Tarot Pull with Character Development Demo: The Lovers

Believe it or not, I actually pulled two cards this week to try and shake up our Major Arcana theme. Alas, BOTH cards were members of the Majors. Guess we’ve got some hard-hitting energy in the air (judging by the state of writing in the Twitterverse, it makes sense). 

I had the choice between Judgment and The Lovers, and for a bit of levity as we walk into the spring months with hope growing around us, I opted for The Lovers.

With this post, I’m not only going to highlight the meaning of the card and how it can be represented across various decks, but I’m also going to give a quick-hit example of how I’d use the appearance of this sugary sweet card when pulling for characters.

Here we go with our overview of The Lovers card…

Pictured: The Lovers card from the Wild Unknown Tarot deck

It doesn’t get much more huggable than this.

Traditional keywords for The Lovers:

Upright - Love; harmony; values alignment; commitment; choices

Reversed - Self-love, disharmony, imbalance, misalignment of values; separation

For more information on the traditional interpretation of The Lovers card, see Biddy Tarot’s article here.

Pictured: The Lovers card from the Ethereal Visions Tarot deck

If you’ve ever been to a carnival and gotten a tarot reading, it’s very likely you just happened to end up with The Lovers card. I’m not saying they would have perhaps stacked the cards in such a way where you were almost certainly going to end up with that card in the spread, but ummm…*cough, cough*.

Look, it’s generally a happy card, and for those of us who are either in a relationship or would like to be in one, it’s always nice to have that reassurance that peace, love and harmony are on the way.

Of course, in its reversed position, it can mean exactly the opposite of romantic bliss. Instead, it could land you in hot water with divorce papers on the counter.

Pictured: The Lovers card REVERSED from Madam Clara’s 5-cent Tarot deck

To be honest with you, the romantic piece of The Lovers card doesn’t register with me as much as what I view as the core meaning of the card: harmony.

In the upright position, it can be indicative of a happy home, well matched partnership or even a harmonious working relationship. It doesn’t have to be about your soul mate (which is good for me since I don’t really believe in soul mates). 

In the reverse, take all of those things and flip ‘em around: are your relationships out of alignment? Is there discord amongst family members? Are you puling out your hair at your job? Do you need to focus more on loving yourself than obsessing about how others feel?

Pictured: The incredible Star Spinner Tarot deck decided to go all in on The Lovers card showing the many kinds of relationships and ways in which love manifests in the real world

Let’s play with The Lovers and some character development!

Instead of chit-chatting about how your dream lover might be walking ‘round the corner of the 8 of Cups if you’d only follow The Hermit (No; I’m not sorry for the lame tarot jokes), I decided to use this space to quickly show how The Lovers card can be used in creative writing to give you a better sense of your characters. 

To do this, I’m going to use Madam Clara’s 5-cent Tarot deck, and we’ll play around with some of the characters I’ve been developing for my new work-in-progress.

As I mentioned in my article on a more elaborate character building spread, this is the particular deck that seems to gel best with the vibe of my next project.

It’s also going to be the next deck we take a Tarot Tour of soon!

Let’s take a peek at how I leverage well known tarot archetypes like The Lovers to spark ideas in the writing process…

If we’re going to start out with The Lovers, we’ve really gotta be talking about a relationship of some sort. It would be pretty easy to use the card as a starting point to delve into the two actual lovers in the story, but we’re going to look at a relationship that’s a bit more fraught. 

This time, we’re taking a look at the relationship between Addy and Nora— two women thrown together as the world fell apart. While Nora is decades older than Addy, they certainly don’t have the traditional mother-daughter relationship. Addy would concede that Nora has taught her enough to survive the world as it’s become, but she would also highlight the terrible price Nora has forced Addy to continually pay for that survival.

Their circumstances have created a vicious cycle where neither can survive without the other, and that brittle glue is the only thing keeping them together…at least, in the beginning of the novel. 

Here’s where using the lovely Lovers card can be fun beyond mapping out traditional romantic relationships.

I started out placing The Lovers card in center with the intent of honing in on what keeps these two connected on a level that goes even deeper than just their mutual need to survive.

Next, I placed a card representing Addy (the Page of Needles pictured here and previously identified in another article).

For character cards, I like to think they can be oriented in either direction. Why?

Because we’re multi-faceted beings with the ability for both the “light” and “shadow” versions of ourselves to come peeking through. Your characters are the same.

For additional context, in the 5-cent Tarot deck, Needles are the equivalent of Swords in the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck. While many associate Swords with “thought,” I often associate them with “action” or “movement.” Thought and action are interrelated anyways, so I’ve never had an issue with this interpretation. 

Meanwhile, Pages often represent new beginnings or pursuits…the start of an adventure or passion project. 

Keywords associated with this card per the deck:

Upright: ambition; restlessness; initiative

Reverse: haste; dishonor; ‘all talk’

For Nora, I pulled The Queen of Needles…reversed. Like I just said, I think character cards can be read in any position, but it didn’t surprise me that hers immediately presents upright given what I know about her. 

Keywords for the card include:

Upright - Clear of Mind / Honest / Unbiased 

Reversed - Cold of Heart / Critical / Narrow Minded

The next thing I wanted to know was:

“What is it that actually keeps them together?”

For that, I pulled The Magician Reversed.  

Keywords for this card in the REVERSE position are: Manipulation / Deception / Unfocused

Final question: What is the undoing of this relationship?

And the answer? I pulled sweet, sweet Justice Upright.

Keywords for Justice in its UPRIGHT position are:

Cause & Effect / Truth / Fairness

So, what does all of this mean for me as the person writing down their characters’ story? 

Obviously, I’m not going to give away the ends and outs of the plot, but there are some extremely valuable takeaways in here: 

Firstly, I find it fascinating that Addy presents as the PAGE of Needles while Nora presents as the QUEEN of Needles. Even just looking at the age difference speaks volumes— Addy is of the new order while Nora’s reign is declining. 

While we’ve already learned that Addy and Nora are stuck together in order to survive, The Magician reversed speaks to something more nefarious. Beyond the immediate external pressure, manipulation and deception are baked into the foundation of their relationship. It’s the thing keeping them together far more effectively than anything the outside world throws at them. 

So, how does that bond forged in tragedy and deceit fall apart? Justice. Not only will the truth come to light, but the actions that were hidden in the darkness eventually have a stunning effect for which everyone will be held accountable. 

Pictured: The impromptu spread I used to further develop the relationship between two main characters using Madam Clara’s 5-cent Tarot

And that’s my quick hit on The Lovers and how you can use it as a creative tool! 

I’m loving playing around with smaller spreads and doing spontaneous character development using tarot as a writing tool. If this is something you’re also finding useful or even moderately interesting, let me know! I love hearing what people enjoy learning about tarot, but I also want to hear all of your brilliant creative techniques and projects. 

As always, you can reach me here or on Twitter

Until next time, stay creatively and perpetually weird!

~Allison