The Lovers
The Lovers card represents a deep connection between two souls, symbolized by the unbreakable red string of fate. Despite potential challenges and time apart, their bond remains enduring. The card also signifies choices and decisions between different paths. The additional artwork hints at the celestial origins and the perpetual search for one's other half, as described in Plato's Symposium.
Keywords
Balance
The red string of fate ties two souls across any amount of time or space, and while it can be knotted or stretched endlessly, it can never be broken.
Origin
Originating from Eastern cultures, the “red string of fate” has been described as either binding two persons’ pinky fingers or ankles, and here as binding their wrists. In some embodiments, the story follows a young child that throws a rock at another child, only many years later marrying someone with a mysterious scar.
Time
In any form of the story, considerable time elapses between their first and final meetings, with any number of events or years separating them, symbolized by the extensive and knotted red ribbons in the card’s background. In this time, the red string never breaks as the two carry on with their independent lives, only to arrive together in a distant future.
Choice
The two figures also hold a prism in their hands. One upright and another facing down, representing the opposing but attractive forces of each person, and can also symbolize a choice between two different paths. Should they choose each other now, or another path that calls to them, hoping and trusting that they will inevitably meet again in the future?
Additional Artwork
Above the Lovers hangs 3 heavenly bodies: The Sun, Moon, and Earth.
Plato's Symposium
Plato writes on the origins of Love in his novella, Symposium. In it, he describes humans as having originally been two-headed, four-armed, four-legged beings, powerful enough to threaten the gods. The gods, fearing them, split each human in half, dooming them to forever search for their “other half.” What consisted of a person’s “other half” depended on what heavenly body they descended from: man-man pairings from the Sun, woman-woman from the Earth, and man-woman from the Moon.
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