The Lovers

Symbols

• The AngelThe winged angel poised above them — the light that sees them, and the condition by which they can recognize each other.+

  Waite names no angel, only 'a great winged figure with arms extended, pouring down influences'. Later readers call him Raphael: the Golden Dawn's archangel of Air, Gemini's element, and in Tobit the guide who brings Tobias to Sarah.

• Apple Tree and SerpentThe tree behind the woman — the knowledge of desire, the bite that makes choice possible.+

  Waite names it 'the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil'. Genesis never calls its fruit an apple; that reading is usually traced to Latin, where malum means both 'evil' and 'apple'. The woman has her back to it as she looks up.

• Tree of Twelve FlamesThe tree behind the man bears twelve flames — the full round of the zodiac, will falling into the track of time.+

  Waite's 'Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits' is the tree of Revelation 22:2, which 'bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month'. Smith draws the fruits as flames: the man's tree burns where the woman's bears.

• The Solar DiskThe solar disk poised at the zenith above the angel — noon light leaves no half-shadow to blur in, and the pair stand in clear contour.+

  Waite writes, 'The sun shines in the zenith.' In the Golden Dawn system the card belongs to Gemini, the last sign the Sun crosses before the June solstice, when its noon height in the northern hemisphere reaches the year's peak.

• The Mountain BetweenThe mountain rising between them — the weight of deciding translated into a feature of the land.+

  Waite's text has no mountain; it is Smith's addition. It rises exactly in the gap between the two figures, with the angel and then the sun above it, so the card's one vertical axis runs through the space the pair leave empty.

• The NakednessFacing each other without robes — no garment to cushion; the choice must be made in the body as it is.+

  Waite has them 'unveiled before each other, as if Adam and Eve when they first occupied the paradise of the earthly body' — Genesis 2:25, 'both naked … and were not ashamed', before 3:7, when 'they knew that they were naked'.

Story

The picture is built as a tall triangle. At the base, a woman on the left and a man on the right stand apart on open ground, the whole centre of the card between them; at the apex the angel spreads its arms over both, wings filling the upper half. The glances never close into a circle: he looks across at her, she looks up to the angel, and the line of sight climbs without returning — from him to her, from her to the height. Noon light falls straight down, with nothing to soften it. No one touches anyone; the only contact in the picture is the line of sight.

Correspondences

Shadow

Related Cards

Temperance

The High Priestess

Two of Cups

Combinations with this card