In my last article I discussed the Lovers Card in the Tarot of Marseille, which depicts a male lover being offered a choice between two women. The lover must make a choice between a woman with flowers in her hair, representing sensuality or one wearing a laurel wreath representing virtue. I was able to trace this theme to the Iliad, in the 8^th century BC.

Before the hero of the Iliad, Achilles, could decide on joining the siege of Troy, he asked his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, for advice she told him that he had a choice of two fates: either he can die a young and glorious death at Troy and his name will be remembered forever, or he can stay home and live a long sensual but unremarkable life and his name will be forgotten. He goes to Troy. But the story continues, and he is offered the choice again.

While at the battle in Troy, Achilles is awarded the beautiful female captive, Briseis, as his slave, which is considered a war honor. Achilles loves Briseis and it seems he plans to marry her. So, he is greatly angered when Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces, takes Briseis from him. He leaves the fighting and stays in his tent enjoying the affection his friend Patroclus. Patroclus, however, gets permission from Achilles to enter the battle wearing Achilles armor, and he is killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles is angered and realizes that he must again choose honor, or Thymos, over sensuality, or Eros. His mother intercedes again and brings him new armor crafted by the blacksmith god Hephaestus (as depicted in the 18^th century painting below). In the course of the battles, he kills Hector, but eventually, he himself is killed. And his name is remembered for all time.    

Here is the same scene with Achilles receiving his armor from his mother on this 6th century BC Attic black-figure hydria.

In the last article, I also told a related story that was written in the 4^th century BC by Xenophon about the hero Hercules and it became a theme often repeated in European art. The young Hercules is offered a choice between a life of vice presented by Kakia, the amoral goddess, or of virtue presented by Arete, the goddess of virtue. as depicted in the 16^th century painting below. In other words, he was offered a life of selfish pleasure or one of hardship and honor. He chose Arete.

Now, looking into the origin of this theme further, I discovered an older Egyptian image, a statue in the Cairo Museum that seems to relate. It depicts the pharaoh Ramses III, who reigned 1187–1156 BCE, between Horus and Seth, or harmony and chaos. The gods Horus and Seth are two main characters in the most famous myth from ancient Egypt.

It was said that in the golden age of Egypt, the god Osiris was the pharaoh who taught his subjects art and culture and brought prosperity to the land. He was married to his beautiful mystical sister, the goddess Isis. Osiris’s evil brother, Seth, was jealous and managed to drown Osiris and let his body float away. Then he took his place as pharaoh. Isis was relentless and managed to fine Osiris’s body and bring it back, but Seth found out and cut the body into fourteen pieces. Relentless Isis found the pieces and put his body back together with linen wrappings. With the help of Thoth, she brough Osiris back to life and mated with him. The result was the birth of their son, the hero god Horus. When mature, Horus defeated his evil uncle and became Pharaoh himself.

To many modern readers this would seem like a simple story of good triumphing over evil. Therefore, in this sculpture we might assume that Ramses III, like the lover on the Marseille card or Hercules in Xenophon’s story, is being offered a choice. But it seems that the Egyptians did not see it that way. Seth, besides being selfish and ruthless, was a god of strength, and in an older myth he was a hero who saved the sun god Ra by defeating the serpent Apophis. Although Horus defeated Seth, the two gods came to a truce in which Horus would rule the fertile Nile valley, and Seth would rule the desert and foreign lands. The statue of Ramses does not depict a choice. Both gods are honoring the pharaoh as the ruler of all of Egypt, the river and the desert. Instead of choice, it represents union. 

The theme of union can also be seen in the relief sculpture of Horus and Seth from the throne of Seti I, 1294/1290–1279 BC (whose name is actually derived from Set or Seth) . Here we see Seth holding the lotus representing Upper Egypt and Horus holding the papyrus stalk of Lower Egypt. The two gods are tying the plants together to represent the union of Upper and Lower as one unified Egypt.

And here is another relief sculpture from the Temple of Horus created in the later Ptolemaic period. On this relief we see the pharaoh standing between two women, who are reaching out for him, so that it seems even closer to the theme of the Tarot card. The pharaoh is facing to our right as if he is choosing one over the other. But as we look closer, we find that the woman on our left is wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt and the woman on the right is wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt. The Pharaoh himself is wearing the combined crown of the unified Upper and Lower Egypt. It seems that he already had the affections of the woman with the red crown, and he is welcoming the woman in white to join him. Again, the theme is union.

Although the theme of the French Lovers Card is intended to be the hero’s choice. Like Hercules he is supposed to embrace the virtue of the soul of will, Thymos, and become the Charioteer facing the hardships of life depicted in the next sequence of cards with cards representing suffering and death. I interpret the Lovers, when it appears in a reading, as a choice between physical desire or comfort and idealism. Although excessive self-interest is dangerous and self-defeating, excessive idealism may also be dangerous. The Tarot teaches us this lesson by including the virtue, Temperance. This virtue was praised by Plato as a way of bringing the soul of desire, Eros, Into balance and health. Temperance was the virtue associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and art. It was her tempering wisdom that reigned in the excesses of her son, Eros, as we can see in this Renaissance painting by Lucas Cranach in which Eros is crying to his mother because the bees sting him after he Impetuously grabbed some honeycomb. In the third section of the trumps, we progress into the soul of wisdom, Logos, in which we achieve the right balance between Eros and Thymos. As in the first Egyptian image, it seems the healthiest path is to harmonize these two aspects of our personalities in the right balance or union.