Tarot Card Meanings: The Lovers

“I’m running away with you
From yesterday’s news
Let’s leave it all behind
Help me back to my mind
I’ve paid the penalty
You’re the jailer rattling the key
But the key is mine
I keep a spare one every time
This is for lovers
Running away
This is for lovers
Running away”

‘For Lovers’ by Wolfman (Wolfe/Taylor/Doherty/White/Scott/Scott)

Welcome to my loving circle! The Lovers is the sixth card of the Major Arcana, and it’s often misunderstood. While it can represent romantic love, its deeper meaning is about choice, commitment, and soulful alignment. In this post, I explore the many layers of the Lovers Tarot card, from mythology and symbolism, to popular deck imagery and how we experience the energy of the Lovers card in our day to day lives.

I found The Lovers card a bit tricky when I was first learning Tarot because it fools you into thinking it’s easy. Ah, The Lovers! It’s all about love, right? True Lurrrrrvvveeee. But then when you read a bit about Tarot it turns out it’s about choice*. Maybe? But also True Love. (*The choice being a bit of a mishmash of leaving the security of your mum to run off with your girlfriend, Eve’s choice to eat the apple, and taking the path that feels true to your heart’s desire).

The choice connection is pretty intuitive though, despite my grinching, because while love often feels like a Great Overwhelming Thing that happens to us, in many ways it is a conscious choice. A choice to be vulnerable and open with another person. A choice to allow true intimacy. A choice to be our complex, flawed but authentic selves, and let someone else see that, in all its difficult, messy glory. It’s also important to remember that self-love is key to balancing the duality in any relationship. A true lover is someone with whom you can learn the lessons you are wanting and ready to learn, who loves you just as you love yourself.

“Love requires surrender, and surrender requires choice”

Philip Carr-Gormm

Now, before I get into my customary deconstruction of the symbolism we often see in RWS style decks (and my celebration of all my pretty Lovers cards 😍), I’m going to take a bit of a detour via the Tarot de Marseilles. I am absolutely not an expert on the Tarot de Marseilles, but, from everything I’ve read about The Lovers (as well as the vibes that this card often gives when it comes up in a reading), the way the TdM depicts the card sits more comfortably with me than the Rider-Waite-Smith’s image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

But what really cinched my preference for the TdM’s depiction was diving a bit deeper into the parable of Hercules at the crossroads. The whole thing is just so Tarot! The story dates from ancient Greek times, and speaks of the young god Hercules being offered a choice between two (allegorical) female figures, Vice (Kakia) and Virtue (Arete). Kakia offers him a life of ease and pleasure, and Arete offers him a life of hardship and honour. As Hesiod explains in ‘Works and Days‘ (c. 700BC):

“Wickedness (κακότητα; kakotes) can be had in abundance easily: smooth is the road and very nigh she dwells. But in front of virtue (ἀρετῆς; arete) the gods immortal have put sweat: long and steep is the path to her and rough at first; but when you reach the top, then at length the road is easy, hard though it was.”

I always say to clients I read for who are new to Tarot, that the Majors are often so intuitive that anyone can look at them and say “oh yeah, I know what this thing is” – because it’s an idea or theme that crops up time and time again in our art, our literature, our religious writings, our songs, and, of course, our lives. And Hercules at the crossroads just feels to me like one of those things! The theme of two paths associated with a choice or judgement concerning virtue vs. wickedness is one we’re probably all very familiar with; as is the notion that choosing to do the right thing is often hard, and a bit of a slog, whereas choosing the easy option is just that – easy! It’s tempting to go for the path of least resistance even if we know it’s not ‘right’/right for us, just as it’s often tempting to choose nothing at all – to just stand at the crossroads, not committing either way, reserving judgement while life happens around us. It’s a theme beloved by The Bible in both the Old and the New Testament (e.g. in Psalm One, traditionally called The Two Paths, or in the Gospel of St. Matthew with its discussion of the wide gate and broad way that leads to destruction, or the strait gate and narrow way that leads to eternal life).

