What Does the Lovers Card Mean in Tarot?

The choice – whenever you come across this card, you are at a love crossroads. Will you acknowledge “the third soul” in your relationship or will you not?

There’s you (the first soul), there’s your partner (the second soul) and there is also a third and a generally unrecognized soul: the soul of the relationship.

Your choice is between staying in your relationship as it is, or going deeper, sensing, understanding and communicating with your relationship’s soul to uncover subconscious secrets, unexpressed energies, and your relationship’s karmic purpose.

In many Tarot decks, The Lovers card features two women and one man. While one woman is older, representing the young man’s mother, the other one is young, representing the man’s wife-to-be. The Lovers card, in this context, means choice between psychological idleness and true inner growth. In choosing the young wife, the man will start a new life where he assumes real responsibilities. He will become an independent, responsible individual. In choosing the mother, he’ll stay a boy.

Some men “seem to” grow up. They choose to be out there in the world and commit to their dreams and to a woman, but inside they remain a boy. They seek a wife who’ll be their new mother. In a reading, the Lovers, when accompanied by other “motherly” cards such as the Empress, may point to such a man. The soul of this relationship is wounded, with the healthy give-and-take balance long forgotten.

Symbols of The Lovers

If you look at the images on the Lovers card, you’ll notice the tree of fire behind the man on the right. This tree represents man’s innate nature. Fire, when out of control, is destructive (think greed, politics, wars). Any man out of touch with his inner feminine side will have a Napoleon-complex.

But the man in the card is looking at his woman, symbolizing his need to submit his fires to feminine waters for true growth. As such, the Lovers tells us the secret behind men’s true happiness: embracing the feminine ideals of love, nurturing, and commitment as they maintain spiritual maturity and independence in their adult-adult relationships.

Now the woman in the card has a snake behind her. Note that the woman is looking at God and she doesn’t seem aware of the snake at all. This teaches us, when women fall in love with men, they need to constantly remember their own worth, sacredness and divine connection. In loving their man, they should not flame his fires out of their own greed.

In readings, what does the Lovers Tarot Card mean for love?

If you’re in a relationship and you get the Lovers card, rest assured that your relationship is one that can take you to the “next level” in your soul development. As long as you learn to maintain the adult-adult balance, this relationship is everything you need and he needs.

Your relationship will test your ability to choose. The Lovers, representing “the choice,” will consistently want to know that you can choose what’s better for the soul of the relationship – that you can put your relationship’s wellbeing before petty arguments. That you can sense “the third soul” and its purpose in your bones.

Your divine connection may sometimes ask you to draw boundaries, be firm, or show anger – that’s all fine. As long as you understand and work with the soul of your relationship, instead of succumbing to ego-games, your relationship will become stronger and deeper.

What Does the Lovers Reversed in Tarot Mean?

A relationship that’s all about who’s right. A ship with two captains wanting to sail in different directions. Your man is all about his ambitions, maybe even greed, and you forgot who you really are – the all-loving Goddess.

Unless you get psychic and spiritual help and take a deep look at your relationship together, you can’t sustain it. And even if you do, it won’t bring you what you deeply crave. You’ll waste your years.

Complicated?

The Lovers reversed can also mean going from one relationship to the next without finding what you truly need. Take a break from dating and look within. It’s time you get to know yourself better, and figure out what kind of man would be best for you.

Zodiacal Association

The Lovers card is associated with the sign of Gemini. Is it any wonder then that the card is associated with choice? Gemini symbolizes the number two – and Gemini energy tends to go from one extreme to the other, like a swinging pendulum that never knows how to stop in the middle.

But when the Gemini energy falls in love, it goes all the way. So there’s something good about extremes – in burning down to his bones with love, Gemini transforms. Same is true for anyone whose soul craves love and who comes across the Lovers card frequently! A boy transforms into a man into a God, and a girl transforms into a woman into a Goddess.

The choice is yours – what kind of a relationship will you have?