by Veronica Genta

Since ancient times, humankind has sought to understand love: that vital force that unites, transforms, and awakens the deepest part of the soul. In the Tarot, the journey of romantic love can be read as a journey that goes from the hope of meeting to the possibility of a real and conscious commitment. It is a symbolic path, full of nuances, where each card reveals an aspect of that search.

The Knight of Cups: The Soul's Longing

The Knight of Cups depicts the seeker of love: someone who is available to both give and receive. This card represents the moment when the heart opens to the possibility of love. It is the archetype of falling in love, of the inspiration that touches the sensitive and the beautiful. When this energy manifests, it often brings with it a gift: the message that love exists.

But it is also a card that invites us to be attentive: this knight rides with a cup—a symbol of emotions—carefully held, still unspilled. It reminds us that falling in love is fragile, ephemeral, and that we often project more than we actually see in the other person.

The Five of Cups: When the Veil Falls

As a relationship progresses, an inevitable moment arrives: disenchantment. The Five of Cups represents that stage in which part of what was idealized collapses. Not everything is perfect anymore. Wounds, past histories, and unspoken needs are revealed. But in that fall, there also lies a possibility: to look at what remains standing. Because there are always two cups that are still there, intact, waiting to be acknowledged.

This is where love ceases to be a mirage and begins to demand presence, listening, and inner work.

The Lovers: Choosing to Love

When the veil of falling in love falls and we choose to continue, the Sixth Arcanum appears: The Lovers. This card goes beyond romanticism; it is an image of choice. It reminds us that love, if it is to mature, requires determination and commitment. It's not just feeling; it's choosing to walk alongside the other with all that this entails: joys, contradictions, challenges.

This is where love begins to transform into a path of shared development. As Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana said:

This acceptance, according to Maturana, is the basis of all relational intelligence. But then, why do so many couples live in conflict?

The Chariot and the Devil: The Tensions of the Bond

Often, being in a relationship becomes a battlefield where love is confused with power. The Tarot offers us two powerful images to explore this tension.

The Chariot shows us a triumphant figure moving forward with determination... but alone. There's no room for two in that chariot. It's the card of autonomy, of control, of clear direction. However, in the context of love, it can reveal a difficulty: when there is no real space for collaboration, one of the two will fall.

Then the Devil appears: the mirror of our shadows. Fears, traumas, unrecognized desires. It binds us to what is known, to what is comfortable, to the unconscious pacts that sustain relationships where control and dependence reign.

But if we have the courage—and sufficient emotional health—to cross that darkness, then an opportunity opens up.

The Tower: Breaking apart to be reborn

The Tower is not the end, it is the beginning of something new. It is the crisis that comes when we can no longer sustain what was. What seemed stable breaks… and that hurts. But it also liberates. The Tower shows us that, sometimes, only by tearing down what was built out of fear can we make room for a freer, truer, and more conscious love.

Between what we inherit and what we yearn for

Perhaps in these times we stand at a crossroads. We come from a way of loving that we saw in our parents: bonds often marked by conflict, tug-of-war, constant struggle. In my personal experience, this brought me many contradictions. I didn't want to repeat that model, I didn't want to normalize the tension, the fighting, the wear and tear.

And yet, seeing them today, older, still together, with that dependence woven over the years... something in me is moved. What is it that provokes my conflicting emotions: selfishness, fear appear? Fears that don't let us build something that lasts. Because also—in the deepest part of our hearts—we long for an unconditional presence by our side.

We live in times where many experience loneliness. Times where no one wants to give in, where we cling to our ways, to our idea of ​​autonomy, independence, absolute freedom. But in this attempt to be unique, we sometimes forget that love is, at its deepest root, an act of mutual surrender, not a loss of identity, but a bridge.

Perhaps, as a generation, we are learning to look at love with different eyes: with awareness, with tenderness, without idealizing, but without giving up. The Tarot accompanies us on this journey, not with closed answers, but with living symbols that invite us to ask ourselves again and again:

What does it mean to truly love today?
And are we willing to give up something of ourselves to build a "we"?

There is always a purpose beyond.

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Veronica Genta, tarot reader and astrologer, with a strong background in theatre, has built a deep bond with the Mapuche culture of Chile, exploring their cosmovision through textile art, medicinal plants and traditional dances.

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