The Archetype and The Tarot: The Lover and The Tower
Through the Lover and the Tower, this week we’re being called to let go of our defenses. Can we trust that love will catch us as we fall?
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The Lover Archetype
I guess to understand the Lover, we first need to have a handle on what love means. I looked up the dictionary definition and shook my head, dismissing it immediately. I then turned to the etymology. It only told me that it comes from the PIE root *leubh- which means ‘to love.’ So that wasn’t helpful.
I suspect love is one of those things that we know when we’re experiencing it and we each have our own way of describing it. As for my specific experience, and for the sake of this post, I think I’ve come to define love as:
The act of including another as me while simultaneously being willing to let go.
By its very nature, love is a bit of a paradox.
The Lover, then, is the one who loves, the one who holds this paradox. This one one knows that love is an action and expression. They are masters of passion and devotion. As a type of artist, the Lover creates union, governing the realms of relationship and intimacy.
When the Lover comes up for us, I think we’re being called to examine the ways we enact love in our lives.
In the light, the lover celebrates love in all its forms. This one lives in service to what is possibly the greatest force in life, and is fully aware of the sacredness of love. Because the act of love is intertwined with many emotions, the Lover in the light has a strong emotional intelligence and sense of empathy. Their actions of love flow freely and in a healthy manner. They understand vulnerability on a profound level.
In the shadow, the Lover might use love as a weapon. Love here can become obsession and possession. The shadow Lover may have a tendency towards clinging or forcing another into their possession even after it’s time to let go. Instead of being in service to love, the Lover in the shadow might use love to feed their identity. This one only knows who they are if they feel loved by others. This type of shadow Lover might struggle with having clarity and discernment regarding whom to include in their love relationships. They might even practice devotion to the point of self-destruction. On the other end of this spectrum, the Lover in the shadow might experience a sort of blockage, having a hard time with expressing love and dealing with intimacy. This one might fear the pain of losing love (perhaps as a result of having experienced this loss before) and so they keep themselves walled off from it entirely.
Some questions to consider this week:
How have you witnessed love modeled by others in your family or community?
How do you distinguish between intimacy and entanglement?
Does love generate a sense of safety or danger for you?
What is your favorite way to enact love?
The Tower
Well, here it is. The dreaded Tower card. It’s hard not to feel some anxieties when we look at this one. Here we see a tower being struck by lightning, which seems to have dislodged a giant crown from the tower’s top and caused all sorts of destruction. There are flames everywhere and people falling to their deaths.
But sprinkled on both sides of the image are 22 yods (those small yellow objects that sort of look like raindrops or tiny flames). Yod is the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has tremendous significance. Technically considered to be a dot, yod is the building block of all letters and its meaning is the creative hand of God. (For a wonderful in-depth look at the way the yods appear on the Tower card in varying decks, check out this article here.)
To me, seeing the yods on both sides of this card gives me a reassurance that something new will be divinely created out of this destruction; that what has been destroyed needed to go for the sake of what’s to come.
summed this up perfectly in her recent post on the Tower:Usually, the crumbling structures represented in the Tower card come down because they are built on faulty thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and concepts. Conditionings we may have received from our family and society. Shields built years ago with pure intentions for safety and protection. Yet, over time these guards have become outdated, solidified into the armor we wear, the cages we live in. A dismantling is needed, edifices broken down so stuck energy can be released.
This is not about you being destroyed, it is about the removal of the ways we oppress and restrict ourselves. A clearing away of the layers to uncover the treasure hidden beneath them.
The Tower, then, is calling us to look at what constructs in our lives are ready to be busted through. And if we’ve recently faced such a destruction, can we see what is wanting to be created from the rubble?
How does this pair work together?
What immediately comes to mind for me when I think of these two is the sensation of falling in love.
I see the Lover as the force of gravity in the Tower card. It brings down the tower—the walls that have encased our hearts—and sends us into a free fall. But then it becomes the ground that catches and holds us. All the while, we are enveloped in divine yods that simultaneously soothe us and light us up.
I think we’re being called to open to this level of vulnerability and to honor the force of love in our lives. Can we allow ourselves to fall in love with something or someone this week? Can we surrender to the gravity of the Lover this way?
This feels both exciting and scary to me. The memory of past hurts lives strong in me, but I’m intrigued by the thrill of letting myself fall. I think I’ll turn to a little David Bowie for inspiration.
Let me know how you do with falling in love this week!
Jenna, this pair and your interpretation are breathtaking. I resonate with Donna in her comment, and what kept coming to me in reading you was a breakthrough from (Gebserian here) deficient Mental into fullness of being in mutually enhancing relation, i.e., love as "an embrace" and at the same time, "willingness to let go." The top of the tower is blown off!
Might we see what is being asked to unfold across the collective as an act of love? i.e., Julie's comment: "The armor can come down, intimacy can be born."
I feel like I say this every week but… this feels big! And I adore your interpretation of this too.
Love is one of those things that seems easier to describe what it’s not, than what it is. It’s intangible in a sense. So it’s almost as if The Tower is coming to strike away all that it is not, to reveal to us the true heart of what love is, and that can only be felt, not described.
❤️ ⚡️