The Lovers as a Birth Card

Sarah, the invented woman the numerology pages use, was born on 14 March 1987. Her digits add to 1 + 4 + 0 + 3 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 7 = 33, then 3 + 3 = 6, The Lovers alone. A total of 15 gives The Devil first and The Lovers second, as with 3 March 2007: 0 + 3 + 0 + 3 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 7 = 15, then 1 + 5 = 6. Two cards, and a pairing that makes people flinch when they first see it. Bear with me.

Your life's archetype

If The Lovers is your birth card, you are here to choose. Most people assume the card is about romance, and it is, sometimes. Underneath the romance it is about the fork in the road and the person standing at it, deciding who they are going to be.

Two figures stand in a garden with an angel above them, and the whole picture is a choice made in the open, with nothing hidden. That is your archetype. You are the one who takes the mask off first, says the true thing, and gives everyone else in the room permission to do the same. In my experience the people who carry this card cannot bear pretence for long.

You are here to show that real connection is possible between two people who have stopped performing.

Who you are

You need connection to be real and you are uncomfortable with anything shallow or put on. You can say what you think and feel with clarity, and you listen the same way. Your values matter to you enormously, and you care about doing the right thing even when the right thing is expensive.

Your life keeps bringing you to crossroads. Comfort or truth. What is expected or what fits. Each time you stand at that fork the choice shapes you a little more into yourself. You are drawn to places where plain speaking is safe, and you tend to create that safety by going first.

Choice, truthfulness, communication, values and the courage to live by them. That is the theme.

The shadow

The shadow of The Lovers is the person who can see every side so clearly that they never choose any of them. Commitment closes doors, and you can stand in the hallway for years rather than close one.

Conflict is hard for you, especially with someone you love, and you may fold rather than hold your ground. You can over talk, processing a thing to death when it only needed accepting. Perfectionism about relationships is a quiet trap, and you can be disappointed in real people for being human. The heavier shadow is truth delivered to wound, or the demand that everyone be as open as you are, on your timetable.

The work is to accept that connection comes in shades. You cannot bite into a banana and be angry it is not an apple. People are who they are, and love includes letting them be it.

In love and at work

In love you are fully present, which is the rarest gift there is. The difficulty comes with partners who do not talk the way you do, or who feel the way you feel but cannot say it, and with the ordinary compromises every real relationship asks for. The relationships that work for you are with people who value plain truth, who can have an actual conversation, and who never ask you to swallow what you think to keep the peace.

At work you communicate, counsel, negotiate, teach or write. Any role where saying things clearly matters will suit you, and you shine wherever you can help other people talk to each other better. Your satisfaction comes from work done with integrity, where you can be yourself and help others do the same.

What you are here to learn

That saying the truth and saying everything you think are two different things, and that some truths are better shown than spoken.

You are learning that other people may never fully understand you and that connection does not require them to. You are learning that love sometimes means accepting someone exactly as they are, and that choice has a cost, and that choosing what is true sometimes means losing what you thought you wanted. The achievement is to be wholly yourself without needing approval, to speak truth with kindness, and to love freely while letting others choose differently.

The cards that share your number

The Lovers shares the number 6 with The Devil. In the way I count, which every page here uses, a total that lands on 6 gives The Lovers alone, and a total of 15 gives The Devil first and then The Lovers. Other books count differently and some add a companion card to a single Lovers where I do not.

If you have both, breathe. The Devil is a mirror, and in the birth cards it is a piece of work you are here to do. The two cards are drawn almost the same way: two figures, a larger presence above them. In one the figures are free and in the other they are chained, and the chains are loose enough to lift off. That is your life's question. Where have you chosen a bond that holds you, and where have you mistaken a habit for a choice? The Lovers beneath The Devil is the freedom that was always available, and the people who do this work become some of the clearest people I know.

The cards either side

In the deck The Lovers sits between The Hierophant and The Chariot, and the library pairs it with both: the values that give a choice its ground, and the courage to pursue the choice once made. Those are the neighbours in the deck, a way of reading the card, and your birth cards are the ones under The cards that share your number above.

Across the traditions

The Lovers has its own page in The 78 Cards, which reads it as a card in a spread. In numerology its number is the 6, the number of love, home, responsibility and care, and The Number 6 page covers how it reads as a Life Path, a Destiny and a Personal Year. In Western astrology the card belongs to Gemini, mutable air ruled by Mercury, the sign of the two figures and the conversation between them, and the Gemini page in the Western Astrology section describes it in full. The Tarot Card of the Week post is a shorter companion read when this card comes round.

Which fork are you standing at right now, and what would you choose if nobody was watching?

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Devil as a Birth Card