John S. Uebersax points out that when we find the same theme like this so prominently expressed across time periods and traditions, it implies some universal, archetypal psychological dynamic of fundamental significance – exactly the kind of archetypal dynamic that permeates the Tarot. He goes on to explain that the dynamic at play in the Hercules parable “is not a simple, prosaic morality tale such that ‘one must choose good and not evil’. Rather it confronts us with the existential fact – readily verifiable by introspection and close attention to thoughts – that we are always, every moment of our lives, faced with the two paths: we can direct the immediate energies of our mind towards seeking physical pleasure, or to virtue, spirituality and higher cognitive activity.  When we choose the latter, all is well. Our mind is a harmony.  This is the path of life. But the moment we stop actively choosing virtue, our mind lapses into its immature state dominated by the pleasure principle; we are no longer true to our genuine nature, and a cascading sequence of negative mental events ensues… To choose the path of virtue, wisdom and righteousness on an ongoing basis is not easy. It is, rather, as Plato calls it, the contest of contests and requires a degree of resolve and effort we may perhaps rightly call Herculean.” Benebell Wen says something like this in her book ‘Holistic Tarot’ about the Lovers card: “By most traditional accounts of Key 6, The Lovers card isn’t about romantic love per se, but rather it’s about moral choice. It expresses the duality of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge and how that duality might manifest in our lives.”

This take on the Lovers makes even more sense to me when we think that the next card in the deck is the Chariot – the steely willpower that keeps us on the steep and rocky road to virtue; to our heart’s choice. As Maddy Elruna points out, “to be engaged in life is to make a choice, not just coast along with what everyone else is doing”. She reminds us that Jung believed that it is only by facing our conflicts, and making choices, that we can find peace. When we stand at a crossroads in our lives “we make choices about what to pursue and what to leave behind, about which parts of ourselves to embrace and which ones we may not be as satisfied with. When we know what feeds us, what excites us, what challenges us, we can be more deliberate in our actions and can pursue ambitions and objectives that reflect those values and desires” (Meg Jones Wall, ‘Finding The Fool‘). And if we’re struggling with what direction to choose at that crossroads, Charlie Claire Burgess reminds us that “the answer is built right into the card: whatever you choose, choose with love”.

Symbolism in the Lovers Tarot card

Obviously it’s not that this idea of choice is lacking in the RWS (and decks which follow it), as we can see in the above cards – it’s just the traditional Adam & Eve imagery, or the two romantic lovers locked in an intimate embrace, make the concept of choice a bit harder to parse (especially if we think about the Lovers as any choice that we feel passionately about, not just a choice about literal passion!) In the RWS (see Jamie Sawyer’s beautiful redux version, above) we see Adam & Eve, naked in their innocence. Above them is the Angel of Air, Raphael, with green and red flames streaming from his head: red representing conscious thoughts, and green the subconscious (note the two flames are working in tandem here). Traditionally both Adam & Eve (the OG Gemini) and Raphael are associated with air, which is interesting given you’d expect a ‘Lovers’ card to connect to fiery, passionate Wands, or deep, emotional, watery Cups. This suggests the Lovers card, at its heart, isn’t about passion or romantic love (or even about shagging, which sits within the earthy, lusty realm of the Pentacles), but is about our thoughts and psyche – about finding harmony. When it appears in a reading this card can be about finding a person (or thing or life path) that speaks to us, that we ‘know’ (in an airy, Swordsy way) and recognise as our twin, as a part of us, as something that makes us feel balanced or complete. When we see a new Tarot deck and think ‘I have to have it’, that deep, instant psychic attraction is what the Lovers card is about. Sometimes we come across something that we know was meant for us, even if it involves diverging from our current path. And let us not forget that the person Eros/Cupid (the god of love) fell for was Psyche, the goddess of the soul. The Lovers card is less about romance, passion, and sex than it is about anything you see that calls to you, that sits well with your personality – that makes you think ‘that’s just so me‘ – that attracts your very soul.

Thirteen observes that in the RWS image (and in decks that follow it like the Tarot at the End of the Rainbow, above) Raphael is playing Cupid’s role, saying, “Adam, meet your other half. Eve, meet yours…” However, she says it’s a mistake to therefore interpret this card as being about destiny or fate, or Romeo & Juliet style star-crossed lovers. Instead the card is about that realisation that someone or something is the path we need to pursue: it’s a “little bell [that] start[s] ringing in our ears ‘ding! ding! ding! We have a winner!‘”.

Alongside Adam & Eve in the RWS deck are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge (love the little shout outs to these two trees (as well as the phallic mountains and vulvic rivers) in Jamie Sawyer’s super smart re-imagining of the card in the Out Of Hand Tarot!) The Tree of Life – a sacred tree that connects heaven/eternal life and earth/human life – is a fundamental archetype that we see across lots of belief systems, not just the Abrahamic religions. It is synonymous with Yggdrasil in Norse cosmology, and is a form of the world tree (that we find in Indo-European, Siberian, and Native American religions) or cosmic tree (that we find in ancient Greek mythology). In Genesis it is implied that eating of the fruit of this tree gives you eternal life / makes you ‘like God’. The RWS tree has 12 fruits (which can be seen via the 12 zodiac signs to represent time and eternity).

