Paris, the city of love. What an intriguing name and an even more intriguing designation. I can’t quite say whether it was Paris itself, which we visited two years ago during the Olympics, my daughter, born on 2016-06-24, or my own birth chart that first drew my attention to the Lovers card in the Tarot de Marseille, VI – LAMOVREVX.
Suffice it to say, my true journey into this card began on September 27, 2025, and culminated on October 2, 2025. It feels fitting that after the card lived with me so intensely for six days – the very number of the card itself – it is now on the seventh that I am finally ready to tell its story. During the time I contemplated the card and its surrounding myth, new ideas solidified and the fog lifted in different ways. I wrote as ideas came to mind. I considered rewriting the entire piece to integrate these later revelations, but I ultimately decided to leave the writing as it is, for better or worse. I believe the journey of discovery is just as exciting as the discovery itself, and that bringing you along through all the twists and turns is perhaps the truest way to tell this story: a story about truth, fear, and love.
This card has been the quiet focal point of my life, shaping my path even when I was not aware of it. So let me begin at the beginning.
First, I have to draw your attention to another card in the Tarot de Marseille deck. Number 9, VIIII L’HERMITE. My mother once told me, or perhaps I read it in her book (https://carteamagului.ro/tarot/initiere-in-mistere/), words that lingered in my mind. They may not be exact, but the message was clear: “When L’HERMITE comes into your life, listen to what he has to say.”
I had been expecting him, even searching for him, only to realize that he was right under my nose all along. This revealed another lesson I have come to understand in the past little while: the most important things in life are often hidden in plain sight. They wait quietly until we are ready, and all it takes is the courage to shine a light.
This leads me into the mysterious world of the number nine itself: L’Hermite, Cronos, the keeper of time, the old man with the lantern showing us the way.
I have always felt the number nine to be special, but I had never looked too closely. For the past couple of years, I have been on a learning path, determined to leave no stone unturned. I find teachers in the most peculiar of places, but I have to recognize that my most important guides are my two daughters, currently seven and nine. They have been showing me a new way of life since the day they were born; I have just been too blind to see it and too dumb to listen to them. So it comes as no surprise that even in interpreting this card, my little teachers are once again showing me the way. Children are a repository of knowledge; we only have to open ourselves and listen to them. They see the world with a wonder and excitement most of us have forgotten, like the simple idea of having a favourite number.
When my daughters ask me what mine is, my answer has always been nine. They know this about me. Perhaps it was their asking that first made me pause and truly notice the number, long before my journey with the Tarot de Marseille. Only in the last few days have I begun to understand just how special it really is. Nine has been present in my life in ways I did not even recognize. I will not go into detail here, as that deserves its own spotlight, but in a nutshell, it has become a catalyst for change – a shining light, a lantern, or perhaps even a laser pointer.
So here we are in 2025 (2+0+2+5), a year marked by nine, in the ninth month, on the 27th day. A portal of sorts – 9-9-9 – calling me toward the lantern of L’Hermite, almost as if the number itself summoned me on its own day. I did not even realize the significance of that particular day, or of the events that unfolded then, until today, September 29, 2025. I did not know it at the time, but it felt like another beginning, as though more pieces of the puzzle were quietly falling into place.
One clue that pointed me toward LAMOVREVX was my elder daughter, who happens to be nine this year, a year of nine. She was born on 2016-06-24. Her birth year, 2016 (2+0+1+6), also reduces to nine, echoing the lantern of L’Hermite as it shines into hidden places. In her case, that light illuminates the numbers six and twenty-four, both energies of the Lovers that form the next part of her birthday. She is the Lover born in the month of the Lover shining the L’Hermite light on the next step in my journey of discovery.
And it is not only my daughter who carries this influence. My own birth chart is threaded with the same pattern. My Ascendant and Descendant axis, Sagittarius and Gemini, lies at 24°48′. My MC and IC line, Libra and Aries, rests at 24°24′, with Pluto poised at 24° on the Midheaven. Even White Moon Selena is placed at 24° Taurus. But perhaps the most striking placement of all is my True Node in Cancer, an astrological sign I associate with the LAMOVREVX card. This point, which represents my soul’s very destiny, is found at 14°29’11”- placing it right in the heart of the card.
So with all this in mind, here I stand, flashlight in hand, face to face with 6/24, LAMOVREVX, the Lover, a pattern woven through my life and carrying its own luminous symmetry. What secrets might it reveal, and what does it have to do with Paris?
Love, I suppose, is the first answer. The lover, as the card says. Singular, masculine. Choice in the hands of masculine energy, but is it really choice at all? When I think of the city of Paris, romance is the image that rises first. Yet my analogy runs deeper. It reaches into Greek mythology, another thread I owe to my mother.
