28/08/2026
LOVE IS THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY OF TAROT - but love is not what Western cultures believe (I will die on this hill)
Love is authenticity, compassion, courage, honesty. Love is confronting, ugly, beautiful, terrifying. Love is accountability. Love is choosing to grow. Love is recognising your connection to all beings. Love is treating your darkness with compassion. Love is recognising pain as a route to truth. Love is loyalty to truth. Love is the balance of all forces, internally and externally. Love is a VERB, not just a noun.
I know the word ‘love’ has become so devastatingly tainted with Disney distortion, capitalist corruption and love-and-light spiritual bypassing, but don’t let the appropriation of the word distract you from the true meaning of the concept. Western culture may have forgotten what love actually is, but the wisdom of tarot reminds us that love is the way ☯️
In my recent video about The Lovers card, I mentioned ‘living by the way of love’ - here’s a little more on what I mean by that, spoken through the Major Arcana cards of tarot.