It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
Professor Albus Dumbledore, via J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Shifting our focus now from the personal to the global, how might we see The Lovers Tarot year’s influence in world events?

As everyone reading this surely knows, we have come to a crisis point in the perfect storm that has been long forming for humanity: massive extinctions and climate catastrophe, a showdown regarding the tension between money/big business vs. people’s safety and welfare, racial, gender, and economic injustice, and of course, the fact that democracies the world over are being poisoned and sabotaged by the darlings of authoritarianism.

There is no going back, only forward, one way or another.

Cosmic Revolution Now in Progress

Two of my favorite astrologers, Ralfee Finn and Diotima Mantineia have written in-depth essays on what we can expect in 2022 (using the tropical astrology system).

Ralfee offers thoughtful, compelling insights into what is arguably the biggest event ahead in 2022, the Pluto Return of the United States. She warms up to the topic by writing:

You say you want a revolution? Well, welcome to 2022, where we’re already in the midst of the American Revolution 2.0. It is being televised every day, and it is already on social media, even in the Metaverse, and it’s only just begun.

All year long, no matter what may be happening on the surface of daily life, underneath the almost regular routines, a strong undertow is sending out a disruptive pulse that is signaling the inevitability of a massive shift.

What those changes are and how they will happen is anyone’s guess (and that’s not me copping out on predictions). Predictions are possible when patterns are revealed through reoccurrences. But the pattern we’re currently caught in—the United States of America’s Pluto Return—is only the first iteration…

Pluto’s transformational soup is complex. Pluto symbolizes all the things we have no control over (even if we think we do)—politics, finances, the process of transformation, sex, death, power, and any other area of life that is out of our immediate influence. A Pluto Transit can be subtle, extreme, or a combination of both.

Ask anyone who has been through a Pluto transit [waving my hand wildly and showing the teeth marks. – Beth] and they will testify to Pluto’s seeming insistence that something needs to shift, and because Pluto represents the process of death and rebirth, that thing that’s gotta shift is usually something we don’t want to release.

From an individual perspective, the most useful prayer while in the midst of a Pluto transit usually goes something like this: I am willing to release anything that is not authentic.

Sounds simple enough, but the problem is that what we tend to cling to is usually what we fail to see is what we most need to release. And that’s where the struggle usually takes place; Pluto keeps reiterating what needs to change and we keep saying, “no way, not yet.”

Diotima echoes Ralfee’s musings on the Pluto Return, and elaborates with beautiful and profound insight:

The background noise you’ll be hearing in 2022 is the same one we’ve been listening to for over a decade now — the low hum of Pluto as it has been traveling through Saturn-ruled Capricorn since 2008, testing the foundations of our civilizations.

It’s the sound of long-standing institutions crumbling under the pressure of immutable realities that demand change, the usual bureaucratic failures to adapt in time, and corruption.

Institutions of government, business, religion, health care, agriculture, science, art are all being challenged to prove their worth and competence. The ones that survive the events of the coming decades will be the ones that are willing to recognize what is needed, adapt, and create change from within.

The same is true for all of us. After all, our lives are thoroughly intertwined with our institutions. We work in them, interact with them, depend on them for food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and entertainment.

If you were hoping 2022 would mean getting back to “normal” (do we even know what that is anymore?) you’ll be disappointed. However, the planetary patterns this year suggest tremendous opportunities to create and define new structures for our individual lives and the institutions that support our society.

The upshot of both, and where I believe The Lovers Tarot Year can be most instructive, is that letting go of “normal” is not something we should fear or fight back against. That train has already left the station.

Besides, for countless millions of people, “normal” was a grindingly oppressed, unjust, poverty-stricken, and dangerous life. The Great American Dream fantasy never existed for many generations of the marginalized, many of whom broke their backs to make it happen for the few. Frankly, it has been a toxic lie for ages.

I hope you’ll take a few moments to read both articles in detail, as well as the impressive weekly forecasts from Elisabeth Grace, which will faithfully help you navigate these very fraught times. Especially since the Pluto return is NOT the only transformational influence we will be reckoning with this year.

Choices Ahead

As I discussed in Part One, when you see The Lovers card in a reading (or for an upcoming year), there is an important choice we are being urged to make. And remember that, as a triumph of the Major Arcana, this choice is not trivial. It is potentially life-defining.

So if we apply The Lovers card to planetary events this year, the most obvious indication is that we are at a threshold moment where historic choices will be made.

Must be made.