But before I dive into that story, let me tell you about my wonderful nine-year-old daughter, the lover and the hater, the black and the white, the yin and the yang.
Clara has been a difficult energy to navigate as parents. She can be the sweetest presence or the most challenging. She is governed by two simple rules: I like it and I do not like it. There is no in-between for her. This energy is so overpowering that it shapes everything in her life. When she likes something, she loves it with all her being and life is heaven. When she does not, she rejects it with all her being and life becomes hell.
This colors every detail of her world, from the shade of her ice cream spoon to the food arrangement on her plate, from the design on her underwear to a stone she picks up on the sidewalk. She must love it all.
We all experience this to some extent, but most of us learn to soften it. We tell ourselves: you cannot love everything, some things in life must simply be done, you take the good with the bad, and so on. For years we have tried to teach Clara these lessons, pressing our worldviews and wisdom onto her, yet all the while she has been the one teaching us.
An interesting thing about wisdom and discernment: I do not think it is a coincidence that in the order of the Tarot de Marseille the Lover, card number VI comes right after card number V, LE PAPE, the teacher of wisdom and discernment. Even the number hierarchy seems to tell us that matters of the heart overpower matters of wisdom and discernment, or perhaps that the greater wisdom lives in the heart.
Another thing my mother once said comes to mind. She told me that the Lovers card shows the fall from heaven, the moment we become mortal, even finding a hint of death itself built into the name La Movrevx. It’s a powerful and somber idea. And while the linguistic echo between Movrevx and Mort (death) is compelling, I am no longer sure I can fully agree. To me, this card may just as well point the way into heaven. After all, when is true love ever the wrong choice? That is another lesson these last couple of weeks have taught me well.
Let us first look at the name itself: LAMOVREVX. At the beginning we find LAMO, echoing the Latin amo, “I love.” This is love in its simplest and purest form, a declaration of the heart. Clara’s first rule of being. Her only calling. Her most treasured state. The thing she chases from the moment she opens her eyes in the morning until the moment we tuck her into bed at night. And yet it is the very thing we have been fighting against for years. Even as I write this, it sounds absurd, fighting against love, all the while thinking we are helping her. But I digress.
In the middle stands the letter V, the number five – the Pope of the Tarot de Marseille. He is the mediator, the messenger, and the teacher; the hinge or perhaps the very mirror between higher and lower forces.
On the other side of the mirror we encounter REVX, an old spelling that carries the sense of “fullness” or “completeness.” Perhaps this is the wisdom the world offers: the lessons we pass to our children, the driving force of society. Learn to be rich, to be self-sufficient, to amass wealth, to amass knowledge so that you can monetize it. Yet hidden within that fullness is its own shadow, for the last letters, VX, mirror XV, the Devil card. I have not yet studied it in detail and so I reserve the right to change my mind, but as I understand it now it represents bondage, temptation, and compulsion.
Thus the very structure of the word suggests a choice. On one side is love, unencumbered and true. On the other is fullness, which promises abundance but conceals the chains of the Devil. The Pope at the center calls for discernment, yet the deeper wisdom of the tarot may be that love alone is the true and liberating path, the way into heaven itself.
This is a truth I have been waking up to in what we teach our daughters. I realized that we teach them to be rich when we should be teaching them to be happy. In doing so, we end up teaching one another to be miserable. Perhaps this is because we ourselves have forgotten how to be happy, caught in a mad race to enrich our material world. I am only beginning this journey, unsure of where it will lead, but already I sense that the heart knows more than we let it.
And so I turn back to the card itself, VI – LAMOVREVX. Looking at the image, four figures occupy the scene: a young man stands between two women, as if torn between paths, while above him hovers Eros with bow drawn, ready to strike. This is not a simple image of romance; it is the drama of choice, of surrender, of stepping into destiny. The arrow reminds us that love is not always reasoned, and that discernment alone cannot shield us from its pull. The card suggests that the heart’s decision carries consequences that shape the course of a life. To me, this is where the mystery deepens – choice and fate entwined, wisdom and desire in dialogue, all illuminated by that ancient lantern of L’Hermite.
The Lover stands with bare legs, his red shoes of action planted on a patch of yellow. This patch of yellow at his feet represents wisdom and discernment, showing that he already carries all he needs to choose. Yet the question remains: which will prevail, the mind or the heart?
To explore this, I turn to the story that mirrors this card most closely: the Greek tale of Paris of Troy, a story I once read to Clara. We spoke of it again tonight, and to my surprise she remembered the details more vividly than I did, as if the tale had rooted itself more firmly in her heart than in mine.
