Mystical wanderers,,,,hello. I, Troy Parrott, Tarot Pro, am continuing our journey through and exploration of the Tarot. In this series, we are examining each card of the major arcana, using a special North London themed deck of my own design. What do the cards hold in store for your future?

Today, we move on to Card VI: The Lovers.

VI – The Lovers

Upright

Love, relationships, harmony

Inverted

Separation, relationship difficulties, imbalance

Is there anything in this world that’s better, more pure, more PERFECT, than true love? Uncountable songs have been written about it, or the loss of it, or the lack of it. It is, one could argue, one of the founding pillars of our human society. People spend their entire lives in search of it, obtaining it, trying to regain it, or find it again. Love, as they say, makes the world go round.

There isn’t much subtlety to The Lovers card. There’s very little deception or obfuscation as to its meaning. It is a depiction of two people enjoying each other’s company. They are on a fertile field with symbols of life all around them — an apple tree lies on the left with a snake twining up its trunk, a not-at-all subtle allegory to the Biblical story of Eden and the temptations of the flesh. A burning bush lies on the right — the fire of love, the flaming passion of lust, itself a cautionary allegory. There’s an actual angel behind them, blessing their union. The lovers stand in front of a literal exploding volcano, and jeez do I really have to explain this symbol to you? I think you know.

Upright, The Lovers represents exactly what you think it does. Love, relationships, and everything those things contain. It is passion on a little white piece of paper, but not just the primordial act of consummation — it goes deeper. It also represents communication, a deep friendship, a shared connection. See the two figures, one riding on the back of the other — this is a shared experience of joy and celebration (England actually scored a goal!). The two figures are obviously friends, but they also understand each other deeply and enjoy each other’s company. They are different people — one likes Fortnite, the other artichokes. One can’t resist a proper nutmeg, the other is afraid of fire.† Upright, The Lovers can also represent the joining of two things — ideas, concepts, people, groups — into a unified whole through the process of open communication and loving discourse.

Inverted, The Lovers can represent the dissolution of love: a broken relationship, the loss of a friend, a transfer request to Manchester United. It can also be far less dramatic. Every relationship has its peaks and valleys, and all couples will experience trials in their interactions with each other. The inverted Lovers can represent a time when thinks are “out of sync” — say your dad suddenly asks you to play deeper when you just want to score goals and things don’t go well and the pundits are saying you’re “off the boil” and your partner gets benched and suddenly your dad and your club get divorced and you’ve got a new stepfather out of nowhere who asks you if you’re actually your twin brother and to shoulder the entire creative production of the midfield and meanwhile your partner still isn’t getting minutes and when he comes back he just wants to play in defense, farther away from you you might add, and still looks a shadow of his former self so that hanging over your heads is the threat of a transfer and there’s this pandemic happening and you’re stuck both in mid-table and in your home and you can’t get a haircut and your house gets broken into and maybe that big transfer to Real Madrid you so desperately wanted won’t happen now and meanwhile you can’t look at your partner without thinking of him at United and wondering if he could’ve been more supportive of you or you of him and the spark just doesn’t seem to be there like it was when you were challenging Leicester for the title.

Yeah, you might get the inverted Lovers in that scenario.

Come back tomorrow and we shall discuss the next card in the Tottenham Hotspur Tarot.

† — See, literally, any episode of Wheeler Dealer Radio where Eric Dier is discussed