Especially with the Pluto in Capricorn collapse and contraction of all we have taken for granted. Particularly since, as many have suggested, we are in the midst of the turning of the aeon.

Ralfee sums up the seismic undertow of the Pluto return, writing:

And that’s the soup we are in—the MAGA millions are at odds with the social justice millions and neither is willing to budge.

Through a Pluto Return framework, the United States of America is in the process of deciding what is authentic and what isn’t. Originally, “all men are created equal” was a lofty ideal, except in practice that equality did not include people of color and women.

Eventually, we grew into a more enlightened application of that constitutional principle but it wasn’t without pain, angst, and struggle; it took a very long time and there is still resistance and resentment about including everyone. And that’s just one inauthentic pattern embedded in the so-called American Way.

The threat to voting rights is yet another challenge to our ideals, and is seemingly the white man’s last stand in an effort to hold onto the days of yesteryear, when he was in power. This is the most pernicious threat to democracy because it undermines the very core of the democratic system.

If you have states enacting laws that allow certain officials to curtail voting rights and overturn election results unfavorable to them, then the hands of time have been set to run backward and racial prejudice will prevail.

Don’t worry; if that happens, it won’t be a lasting moment. There are too many young people who won’t agree to live in a world structured by racism; they will fight for their right to be free. And they will win. Every structure in the government of the United States of America is currently being challenged, from the presidency to the Congress to the Supreme Court. That’s Pluto in Capricorn revealing what is not congruent.

And what does The Lovers say about all this? As if in answer, she, herself continues:

Social justice is love at the collective level and I am aligned and committed to its movements, perhaps because I’m a child of the Sixties or because love is a transcendent value that I do my best to align with.

Finding the means to heal the enormous divisions that currently challenge our confidence in the American Way includes finding a way to turn love into actions that will close the gaps between who we are and who we want to be…

Many of us already know this and are working quietly and diligently to make a difference in our communities. As the climate crisis intensifies, we are also reminded that we are connected to all sentient beings on the planet.

Will we remember our essential interconnectedness in this year of revolution? We must, because what unites us has the power to reveal our common ground and help us weather the revolution through its many twists and turns.

And that’s The Lovers, straight up, no chaser.

Loving the World into Being

The paradigm most of us expected would always be here is shifting forever. We are called to step up and rebuild the world that replaces it.

We create our reality by how we choose, and why we do so. If our life is reactive and fear-based, if we believe people are mostly bad and the Universe is out to get us, our choices often play out as greed, bigotry, hostility, and worse.

We encounter those evaluations constantly every day, even if we are not always aware of it.

For instance, imagine you hear about someone holding up a convenience store. What do you assume about them in your mind’s eye as you hear the story?

We are exposed to endless chronicles of the unhappy, even despicable, thanks to the news, social media, and even popular entertainment. They are almost always the stories of people who are strung out on fear and isolation.

We can choose to amplify the hand-wringing and angry accusations. We can shake our heads in resignation, shrugging sadly that this is just human nature. We can up the ante with even bigger stories of cruelty, greed, and hate.

Or we can see through all those illusions with the eyes of compassion, knowing that we have built institutions rooted in systemic fear, because they are supposedly designed to protect us. Protect us from.. what?

Suppose we are not in a dungeon full of monsters, doomed to eternal damnation, but a garden of love and possibilities.

Never Exiled, Always the Beloved

I believe that The Lovers encourages us to reconsider who and what we are by challenging the ancient, tragic origin tale of Eden.

It is long past time to reassess the Abrahamic religions’ story (subscribed to by more than half the world’s population, and upon which is built the entirety of Western civilization) that Woman caused “the fall” and doomed humanity to exile, pain, and death.

That patriarchal narrative has poisoned our civilization by overtly and subtly telling us that the Earth is an unholy commodity and women are innately wicked. This message has hurt men, women, and life on this planet for long, blood-soaked ages.

So for starters, what if.. just suppose.. imagine that humanity’s soul was not tainted and our destiny not cursed?

What if you discovered that Grace and blessings have been your birthright all along?

How would our world change if it turned out that we were not put on the Earth to slog through a veil of tears, waiting around to be rescued by death? Suppose we are not doomed to eternal damnation if we disobey the Big Father/King/Priest in the sky?

What if, instead, we learned that we have incarnated into a sacred world in which we are all loving partners with one another?

What do you believe?

We have a choice. And if this makes The Lovers one of the most subversive cards in the deck, so be it. This is our year to move forward on such assumptions.

Once concealed, now revealed, let us open the door to Love.