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Tarot Birth & Year Cards · Trump VI of the 22

The Lovers, VI: the choice that comes with love

The Lovers is trump VI of the Major Arcana: a man and a woman beneath a winged figure in the sun, with the Tree of Life behind him and a tree with a serpent behind her. The Golden Dawn gave the card Zayin and Gemini, making it the Sun-sign card of Gemini; in Greer's method it is the Soul card of every total of 15.

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Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 design for The Lovers: a naked man and woman standing apart beneath a winged angel in the clouds with the sun above, a tree with twelve fruits behind the man and a fruit tree with a serpent behind the woman, a mountain between them. Beside it, Greer's rows of nine with 6 filled and the column 6, 15 outlined.
The Lovers in the 1910 printing of Smith's designs, and its place in Greer's rows of nine: the cards of one column share a digit root and make one constellation. Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain).

Facts

Number
VI (6) in the 1909 deck
Hebrew letter (Golden Dawn)
ז Zayin, “sword”, value 7; a simple letter
Sign, planet or element (Book T)
Gemini (sign)
Path on the Golden Dawn's tree
Path 17, Binah to Tiphareth
Greer's constellation
6 · 15: the Lovers and the Devil
As a birth card, 1900 to 2030
Soul card on 11.1% of days; both cards at once on 7.6%
Natal-chart card
Sun-sign, Moon and Rising card for Gemini
Year card, 15 June birthday
13 of the 201 years from 1900 to 2100
Tarot de Marseille
L'Amoureux, VI

Meaning

Smith drew the Lovers as a man and a woman standing naked apart, beneath a winged figure in the clouds who spreads his arms below a blazing sun. Behind the man is the Tree of Life with twelve fruits, behind the woman a fruit tree with a serpent coiled round it, and a mountain rises between them. Waite calls it the card of human love in all simplicity, a picture of the garden before the Fall, and says he put it in place of the older picture of a man choosing between two women.

The Golden Dawn gave the card Zayin, a simple letter glossed as sword, and the sign Gemini, and titled it the Children of the Voice, the Oracles of the Mighty Gods. On the order's tree the Lovers is path 17.

We read the card as relationship and choice: the pull towards another and the decision that follows it, with what one gives up by choosing. The older picture of the youth between two women is still in that reading; Smith's version moves it from a choice between people to a choice within one.

In the birth cards

The Lovers is the root of Greer's sixth constellation, with the Devil, 15. It is the Soul card of everyone whose total is 15 and both cards for a total of exactly 6, together 11.1 percent of the days from 1900 to 2030; a single 6 on its own covers 7.6 percent. Greer counts 15-6 among her night-time chains, which reach every card of their constellation and so have no Hidden Factor. A single 6 leaves the Devil unreached.

Smith's two cards answer each other: the Devil shows a naked man and woman again, now chained beneath a dark figure where the angel was, and Waite reads them as the couple after the Fall. Greer's pairing of the two by number puts that echo into the birth cards.

As a natal-chart card the Lovers is the Sun-sign card of Gemini. As a year card it comes 13 times in the 201 years from 1900 to 2100 for a 15 June birthday, as often as the Hierophant.

History and names

The Marseille decks call the card L'Amoureux, the lover, and show a young man between two women with a winged Cupid above. Waite says he set that scene aside for the couple in the garden, and Smith drew it so.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Golden Dawn title (Book T)
“The Children of the Voice; the Oracles of the Mighty Gods” sourced
Waite's fortune-telling list (1911), upright
“Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome”, quoted as history; Waite called such meanings artificial and arbitrary sourced
Greer's name for the constellation
Relatedness and Choice (1987, 2021) sourced
Our line for the birth-card chain
6: Choices of the heart; 15-6: Choosing love over fear our construction
Sun-sign card
For the Sun in Gemini; also the Moon card and the Rising card for Gemini sourced
Older picture
A youth between two women, with Cupid above (Marseille pattern) sourced

How the schools read it

Game decks (15th to 18th century)
L'Amoureux, a young man between two women, with a winged Cupid above: a picture of choosing.
Golden Dawn, Book T
Zayin, the sword, a simple letter, and the sign Gemini; path 17. Book T titles it the Children of the Voice, the Oracles of the Mighty Gods.
Waite and Smith (1909 to 1911)
Human love in all simplicity, before the Fall, replacing the older scene of a man choosing between two women.
Mary K. Greer (1984 to 2021)
The root of the constellation of 6, with the Devil: the Soul card of every total of 15, and both cards for a single 6.
EsoTerrier
Read here as relationship and choice: the pull towards another and the decision that follows it, with what one gives up by choosing.

Claims about it

  • The Lovers predicts a new relationship.

    false

    What the record shows: No card foretells events. Waite's fortune-telling list for the card is quoted as history.

  • The Lovers' old one-line meaning on our chart was our own wording.

    false

    What the record shows: Our old line followed a modern keyword list too closely. It was replaced in October 2026 by the sentence in the EsoTerrier row above.

  • Zayin and Gemini are the Lovers' ancient correspondences.

    disputed

    What the record shows: They are the Golden Dawn's, from about 1888.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

Sources

Primary texts (4)
  1. S. L. MacGregor Mathers for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Book T: The Tarot (late 1880s or early 1890s; H. Felkin's copy). First printed in The Equinox, 1912. archive.org/details/mathers-and-felkin-golden-dawn-book-t-the-tarot-1888
  2. A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: William Rider and Son, 1911 (issued 1910). en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Pictorial_Key_to_the_Tarot
  3. Aleister Crowley (unsigned), 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica. London: Walter Scott Publishing, 1909. The Golden Dawn's tables in print.
  4. Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, translated by W. Wynn Westcott, 2nd edition. London, 1893. archive.org/details/sepheryetzirahb00rittgoog
Studies and other sources (4)
  1. Mary K. Greer, Tarot Constellations: Patterns of Personal Destiny. Newcastle, 1987. Facts only.
  2. Mary K. Greer, Archetypal Tarot. Weiser, 2021. Facts only.
  3. Joy Vernon, "Tarot Birth Cards" handout (2020), reproducing Greer's Hidden Factor chart. joyvernon.com/images/Tarot%20Birth%20Cards.pdf
  4. "Visconti-Sforza tarot deck", "Tarot of Marseilles" and "Sola Busca tarot", Wikipedia (orientation only). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visconti-Sforza_tarot_deck
Our own research (4)
  1. EsoTerrier, Tarot research, 9 October 2026 (methods, art and legal review).
  2. EsoTerrier, Tarot validation, 12 October 2026: the engine against an independent implementation on 3,288 dates, and the method statistics over 47,847 days.
  3. EsoTerrier calculation engine, the Tarot service and its documentation.
  4. EsoTerrier, Tree of Life research and knowledge records (October 2026).
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By EsoTerrier. Written with AI assistance from our research and checked against its sources; last revised 19 October 2026. How we write these pages.

First published ; last revised . Corrections: support@esoterrier.com.

Card art: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain).