The Lovers
“Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
Osho
“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”
Jane Austen
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…”
EE Cummings
“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.”
Mercutio (Shakespeare)
Two lovers in first blush hold hands, caught in philos/eros/agape. English uses but one word for this, and thus we have the card “The Lovers”; but is this love actually incipient lust? Or the love of bosom friends? Or the soul-love of platonic life-mates? Or the exciting buzz of a hook-up? Or the enduring bond of a 65th anniversary?
Yes. All this and more. To reduce this card to any one of these is to miss out on all the others, and why on earth would you want to do that? Allow the sweetness, the excitement, the loyalty, the blush of innocence and age-old knowing to permeate your sense of the Lovers. Don’t pin them into a box of your own making; they are transcendent in their hope and joy.
What do they have to teach you of hope? Of expectation? Of compassion and care? Of romance, of sensuousness, of purity, of loyalty, of devotion? Where in your life do you need love? Where is it already present? To whom can you give love? From whom can you receive it? Don’t invest more than you can walk away from whole, for there is the danger of love, but neither let your own self-imposed restrictions (or society’s) keep you from loving the ones you’re with.