The Lovers

Upright

Vau's hieroglyph is the eye and the ear — the organs that link what is inside a person to what is outside. Papus reads the sixth arcanum as the trial of choice: the man stands between two ways with the arrow already drawn above him. It is not romance, and reading it as romance loses the card. It is the moment where the binding term has to be exercised by an individual, and where the choice, once made, cannot be un-made.

Reversed

The choice avoided — both ways kept open until circumstance closes one, which is a choice made by default and usually the worse one. Or the choice made by appetite rather than by the eye and the ear: taken on the strength of wanting, without either looking or listening first.

Correspondences

Papus's number

6

Hebrew letter

Vau (ו)

Hieroglyph

The eye and the ear — what links the inner to the outer

Septenary

First septenary (1–7), the Divine world — sixth term, reflecting the Empress: action narrowed to a single decision

Divinatory sense

Ordeal; trial; the choice that binds

In a Spread

At the commencement the whole matter rests on a decision already taken, and the reading is about living inside it. In opposition, a second option that will not stop being attractive. At equilibrium the situation is genuinely poised and the querent is the one holding it there. As the result: a choice is required, it is theirs, and Papus's trial is not softened by good intentions.