The second tree, the Tree of Knowledge (also known as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil – AKA everything) with its apples and twisting serpent, sits behind Eve and brings with it all the connotations of the Fall, because BLOODY TEMPTRESS WOMEN RUIN EVERYTHING! Anyway, <deep breaths, fuck the patriarchy>, this also symbolises the value of our (Swordsy, airy) knowledge, and the importance of free will and – you guessed it – choice. It is only through eating the apple of Knowledge that we even have the ability to choose. The apple gave us freedom from God’s will; we took control of our lives and destiny. In this sense we can view Eve’s actions as humanity’s first act of rebellion: choosing knowledge over ignorance. Looked at this way, the Fall is not so much a spiritual fall from grace as the first step towards self-actualisation.  Some religious scholars (particularly from within Judaism), have argued that the story of Eve and the apple shows us that, right from the beginning, even God agrees that to seek truth means to question authority.

Now, arguably the most important piece of knowledge the fruit from the tree gave us was the knowledge of our own mortality. The knowledge of death. The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that in order to truly live authentically we have to confront death head-on. In other words, knowing that we are going to die is what allows us to truly live. Heidegger wrote: “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.” But so many of us fear Death so much we refuse to (intellectually) accept that one day it will happen to us, even as we simultaneously know deep down that it will, it must (a lesson that the Tarot also teaches us more directly later on in the Death card).

In his book ‘The Denial of Death‘, the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker observes that our obsession with not dying often gets in the way of us fully living. We become so focused on outwitting death, on staying in our own Garden of Eden, that we make selfish and hurtful decisions in our lives – especially around the accumulation of wealth and goods. To eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge is to know that we will one day die. And our eviction from the Garden before we could eat from the Tree of Life (and achieve immortality) means we have to come to terms with this.

We can see this hinted at in the Slow Tarot (thanks to the couple’s choice their house (Eden?) is now on fire, but they have nevertheless chosen each other) and in the Blood Moon Tarot‘s overripe apple with its keyhole wound. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz writes of this moment: “And so, a final question remains. Where is the true paradise? Is it in the Garden of Eden where no one ever dies and time is limitless? Or is it East of Eden, outside the garden, where every moment is precious, every decision is life changing, and the fruit, sometimes bitter, compels us to appreciate the sweet?” The choices we make won’t always lead only to sunshine and rainbows, but the very act of choosing – especially of choosing what we want, what our heart calls us to – is an essential part of what it means to be human. And the Lovers card reflects this.

The Lovers card tells us that to make a wise choice, we need to consider our feelings (woman, water), our thoughts (man, mountain, fire), and our highest guidance (angel). Like Hercules at the crossroads choosing to take the stony, uphill path to virtue instead of the easy path to pleasure, following our heart’s choice is hard. However, choosing to ignore that which we most desire, that which we most love, can be even more hard – and painful – in the long run. Thirteen writes that if we ignore our heart’s choice we will often be left “regretting [our] decision, however unselfish it was, however much trouble [we] avoided”. If we choose the thing that is right for us, no matter how hard it is, we generally feel it is “worth the pain, sacrifice, mess, problems, even guilt. Because if you have it, you become more you. And once you do have it, every time you look at it, you know you made the right decision. It gives you not temporary happiness… but spiritual contentment that lasts… well, if not forever, a very long time. Whatever ups and downs you go through because of this choice, you still, in the end, feel better, not worse, for making it”.

That’s Amore: The Lovers card and romance

Older Tarot decks call the card ‘The Amorous One’, so it’s possible that the current title, ‘The Lovers’, is a bit of a mistranslation/misconstruction. The original title suggests this card is less about two lovers together, and more about one person being ‘in love’ with (becoming amorous for) someone or something. And then choosing that thing above all others.

