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Seeking Eden: the Lovers and the Millennium of Heaven
The journey to self always involves comparison and contrast to other, an exploration of duality and contrast that sharpens our intelligence and hones our perspective. In tarot, this point arrives with the Lovers, the 6th card of the major arcana. Not surprisingly, it’s one of the most misread cards in the system. As tarot continues to capture the imagination of artists and seekers and new versions of the card continue to appear, the card is portrayed as one of romance and longing featuring couples in acts of embrace, hands grasping, lips crushed in passion. It’s interpreted literally as earthly relationships, marriage, sexual liaisons in so many readings. In a system known for its deep symbolism and coded wisdom, why is this arcana above all others taken at face value?
Like every card in the tarot, the Lovers has undergone major transformations over the years. From the gameplay of the 14th Century to the tables of the Forefathers of Cartomancy, that card largely represented marriage as a moment of united faith. This was truly the Triumph of Love: a mirror of value, Truth and Honor united under Love, Divinely Inspired and Sanctified. But Eliphas Levi saw the scene very differently: in his work with the Tarot de Marseilles, he saw these figures not as Truth and Honor, but as Vice and Virtue, the moment of choice between Spirit and Matter. To Levi, this…
