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VI
THE LOVERS
(Gemini)
“O Mother, extinguish my brilliance in thy devouring night. Let not my brilliance stain the sublimity of thy perfection. Let not my little light blind me so that I cannot see Thee. Thy love is the velvet sheath to my sword, & the white-hot heat that tempers it. Take me for the sword in thine own hand, with which Thou art girt, O warrior-lover.”
MEDITATION COLOR: Orange.
HEBREW LETTER: Zayin, sword, symbolic of intellect and representative of division, multiplicity, severing, severity.
CARD NAME: “Lovers” is the title of the Second Grade of the Order per Liber Legis, equivalent to Adept. It comes from the Indo-European root leubh-, “to care, desire, love.” Important derivatives include belief, love, libido.
ESOTERIC MEANING: The Consciousness of Sensation (or Consciousness of Disposition). It provides faith to the Compassionate (i.e., the Adepts), and clothes them with the Holy Spirit. Within the Supernals, it is called the Foundation of Beauty.
TREE of LIFE: Tifereth to Biynah. (Links ‘Beauty’ and ‘Understanding’; or the Ego-center with Intuition, Ruach with N'shamah, Vav with Heh. The wedding of ‘the Son’ with ‘the Mother.’ The Ordeal of the Abyss. Confrontation of duality and multiplicity. The Mystery of Knowledge.)
ESOTERIC TITLE: The Children of the Voice, the Oracle of the Mighty Gods
TANTRIC & ALCHEMICAL SIGNIFICANCE: The Wedding. Declaration of the Work to be done, employing a complex alchemical symbolism. Solve.
DIVINATION: Inspiration, receptiveness, intuition, intelligence, “second sight,” childishness, frivolity, triviality, thoughtfulness divorced from practical considerations, indecision, contradiction, self-contradiction, instability, the necessity to choose between alternate paths. May mean love, union, the proper mating of opposites, resolution of differences, a proper relationship between the inner and outer aspects of life (or between subconsciousness and ego-consciousness).
