Tarot Tip #16 – “Love in the Tarot”

 In my last tip I talked about several ways you might see a marriage in the cards.  In this tip I’ll talk about love.

     There are many types of love, and the tarot cards do a great job giving us insight into all of them.  In fact, the tarot dedicates an entire suite, the suite of Cups, to the subject of love!  Any time you see cups in a reading, you can assume the cards are speaking about strong emotions concerning something.  If upright, that emotion is usually positive; inverted, negative.  The cups in the tarot deck can show us the entire gambit of human emotions, ranging from the negatives of anger, hurt, depression, and loss, all the way to love, happiness, joy, bliss, belonging and nurturing.

     Let’s focus on love, and specifically, romantic love.

     It’s fun to note right off that the cards wisely recognize that sex and love, even romantic love, are not necessarily the same thing, in spite of the fact that many people treat them as such.  In the cards, love is always represented by Cups, but sex is represented by Wands, or cetain of the Major Arcana cards.  More about that in a future Tip.  For now, just assume that if the loving relationship you see in the cards is surrounded by Wands, it’s likely to be sexual, or at least will carry the tension of sexual attraction.  If the Cups in the reading are accompanied by Swords, the relationship is one that involves sharing and communication, and if they are accompanied by Pentacles, it will involve a lot of nurturing as well as finances and business or work.

    So how do I know that the cards are showing me a love relationship?  I will see a combination of court cards showing the people involved, and some specific Cups that tell me the type of relationship.

    Cards that show specific loving relationships are the Ace of Cups, The Two of Cups, the Three of Cups, the Six of Cups, the Ten of Cups, The Empress, The Emperor, The Heirophant, The Lovers, The Devil, The Star, and The Sun. The Major Arcana cards show the type of loving relationship that the surrounding Cups talk about.

     The Ace of Cups will show the beginning of loving relationship.  Upright, it begins fast, inverted, it will grow slowly. The Two of Cups is a soul-mate relationship if it’s upright; if inverted it may be that a soul-mate relationship is in the future, depending on where it falls in the reading, or that the relationship is not a soul-mate relationship. The Three of Cups is often a loving relationship between three friends or siblings.  The Six of Cups talks about a love from the past, returning, or perhaps even a past life. The Ten of Cups is a loving family, the Empress is motherly love, the Emperor is fatherly love.  The Heirophant, if it is surrounded by Cups, is a loving marriage or possibly love given to an authority figure who is admired and respected. When the Lovers comes up there is a decision about love being made.  The presence of the Devil, when upright, can indicate an obsessive kind of love.  The Star, on the other hand, is the kind of love where the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts.  It’s a totally selfless, fulfilling, even spiritual love.  The Sun would be a love relationship that becomes a marriage or produces a male child.

     I’ll be talking more about the people in these loving relationships in my next tip!