Paris was the man who stood between goddesses, forced to choose. Or perhaps it was Eros’s arrow that chose for him, tilting the scales toward love and setting in motion a war. So too Paris the city, forever bound to love, temptation, unrest, and destiny. In both man and city, the same pattern repeats. The circle closes where it began.
But Paris’s story begins long before his fateful judgment. At his birth, an oracle warned his mother, Queen Hecuba of Troy, that her son would bring about the destruction of the city. In fear, she and King Priam abandoned the infant on Mount Ida. Yet fate, unyielding, had shepherds raise him in secret. Paris grew into a prince of both pasture and palace, his life already shaped by prophecy. From the very start, love and destiny were bound together – what is foreordained cannot be escaped, only delayed until the appointed hour.
That hour arrived at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, a celebration of divine union. All the gods were invited – except Eris, goddess of discord. Enraged at her exclusion, she flung into the banquet a golden apple inscribed “To the fairest.” Instantly, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each laid claim to it. Unable to choose between them, Zeus refused judgment and instead appointed Paris, the mortal prince whose life was already under the shadow of fate.
So Paris, like the Lover of the Tarot, found himself at the center of competing forces. Each goddess promised him a gift: Hera, the throne of sovereignty and kingship; Athena, wisdom and glory in battle; Aphrodite, the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Before him lay three paths: power, wisdom, or desire. Above them all loomed the golden apple, not a warm sun but a burning star of discord, forcing the choice into being.
Eros hovered doing Aphrodite’s bidding, bow drawn, arrow aimed at Paris’s heart. For in such moments, reason cannot decide. It is not logic that bends the scales, but love itself, piercing the soul. Paris chose Aphrodite, and with that choice set in motion the Trojan War. Desire, or perhaps fate, carried him, as his very name foretells: Paris, “to carry off.” For he would soon carry Helen—whose name means “torch”—from Sparta to Troy, bringing upon his city’s destruction and closing the prophetic circle that began with Queen Hecuba’s dream; a dream that could have been interpreted through love and prosperity, rather than through the vision of fear.
This brings us to the next piece of the puzzle, the duality embedded in the man himself. Paris is also known as Alexandros, “defender of men.” In this duality, he mirrors his own father, carrying the same purity that was once corrupted by fear. His two names represent his two possible paths: Paris, “to carry off,” the agent of a fate sealed by fear; and Alexandros, “defender of men,” the potential champion of a destiny guided by love. The myth shows us that love is the only true defense. The prophecy declared Troy would fall, and so, in their fear, his parents cast away Alexandros. But in trying to flee fate, they only ensured it. The son who returned to them was now Paris, ready to carry off a destiny of fear and bring about the destruction of Troy.
Perhaps fear itself was the seed that gave rise to the prophecy. It was the same fear that once made the Titans cast away their own kin, and in doing so, sealed their own downfall. It is fear, not love, that we should avoid at all costs. These same patterns are found in our own lives, again and again. We start off pure, only to lose ourselves and corrupt our own true names.
So again, I think The Lover card may be telling us that fear is the enemy of love. Fate is inescapable, but love is the thread that redeems our passage through it – liberation through love, even salvation through love. Love must be pure, unencumbered, and free of expectation.
Clara knows this instinctively, and nobody taught her. She feels it in her being. Yet the world is cruel and tries to tell her, at every turn, that love is not possible, that compromises must be made, that we must learn to endure what we do not love rather than change it.
So in conclusion, here we see the full mirror of the Lover card. The mortal stands in a triangle of choice: two women before him and Eros above, each drawing him toward a promise. The golden apple glows like the sun of destiny, while the arrow of love ensures the decision will not be reasoned, but fated. The choice is his, yet it is not his alone. Through him, fate moves, and through love, history itself is rewritten. Even the name of the card hints at this, ending in the letter X – LA ROVE DE FORTVNE – the cross of decision, the stitch of fate, the mark of the Moirai, the weavers of destiny. In the end, it is always the Moirai who have the final word. And perhaps that is why Clara, in her all-or-nothing way, reminds me so much of the Lover card itself – a little girl standing at the center of choice, guided not by fear, but by love – love that endures even in spite of fear.
Fearless love is our ticket into heaven. So love fearlessly!
Chronicles of Fear
Like many creative endeavors, the true revelations often begin only after the writing is seemingly finished. So it was with this article. It was on the morning of October 1, 2025, that the deeper layers of the story truly clicked into place. How fitting that this clarity arrived on a day marked by the number one – LE BATELEUR, the Magician’s number of creation – and in the tenth month, evoking the Moirai themselves through the Tarot’s tenth major arcana card, X – LA ROUE DE FORTUNE, the Wheel of Fortune. The wheel turns, a cycle ends, and a new understanding begins.
