By Sarah Taylor
We have three major arcana cards in today’s reading: Lovers (VI), flanked by Strength (XI in this deck) and Hanged Man (XII). I drew the central card first, which, coupled with the outer cards being chronological neighbours, indicates that we are looking at two different aspects coming together — whether physically, or symbolically, or both.
This is soul-level stuff; not just the everyday, not just about what we’re doing. It is how we are — more than that: it is who we are, and who we are intending to become.
Something is going on behind the scenes that takes us out of the realm of our five senses and into a larger arena, which I’ve found asks for a greater degree of trust because, often, it is not we who are at the controls. When we engage with the major arcana, we are walking in the land of the gods. This asks for a different form of navigation: our intuition. It calls for a particular way of interacting with our surroundings: one based on receptivity.
I love the Lovers in this deck. Together, the two figures make one, mouths disappearing at the point of contact, arms wrapped around the other, polarised bodies joined from crown to base, each eye-half forming a functioning whole. This may be the coming together of two individuals, but even that is a metaphor for something of greater significance: the uniting of two elements of the soul.