2 of Cups: I Wish for No Other (Autre Ne Veux) (c) Cheryl Lynne Bradley 2006-10


Morgan Greer Tarot: 2 of Cups

"unless you are in love nothing else makes sense"
e.e.cummings

"He is more myself than I am"
Catherine talking about Heathcliff,
"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte

"These words are my own
They come from my heart zone
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you"
These Words (I love you) by Natasha Beddingfield

Much has been written over the course of history on the strange phenomenon known as love. It has as many layers, interpretations, manifestations and expressions as there are people in the world who can fall into it. What is this strange set of circumstances and experiences that, within seconds, creates the feelings of attraction and connection to another? It is certainly one of the most complex of all human emotional experiences. It can bring the high and mighty to their knees and elevate the lowest of the low to the heights of heaven. Love is truly the most powerful force in the universe, love prevails and will find a way.

The 2 of Cups in the Tarot is a card of love, both in the first initial flush of attraction that sends the butterflies flying much lower than your stomach, and in loves that have weathered time, tests, trials and tribulations to persevere. Not all relationships founded in great love will work out. We have often met people who speak with vehement hatred of the one who did them wrong, betrayed their heart and their love - this speaks volumes as to how great the feelings of love once were in that relationship. My only personal theory on love, at the present time, is that love isn't love until it is returned. I think it is a more mature take on love than the one I used to have, which was that love was just an overdose of horniness. In that theory, the 2 Cups depicted in this card would be full of pheromones, those wonderful hormones we emit which attracts another to us in the sexual context of love.

Love is supposed to be a satisfaction, not just an experience. Love is also an emotion that we will often self-reference about, thinking that everyone feels and experiences love the same way we do. For some people love is a mental connection, they need to connect mentally with another to feel it. For others the physical sexual aspects of love are their expression of what their heart is telling them. Others are drawn to love by physical appearances and attractiveness. Still others need to feel spiritually and emotionally connected to the other to feel and experience love and others need to build a friendship first to give love a foundation to grow on. It creates many combinations and we may have experienced feelings of love based on all of these things.

How do you know you are in love? How do you know if this is "the one"? All long time readers know that this is one of the big questions which bring people to consult a reader. It is challenging. I often think we can see who the next one will be or where this relationship is going but "the one" is another matter. People are always looking for a soul mate but this is a term that is often misinterpreted. We can have many more than one soul mate in our life and our soul mate is not restricted to an intimate love relationship - we can be soul mates to our best friend, our child, our parents, our siblings, our neighbours. We can also experience karmic relationships with people that can seem very powerful and compelling but are not necessarily a relationship that will work out despite the strength of feelings it stimulates. These types of relationships are two souls working out karma from a past life connection which may or may not have been a positive connection. We can also meet people who are an other self relationship - we feel connected to this person on many levels but it doesn't quite work as a love relationship because this is someone who we might have been if we had come back a different gender or had been raised in different circumstances.

Falling into love is a heady experience. We may feel like we are falling up. There is sense of profound connection to the other and a strong sense of recognition. This person can take our breath away, ease our burdens with a smile or a touch and make the past stand down. You may feel safe, uplifted, understood and share deep feelings of empathy with one another. Time may feel like it is standing still and you will understand what the expression "lost in your eyes" really means. It is intense, deep, gratifying and your days of lonely longing and yearning will be forgotten. It is a deep experience of passion, sensual and emotional promise and a strong sense that the world is going around just about right maybe for the first time in a very long time.

One of my favourite expressions is "Better alone than badly accompanied". It is better to wait for the right one than to try and make the wrong one right. Love very often is the accidental treasure that we stumble upon when we weren't really looking for it. Love finds its way to you and you have to trust that somewhere on that deeper level, in those strange set of circumstances that bring it all together, your soul won't let it go by you.

 




This page was updated 2010-06-16.