6 – The Lovers
The Lovers represents the union of complementary forces, not only the joining of masculine and feminine, but the alignment of heart and mind. It reflects the Eastern concept of yin and yang, not as a struggle between opposites, but as the integration of two independent yet interdependent aspects of a single whole. In this card, harmony comes from the conscious choice to honor the distinct energy each person brings to an intentional union of body, mind, and spirit.
Traditionally, the lovers in the card are portrayed as a couple being joined through a religious ceremony, or alternatively as Adam and Eve, innocent in their nudity. The former reduces the card to a socially sanctioned contract, while the latter carries the theological burden of original sin. I found both interpretations insufficient to convey the full dimensionality of true union as a meeting of mind, body, and soul that exists within its own self-created sacred space. It is a union defined by the gravitational pull of natural affinity.
I also feel that to not at least suggest carnal desire would ignore an important aspect of what it means to be lovers.
In creating and posing my Lovers, I was careful to obscure any overt markers of gender. This choice was not driven by prudery, but by a desire to present the figures as true physical equals. I envisioned them in an androgynous state, suggestive of a time before biology, culture, and social roles amplified sexual difference. In this form, neither figure dominates nor defines the other. They are equals. Their union rises beyond the merely physical to inhabit a higher plane, transcending time, circumstance, and even death, but they are also human in their expression of the sexual aspect of love.
The figures are posed intertwining to symbolize the absence of boundaries between them and the complete sharing of presence and space. The serpent and idyllic setting recall the Garden of Eden, but the serpent’s integration with the couple reframes the scene as an acceptance of the ties that bind us to the material world, the necessities of human existence, and the exercise of free will despite its consequences.
The substitution of a pomegranate for the traditional apple felt both more historically resonant and less cliché, while also invoking its associations with fertility, desire, and generative power. The lovers’ foreheads and noses touch in a gesture inspired by the Māori hongi, embodying the trust, respect, and vulnerability required for a conscious union of equals.
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