Coming after the Emperor, with his structure and societal rules, and the Hierophant, with his emphasis on community traditions and faith, the Lovers acknowledges that sometimes our heart’s desire defies earthly laws and religious doctrines. Following this desire can therefore be very destructive, but can also make us feel truly alive. Thinking of the Lovers following on from the Hierophant, I am always reminded of this from Neruda:

“send books back to their shelves,
I’m going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived”

From ‘Ode to the Book’ by Pablo Neruda

I like Neruda just as I like these three cards – they speak to the joy of this kind of love! Bakara Wintner points out there is youthfulness and a playfulness to the Lovers card, coming as it does before “any of the shitty ones, or figuring-out-who-you-are ones”. Other writers feel that the card captures some of the same youthful exuberance and joie de vivre as the Fool – here we have the Fool in love! As Meg Jones Wall explains, “no matter what we crave, what we’re drawn to, there are others out there who feel the same way. We are not the only Fool in the world… There’s a hint of the Fool’s curiosity and wonder here, but now the Fool gets to wander arm in arm with someone who really gets it, who really sees them.” They go on to write that finding this kind of “collaborative confidence” can be “energising, transformative, and teaches us to blend self-sufficiency with earnest trust in other people”.

Sex and Love: Gendered elements of the Lovers card

I know a lot of Tarot users chafe against the more gendered elements of traditional decks, and I totally get that. There is a lot of ‘men are from mars women are from venus’ BS that can be read into the cards (they are products of their time, after all), and I can see how the RWS, for example, might not merely be irritating for someone who operates outside of the gender binary, but genuinely hurtful for those of us who labour under gendered oppressions and sexism/transphobia/homophobia etc. in our day-to-day lives.

However, I do think there is some value in exploring the gendered elements of the Lovers card, especially if we treat the masculine and feminine archetypes more as abstract concepts than prescriptive ideas of what men and women should be (and allow that lots of things exist outside of a masculine/feminine binary). For example, some Tarot readers view this card as the marriage of the Emperor and the Empress by the Hierophant, the feminine and the masculine elevating together and uniting in spiritual union: “together, these dualities equal something greater than the sum of their parts. United by mutual respect, common ground, and clear communication, these partners amplify each other’s strengths” (Bakara Wintner, ‘WTF is Tarot?‘). Wintner goes on to point out that while later cards look more at the “heavy-hitting matter of destroying duality entirely”, this card is more about two sides that are able to uplift and reciprocate each other.

Jessica Dore adds of the imagery of the man and the woman joined under the angel, “in the experience of union with another person, we get a taste of something that transcends life’s separations – the mystic’s idea of a return to wholeness”.

Finally, to ‘know’ someone in the Biblical sense is to have a sexual relationship with them, and thus to have children and engage with the cycle of life, love, and death – to separate from God and become fully of the flesh. When Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, the Torah records the very first thing they do: “And Adam knew his wife Eve and she bore him a son”. They have a child: the very realization of “I’m not going to live forever” that we get from eating from the Tree of Knowledge is answered with our best attempt at immortality – progeny. (NB It’s my opinion that we don’t have to see this as literal children either – I think we can take from this that the choices we make live on after us, and that’s why it’s so important to follow our heart’s choice).

I think the Hayworth Tarot, with its two figures disintegrating into one united beam, and the Fyodor Pavlov Tarot, with its two trans figures, both do a good job of acknowledging the roles of sex and gender in the genesis of this card, while also subverting them. Pavlov writes, “though the tarot frequently deals with binaries on the surface, it constantly reminds us that masculine and feminine aspects of its symbolism are interchangeable and applicable to persons of all genders”.

Writing from a queer perspective in ‘Radical Tarot‘, Charlie Claire Burgess describes the Lovers in genderless terms, but states that the card “asks us to face the way we deal with difference. Starting by facing the difference in ourselves… Audre Lorde’s ‘intimacy of scrutiny’… [is] applicable here. In the speech in which she said those words, she implored her audience to turn the intimacy of scrutiny on their own differences, because ‘it is within our differences that we are both most powerful and most vulnerable’.” They go on to point out that we all make mistakes, that we all sometimes treat other people unkindly, or show prejudices that we like to think we don’t have – but “if we are able to continue to treat ourselves with love – and loving ourselves when we have done wrong is one of the hardest times to do so – we will invariably discover that we are motivated to learn, to change, and to become better in those areas, because that too is an action of love”.

If, like Burgess, you prefer non-gendered Lovers cards, I’ve discovered some really gorgeous nature-based ones. A popular theme is to depict the pair as two trees grown twined together. I really like how well these cards illustrate the idea of strength in union. I’ve also had my IRL lover, who’s an ecologist, raving on at me about the book he’s reading (Peter Wohlleben’s ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’) which focuses on what Robert Moor calls “the sociality and sensuous interiority of trees”. Wohlleben’s book is not without its critics (“it’s a conglomeration of half-truths, biased judgements, and wishful thinking“), but the way he writes about how trees support and care for each other (sharing nutrients through their roots in hard times, keeping ancient stumps alive), how they respond to each other, and how they communicate, is amazing. Wohlleben writes, “we think about plants being robotic, following a genetic code. Plants and trees always have a choice about what to do. Trees are able to decide, have memories, and even different characters.” So even here we have the idea of choice!

