The Lovers

Arcana

Major Arcana — one of the twenty-two

Number

VI — card 6 of the sequence

Place in the sequence

seventh of twenty-two

Numbered alongside

the four Sixes of the Minor Arcana

Upright

Love, harmony, relationships, alignment of values

Reversed

Imbalance, misalignment, disharmony

Listing position

card 7 of 78 as the deck is written out

Nothing on this page is calculated from your birth details or your name — the readings below are the traditional attributions for The Lovers, written plainly. The one part of it that is arithmetic, and exact, is how often a card of this kind actually turns up; that has its own section further down.

What The Lovers means

A meaningful choice in relationships or values. Align head with heart before you commit.

The Lovers is numbered VI, card 6 of the twenty-two, and Major Arcana cards are read as the large theme of a stretch of life rather than as the day-to-day events the four suits describe. A Minor card puts one subject — the work, the feeling, the argument, the money — at a particular stage; The Lovers names the chapter all of that is happening inside.

Its keyword line — love, harmony, relationships, alignment of values — is the short form for a grid, not a second meaning. When The Lovers lands beside two Minor cards, the usual reading is that it outranks them: they describe the events, The Lovers describes what the events are for.

The Lovers reversed

Imbalance, misalignment, disharmony

Reversed, The Lovers does not become its opposite. VI is the same chapter either way; the reversal turns it inward, or slows it, or points at the version of love that has gone wrong. On a chapter as large as VI that is a real difference in tone rather than a different card, which is why The Lovers reversed is written here as imbalance, misalignment, disharmony and not as the opposite of love.

Plenty of readers do not use reversals. Do that and The Lovers keeps one meaning, and the cards around it decide whether the chapter it names is arriving well or badly.

Where The Lovers sits in the sequence

The Lovers stands at VI, between The Hierophant (V) and The Chariot (VII). Read as a sequence — and most readers do read it as one — the twenty-two run from a first step to a completion, so The Lovers arrives after spiritual wisdom, tradition, conformity, education and hands over to control, willpower, success, determination.

The number VI

The Lovers is numbered 6, a single digit, so there is nothing to reduce: it is already the root the larger numerals reduce towards. Going the other way, The Devil (XV) reduces to VI, which makes The Lovers the plainer statement of a number that card carries in a more worldly form.

The same number reaches the Minor Arcana directly: the four Sixes — Six of Wands, Six of Cups, Six of Swords and Six of Pentacles — are the day-to-day version of what The Lovers names as a theme. The recovery in four different subjects, against one chapter of a life.

Reading The Lovers in a spread

A Major in a three-card spread usually reframes the other two rather than sitting level with them. The Lovers in each position:

• First — the setting. The Lovers as the theme already in place behind the question: love, harmony, relationships, alignment of values.
• Second — the situation. VI as what the matter is actually about now, which generally outranks whatever the Minor cards beside it are describing.
• Third — the direction. The Lovers as a chapter opening rather than an event: the position where a Major reads least like a prediction and most like a description of where things are heading.

In a love reading

The Lovers describes the theme a relationship is inside rather than an event inside it — love, harmony, relationships, alignment of values applied to two people. That is a broader claim than any Cups card makes, and a vaguer one, which is why VI usually wants the cards either side of it before it says anything useful.

In a career reading

On a work question The Lovers answers about the direction rather than the task: not whether the report gets filed but whether the chapter you are filing it in is the one you meant to be in.VI on its own will not tell you what to do on Monday; read it with a Pentacles or Wands card beside it and that card supplies the practical half The Lovers leaves out.

How often The Lovers actually comes up

This is the part of a card page that can be checked, so it is worth stating exactly. Three cards drawn from seventy-eight means any named card — The Lovers included — appears in one three-card spread in 26, or 3.8% of the time. No card in the deck is rarer than another, and any page telling you its own card is unusual to draw is wrong about arithmetic rather than about tarot.

• At least one of the twenty-two Major Arcana appears in 63.6% of three-card spreads. A "big card" showing up is the ordinary case, not a sign.

Reversals do not change any of that. Whether The Lovers lands upright or reversed is a separate coin from whether it lands at all, which is worth remembering when a reversed card feels like it was aimed at you.

The full set of these figures, including what the most-feared cards actually add up to, is on the tarot page.

The Lovers — common questions