The Lovers is an image of the garden of Eden, promoting enlightenment more than loss of innocence. This card is also called the Choice, and represents an important choice between two strong desires.
The card can indicate a smaller choice, or signify a larger crisis in a person’s life.
Will you go for the new exciting adventure or lover, or stay with the reality that you know.
On the esoteric level, it is a question of choosing: the outer way, where your life has a precise shape and structure, or the occult inner path which can lead to a confrontation with your inner desires and temptations. The card is about the choice between light and dark in the broadest aspect. It is also representing the first human choice made without the parents. Sexuality takes us in the direction it wants to flow. As an individual you have to break free and make your own choices to achieve sexual, and moral and intellectual independency.
This card represent true individuality, the ability to make decisions. It also raises the question, what deep truth can be found in the drama when two lovers meet?
Sexuality leads us away from isolation. It pushes us into necessary relations with other people, and finally it makes way for love. Through love, we achieve union with someone else, and get a glimpse of higher purpose, the greater substance of life. In love we give up some of the ego-control.
We are incomplete and through love we can achieve a sense of completion.
Reason can only transgress its limits through the way of passion. It is the nature of passion to break down all barriers. But sexual desires can’t guide us to the angels alone. The person that blindly follows his lust, will often be met with many challenges. When we surrender to sexual love we experience something that is larger than ourselves. True liberation requires a lot more than passion. Love can help us see the way and sense some of the joy we will experience when we reach our goal.
Many mystics have illustrated the union with God in the image of sexual ecstasy.
The divinatory meaning is about the importance of love in ones life, it represents a certain partner, marriage or a long relation- ship. This relationship is very valuable because it leads to a new and greater understanding of life.
Guide for Oracle card readings
The Empress
Major Arcana Archetypes