KEYWORDS: Intimate relationship, love, wholeness.
The esoteric purpose of the Lovers card is to depict the free-flowing transit from spirit to matter and back again that existed at an earlier phase of our evolution. At this time, we could vividly distinguish the physical, mental, and spiritual levels of consciousness, and we could effortlessly glide back and forth among them.
As I explained earlier in the Essence card, our bodies were much less dense than they are today. These ethereal beings operated in a most intuitive, telepathic manner and were hermaphrodites.
This card could be subtitled ‘Wholeness’, as this was truly the nature of these beings. They were complete within themselves, yet they still sought a relatedness to others. There was, at this time, no differentiation of the self as separate from the totality, so of course, love was expressed in a most divine manner.
Venus, the planetary ruler of the Lovers, deals specifically with the concept of relating. It is through our relationships that we humans attempt to recreate that feeling of “One-ness” or “Wholeness” that we only dimly remember. Wholeness, like Truth, is a state of being, not something to be sought after as a prize — it simply is. On the material plane, these concepts are to be seen as more relative than absolute.
With the passage of thousands of years, consciousness polarized into two single-sexed beings; certain qualities came to be defined as male or female. From this point the myth evolved that one was necessary to complete the other. At that stage in human development, perhaps this may have been true, in some ways.
Today, as we hover at the dawn of the Aquarian Age, many are challenging previous conceptions about relationships and some are even questioning gender itself. I believe that the beginning of this new Uranian (ruler of Aquarius) Age – in addition to major transits and shifts of the “outer planets” Neptune and Pluto – is largely responsible for these changes in relationship consciousness. Granted, one can still find some very traditional relationships, but these are slowly shifting. In heterosexual relationships, the divorce rate is sky-high. Some who stay married “open” their relationships; many stay single. Women are no longer chained to the home; and the nuclear family is a bomb waiting to explode. Rigid concepts of gender that have bisected humanity are yielding to more inclusive and tolerant views.
More and more women and men are opening themselves to lesbian and gay relationships and transgender identities. This seeking after sameness may very well be a cosmic memory of a time when we embodied both sexes in one (Neptune’s effect), as well as an out-and-out rejection of patriarchal emphasis on the heterosexual model of marriage and nuclear family.
Many gay people choose not to revolutionize their manner of relating and they simply mimic traditional heterosexual roles. Because of its freer forms and relative lack of rules, there is, however, great potential within gay lifestyle to totally transform (Plutonic energy) our notions of relating.
This theory is by no means meant to exclude heterosexuals from the relationship evolutionary process. As I stated before, these changes are already all too obvious in male-female relationships. I am also not saying that heterosexual bonding precludes Wholeness. The coupling of women with men simply evokes in the psyche the collective myth that one needs the other to be complete, thereby rendering individual wholeness more difficult, but certainly not impossible. Perhaps gays and lesbians do not trigger that unconscious genetic memory of one needing the other to be complete. Perhaps we do; in this case, the rules that we project on our relationships may generate from enforced heterosexuality.
Basically, wherever we are on the evolutionary spiral, we are all gravitating at our own speed, in our own ways, toward Wholeness, both as individuals and through our relationships.
The image for the Lovers shows three ethereal women joined together from their yonis or genital areas. One springs forth from the other, illustrating the free flow from all levels of consciousness, as well as from spirit to matter. They are surrounded by a glorious rainbow backed by a lavender sky. Beneath this scene, pulses a huge red heart, the source of our desire for relating. The shadows of two women are shown locked in a passionate embrace within the heart. The heart is precisely where we must come from when we are involved in all relationships, for this is where we are most whole. Esoteric texts suggest that this (the heart) is indeed the seat of wisdom.
The growth you invoke when drawing this card is the joy of union with another, the tests particular to relating. The Lovers card is about sharing, blending, joy, pleasure, and, most importantly, Wholeness – relating based on desire rather than need.
