Reading Tarot Like The Lovers

Until now, the path of the diviner along the Fool’s Journey has been one of solitude. This solitude began to break when we reached the Hierophant, as we considered the question of tradition and lineage, but it is with the Lovers that the isolation really comes to an end with the blessing and celebration of the angel. 

Every Tarot reader lives and works within a web of relationships. Even if you are reading this from your desert island fortress, you still exist within a web of relationships. You carry the genes of the people who conceived you. The device you are using to read this was made by people. You and I are engaged in a conversation right now, even if I can’t hear what you have to say.

Relationships Bring Moral Dilemmas

Relationships can be a wonderful thing, but they also bring moral dilemmas with them. As a Tarot reader, how do you handle it when the people around you don’t approve of reading Tarot? Do you use the cards to help you give them advice, anyway? What do you do when someone you care about wants you to do a reading that’s important to them but makes you uncomfortable? 

When I first started doing Tarot readings for strangers, I faced a barrage of ethical questions I never considered before. Some of my decisions were easy. I am not a doctor, financial advisor, or lawyer, so refusing to answer questions related to issues in those fields was a relief, but other questions weren’t so simple.

Relationship readings are among my most popular. Relationships are necessarily between two people. I have a policy of not reading for people who haven’t asked for a reading, but, unless a couple comes for a reading together, a relationship reading necessarily involves at least one person who isn’t there, even if the person requesting the reading hasn’t met them yet.

And yet, relationship issues are some of the most painful emotional issues people face. I had to ask myself: How do I respect the privacy of the person who hasn’t asked for a reading while helping the person who has?

This isn’t a question you can answer once and be done with it. Each relationship is unique, each person asking for a reading is unique, and there are times when I see more into a situation than I asked for, and I have to decide what to share and what to keep to myself.

The Lovers and Choice

The Lovers card is one of the places where the Rider-Waite-Smith deck makes a radical departure from older decks. In the previous versions of this card, the focus was not on a couple but on a triad: A young man between two women is forced to choose. The card is even, in some decks, called The Choice.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith card, the choice between lovers is gone. The third figure is an angel, who is usually portrayed as chaste or asexual, but the theme of choice—or, at least, of mediation—remains.

The imagery in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is inspired by Medieval Christian mythology. In that philosophy, the masculine is said to be ruled by reason, and the feminine is said to be ruled by passion.

In the 21st century, the idea of associating reason and passion with gender is laughable, but the choice represented in the new card can be understood as the choice between the heart and the mind. Everyone has faced a choice between the expression of passionate anger or lust and a rational, cool response.  

Most often, though, the seeming dichotomy between rationality and passion is a false one. The philosopher Heidegger wrote about passionate knowing, but you don’t have to be a dense existentialist philosopher to see that true wisdom comes from the head and the heart. The truth is not a cold thing. Understanding it requires both rationality and passion. The angel does not mediate between warring parties but, instead, nudges rationality and emotion together.

Clients often come to readers because they are looking for a cool, outsider perspective, especially when they are struggling with the heat of relationship issues. It is important not to get too cold, to listen to both what you’re feeling about the cards that come up in a reading, and what you think. Your clients don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do you. To every reading, we bring with us our invisible soul ties, standing behind us like the angel.

This post was originally published on Aquarius Moon Journal on 21 July 2020.