The Lovers - "Nude" by Radiohead

Don't get any big ideas
they're not gonna happen
You paint yourself white
and feel up with noise
but there'll be something missing

Now that you've found it, it's gone
Now that you feel it, you don't
You've gone off the rails

So don't get any big ideas
they're not going to happen
You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking

[Sometimes Thom Yorke adds this verse when performing:]

She stands stark naked and she beckons you to bed
don't go, you'll only want to come back again

Summary only...

Aesop's Fables - The Lovers

(Click here for large version)

"The Man and His Two Wives" impressed me as a child because of the polygamy angle, but I have a particular appreciation for it now as an adult coping with trichotillomania.

I've posted before about how early versions of the Lovers card showed a man choosing between two women (as opposed to the done deal portrayed in other decks). If the card is meant to signify choosing between Virtue and Sensuality, then it appears that the man in our fable has waffled on the question and failed to make that choice. Having surrendered, he is subject to the caprices of both women, passively allowing himself to be plucked bald.

Thus, the fable offers an interesting elaboration on the card's challenge: whatever you're going to choose, you'd better get around to doing it while the matter is still in your hands. Everyone knows that of the two we're supposed to choose Virtue, but perhaps it's less damnable to actively explore the wrong choice than it is to lose the agency required to make any decisions at all.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Lovers

Summary only...

The Lovers - VI

1. Meeting a partner
2. A choice which must be made
3. Attraction and love.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

Summary only...

"Two Agents Ecstatically Converging On A Central Point..."

I caught the Mike Cockrill exhibition at Kent Gallery this weekend. The collection's sensuality is unmatched among anything else I saw in Chelsea (which means his site probably isn't safe for viewing at work, depending on your employer's regard for romantic scenes between nearly-nude pubescent waifs). The room was incredibly still and quiet, but the walls were so heavy with Americana-drenched scenes of sexual awakening that they practically radiated their own warmth.

So many of Cockrill's psychosexual portraits lend themself to a Lovers card that it was really hard to narrow it down to just one. In the painting above, Schoolyard Paradise, we see two agents ecstatically converging on a central point, a male and female united in bliss. Their enjoyment is not exactly sexual in nature (appropriate, since this card is not always a sexual or even romantic talisman) but the latent eroticism within the image is undeniable. We look at this innocent pairing and we see... potential.

In his book The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, Robert M. Place explains that the Lovers card hasn't always depicted the holy union of a male and a female. In the Marseilles decks we see another woman in the picture, with the young man forced to choose between them. He selects the woman crowned with laurels, signifying the victory of virtue over sensuality, and having triumphed thus he will go on to attain the cardinal virtues of Strength, Justice, and Temperance. In this way he really gets three dames for the price of one, as these three virtues each individually appear as powerful female entities.

It's fascinating that other version of the card is more universally known, because I find the Marseilles version to be a little more useful, in readings and personal meditations alike. When You draw the Lovers card, usually your brain can't help but try and figure out who the other person in the card is supposed to be. We can't help but project and ponder and fantasize. When the card is presented in terms of a rite of passage or the opportunity to make a personality-defining decision, however, the focus is suddenly back on the querent, right where it most likely belongs. Let the Lovers -- both the chooser and the chosen -- guide you toward an new understanding of your desire and your relationship with unknown entities, human or otherwise.

Cockrill's paintings offer a sort of middle path between the two versions. Some of his paintings, like True Love, observe the quiet Edenic bond between lover and beloved. Some have a strong sense of an Other, a rival presence that creates a different kind of tension between the scene's inhabitants. But either way, we end up measuring our own standards of beauty and sensuality -- perhaps uncomfortably -- against what we believe to be healthy or virtuous, regardless of whether we find the paintings absurd, erotic, profane, or all of the above.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Lovers

Summary only...

THE LOVERS

Most people assume that drawing The Lovers ensures the sort of enduring romantic connection they've always dreamed of. If only my job was that easy! Instead of a marriage, or even a tryst, the card points to a departure from the familiar world we've grown accustomed to, and the magnetic pull toward some great Other. Two opposites meeting for the first time may fall in love, of course-- but they may also misunderstand and dislike each other. The card is associated with the astrological sign of Gemini, fittingly enough. Are these two separate entities who are cosmically linked, or merely two halves of the same person? Think of the wonder and confusion of a person encountering themself in a mirror for the very first time. Do they like what they see? Do they understand which version of themself is real, and which is the reflection? It's in this spirit of longing to explore this Otherness that we grow up and leave our family, hoping to meet and share our life with someone yet unknown.

Isabella Rosselini explores the strange familiarity of this alien territory in her charmingly bawdy short film series Green Porno. Dressed up in home-made insect costumes, she explains the ins and outs of insect reproduction in rapturously plain speech, physically wooing the opposite sex (or the same sex, in cases where the creatures are hermaphroditic) and apparently enjoying every minute of it. In the animal kingdom, just as with humans, you never know exactly what's going to happen to you once you give in to passion. You may ultimately preside over an entire hive; you may just get your head bitten off.

Summary only...