The Lovers

The 6th Key

Colour: Orange
Sound: D Natural
Sign: Gemini (Mutable Air)
SIMPLE LETTER: Smell

This path connects Beauty with Understanding. The Airy aspect of the Garden of Eden.

The pure Consciousness from which form emerged with the central point of all manifestation. It does not represent a love as between two people but rather the dualities of a single individual, willfully in pursuit of divine love. The dual energies the Lovers propose to unite are equal and opposite as are the twins in Gemini. This union of the opposites takes place under the divine love of the supernals through Understanding.

Case depicted the Sun as man and the Moon as woman with the divine fire above the abyss as the angel or cupid. The Sun is self-consciousness, the Moon is subconsciousness, both aspects of the one life breath. When the solar and lunar currents are rightly perceived and discriminated, there operation kept in proper order, the Personality of man becomes a channel for the outpouring of the cosmic life force. This is an active process of self-control and will which direct the movement and integration of the opposites.

The Lovers depict the experience of the completion of a process begun in Temperence. Temperance required the complete integration of the Personality in its subordination to the Ego in Beauty. The Lovers require a complete integration of the totality of the self manifest in the microcosm, for the return of the soul to the aspect of the garden from which it emerged. Temperance is therefore the balance of the lower self whilst the Lovers are the balance of the higher.

In both the Golden Dawn and Waite cards the number twelve bares significance and in both cases refer to the zodiac. The return to the Godhead requires that we incarnate repeatedly and perfect each of the types in turn.