In the seemingly never-ending pandemic, I haven’t heard as much talk as one usually might in January about resolutions, about goal-setting and about setting an intention for the year. I think tarot provides a great way to provide a launch-point for this sort of introspection if you link the digits of the year to the major arcana. I’ve discussed this method before: you break down the digits of the year by adding them together. 2022 = 2+0+2+2 = 6. Six in the major arcana is the Lovers.
The Lovers is an interesting card for interesting times. Aside from the obvious connotations of love and relationships, this card has a strong link to the concept of choice. In the Fool’s Journey, this is the point where the Fool leaves what they have learned from their parents (the Empress and Emperor) and from school and society (the Hierophant) and for the first time makes a meaningful choice of their own – the choice between their birth family and their chosen family. So the first thing you can ask yourself in this, the year of The Lovers is, are your relationships working for you? Are they fulfilling relationships? Are you getting what you want and what you need out of them? For some of us, we’ve just spent an unprecedented two years in close quarters with our closest family members, and I know more than a few relationships that have not survived that strain. But what about your friendships? How have they weathered the storm?
When it comes up in a reading, the Lovers card often alludes to a crossroads, to a choice to be made. Is it time for you to re-prioritize your life? Where are you choosing to invest your energy? Is it time for you to commit? Or maybe it’s time to reconsider a commitment that no longer serves you? Remember, love is not just romantic love – there is platonic love, filial love, love thy neighbour, and perhaps most important of all after two years of chronic stress: loving yourself.
Another way to interpret the Lovers is in a theme of bringing two together as one, and moving from duality to unity. I’m still optimistic that once the Omicron wave recedes, we’ll be emerging from pandemic to endemic, but to a vastly fractured world. We’re leaving behind one world, a world whose cracks and voids have been exposed. We have the opportunity to make some new choices. The Lovers card hints at unification and reconcilliation, of making two into one. Maybe this bodes well for healing the current chasms, the xenophobia, the gaps between have and have-not.
I think the Lovers is an optimistic card for a dark time, but I also know after being married for more than 20 years that relationships are not easy. They take commitment, compassion, and a conscious choice – every single day. Will this be a year where we are able to start to reconcile the things that divide us?
Next year, 2023 will be a Chariot year where we take off purposefully in a new direction and harness opposing forces. It’s also my personal birth year card. I’m pretty excited to see where it goes!