow this introduction to exist.
I invite you to let whatever feels come up wash over you and journal about them if that feels nourishing. Blessings to you sweet human on this wild ride of existence.