While the Bottanical Deck shows Hawthorn blossom, the vivid pink blooms remind me, again, of Neruda: “I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees”. The kind of big, bold, sensual love that can make us blossom almost violently into life. And the dancing beams of light depicted in the Spacious Tarot are just beautiful.

Self Love: Light work and the Lovers card

Though the Lovers card nearly always depicts two figures, many writers see the card as inviting a reflection on the ways we do (or don’t!) care for and love ourselves. Especially as nearly every bit of advice for finding (romantic) love with someone else will tell you it’s key to work on your relationship with yourself first (I’m gonna go full cheese and quote Carrie Bradshaw: “the most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself”).

As Bakara Wintner explains, “water seeks its own level, always, and we will not find this balance with another until we know it within ourselves”.  She concedes that the idea that you have to love yourself before you can truly accept the love you deserve from someone else is “an overused-advice-column-shitty-annoying cliché” but maintains that it’s also… well, true. It pertains to the principle first introduced in The Magician, ‘as above, so below’. You get the love you (think you) deserve. Wintner concludes, “we don’t have to be perfect, finished products to find love with another person. We do, however, need to not be at war with ourselves and to have a relationship with love not contingent on the other”. 

I think this idea is beautifully addressed in the solitary figure we see in Le Tarot aux Ramures Étranges. I love the giddy, almost drunken joy we can see on her face. Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt maintain that the Lovers card’s “most beautiful showings tend not to speak to relationships with other people at all. The Lovers’ gift is harmony, commitment, and a bond that can weather any storm. And perhaps you don’t have to look beyond yourself to find that… There is something strange, I think, in the idea of the ‘other half’, implying as it does that we are all fundamentally lacking. The Lovers, at its best, asks you to look inwards, to see yourself as complete, as ying and yang, as question and answer, all within the one soul. It says you don’t have to have gaps to fill – only love to give.” 

It’s this self-love that empowers us to make the sorts of choices (heart choices) that the Lovers card is, in essence, about. The Tarot of the Divine depicts the legend of Beauty & The Beast, which I think is perfect for this card. It was Beauty choosing to return to him (after he’d released her to care for her dying father) that finally broke the Beast’s curse forever.

Bad Romance: The shadow side of the Lovers card

Of course, the flip side of the card is the negative aspects of any union – co-dependency, emotional damage, abuse. I think the Tarot of Oppositions does a great job of showing the shadow energy present in this card: destructive love, toxicity, loss of self. Similarly, E. Lubanko writes that the dark side of this card is “an over-intensity that creates tunnel vision and hurts one or both partners”, which is vividly illustrated in their image of two lovers literally eating each other alive.

Manny Garza’s image of two figures labouring under the symbiotic nature of the connection between them, both driven to their hands and knees, also warns us that we need some independence alongside our relationships with others.

I couldn’t end this post without a big chonka quotation from my favourite tome about love ever written (in fact, my favourite book ever!), ‘The Little Prince‘. There’s so much wisdom in this book, and much of it pertains to some of the key ideas we find within the Lovers card. Enjoy!

“Go and look again at the roses,” [said the fox], “You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you – the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.” 

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose—” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose …”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

From ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Lovers FAQs

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Works Cited

Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. Free Press.
Burgess, C. C. (2023). Radical Tarot: Queer the Cards, Liberate Your Practice and Create the Future. Hay House.
Cownie, J. & Lensvelt, F. (2022). Wild Card: Let the Tarot Tell Your Story. Bluebird.
Dore, J. (2021). Tarot for Change. Hay House.
Elruna, M. (2022). Tarot: A Life Guided by the Cards. Matador.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Blackwell. (Original work published 1927).
Hesiod (1914). Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica (H.G. Evelyn-White, Trans.). William Heinemann. (Original work published ca. 700 BCE).
Jones Wall, M. (2023). Finding the Fool: A Tarot Journey to Radical Transformation. Weiser.
Kingsland, S. E. (2018). Facts or fairy tales? Peter Wohlleben and the hidden life of trees. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 99(4), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1443
Wen, B. (2015). Holistic Tarot: An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth. North Atlantic Books.
Wintner, B. (2017). WTF is Tarot? And How Do I Do It? Page Street Publishing.
Wohlleben, P. (2016). The Hidden Life of Trees. Greystone Books.