The story of Paris, I now realize, does not begin with a choice between three goddesses, but with a dream and the fear it inspired. Before Paris was born, his mother, Queen Hecuba of Troy, dreamt that she did not give birth to a child, but to a blazing torch that set the entire city of Troy aflame. Disturbed by this premonition, King Priam sought the counsel of seers, who confirmed that the child would be the city’s ruin.
Here, at the very inception of the tale, fear becomes the guiding hand of fate. Let us look closer at the parents. Priam was not always known by that name; in his youth, he was called Podarces, “the swift-footed one.” This name evokes the heroic ideal of strength, speed, and agility in battle. His name was changed to Priam, meaning “the ransomed one,” after his life was spared in a bargain. This changed Priam from a heroic archetype into a weak, compromised shadow of his former self. From then on, his very identity was forged by compromises made under duress, setting him on a path marked by misfortune and fraught negotiations.
When his wife Hecuba, whose name can be traced to the Greek for “far-off strike,” brought him this dream of misfortune—a vision that was itself a far-off strike from the truth—Priam’s first instinct was fear. It was fear that led him to the seers, and it was fear that dictated the decision to abandon his son. This leads me to a new conclusion: Troy itself was already compromised, just like Priam. The seeds of its destruction were not sown by Paris’s choice of love, but by his parents’ choice of fear. A kingdom built on fear has no place in our collective evolution and, perhaps, had to fall.
This dynamic is also etched into the very design of the Lovers card itself. The title, LAMOVREVX, is framed by vertical lines: five lines (|||||) stand before the word, and six lines (||||||) follow it. This is a visual metaphor for the choice at hand. The five lines evoke the preceding card, V – LE PAPE, representing the wisdom we carry into the moment. The six lines represent the new reality of the Lover (VI) that is born from the choice. The scales are already tilted towards the six, suggesting the heart’s decision is the intended path forward.
But another more chilling detail confirms that the true downfall is fear. Above the figures, Eros hovers within a radiant sun. If you look closely, the negative space created by the divine light framing the archer forms the unmistakable image of a skull. When Priam and Hecuba looked upon their prophecy, their terror acted as a filter; they saw only the skull of their city’s demise. The card presents the same choice: will the Lover see the divine impulse of Eros, or be paralyzed by the specter of the skull? Fear will always find the face of death, even in the heart of the most brilliant light.
This reframes the entire concept of fate. There is a saying, “You will not escape what you fear,” because all prophecies are projections born from a place of fear. Priam and Hecuba, in trying to save Troy, set in motion the very events that would ensure its fall. The core lesson is not that love is destructive, but that fear is.
This brings the lesson back to my daughter, Clara, who embodies this card. She has had one amazing day after another, in love with life and succeeding at everything she sets her mind to. Though she can be naturally selfish, when she is truly in love with herself, she becomes the most caring, helpful, and kind human. She is showing us that the key to being good to others is to first love ourselves so completely that the kindness naturally overflows.
It pains me to think that we constantly fight against this. I am guilty as charged. We tell our children they are selfish, that they only think of themselves and should think of others. We teach them to do things they don’t like just to please people. We tell ourselves that this is preparing them for life, that the world is cruel and they must be made ready. We see it as our duty, but we fail to see how damaging these words are. They make our children start to hate themselves. They begin to believe they are terrible, unworthy, that their own needs cause harm and hardship to others. Of course, this is the last thing they want. Slowly, bit by bit, a program of self-negation gets installed. The damage is done, and to reverse it is nearly impossible. I only hope it is not too late for my girls.
Some might say this argument is against educating our kids. How do you get them to brush their teeth, to do their homework, to tidy up their rooms and form good habits? The honest answer is that I am not sure yet, but I am going to try to do it all and more. I do know one thing, however: when they are truly happy and in love with themselves, they live to please and are on a quest to do things to make us proud.
And so, this is the final, deepest secret. We see the Lover standing between two figures and assume his choice is external. But what if the first choice is internal? To beat fate, we must free ourselves from fear – and I mean all of it. We must write every fear down on paper. We must visit and revisit that list and, like a surgeon removing a tumour, carve each one out of our soul. Fearless love is the only alternative, but it must begin with the self. The Lover, singular, must first choose to love himself or herself. Only then is he or she truly free to love another. This is the only true liberation from a destiny forged in terror.
True and fearless love.
My fear builds a wall of night,
And steals away my inner light.
It whispers lies of what’s to come,
And leaves my heart completely numb.
With fearless love, my rising sun,
I will declare: The WAR is won!