The Lover's Path Tarot: Official Guidebook

By Kris Waldherr

Finally available! The official guidebook to the most romantic tarot deck ever created.

 

The Lover's Path Tarot features classic love stories and myths from around the world. Kris Waldherr, creator of The Goddess Tarot, narrates some of the most romantic love stories of all time while intertwining the tarot and its traditional archetypes. Until now, the official guidebook had only been available as a rare full color book published twenty years ago—but no longer.

 

The Lover's Path Tarot whispers that all love relationships mirror our relationship with ourselves. Its readers are taken on a journey where emotional and spiritual wisdom are gained by daring to love another. Featuring inspiring lovers such as Cleopatra and Caesar, Arthur and Guinevere, Cupid and Psyche, and nineteen other mythic couples, The Lover's Path Tarot allows for individual growth and understanding—whether you seek to improve and expand upon a love relationship with your partner or yourself.

 

BOOK CONTENT INCLUDES:

• Introduction by Kris Waldherr detailing the creation of The Lover's Path Tarot

• Full color card art for the entire deck

• Detailed card descriptions and keywords

• Inspiring retellings of famed love stories

• Tarot reading guide and tips

• Tarot spreads to empower your romantic and personal relationships . . . and more!

Love stories featured:

Pamina and Tamino, Merlin and Morgan le Fay, Shahrazade and Shahriyar, Cleopatra and Anthony, Romeo and Juliet, Isis and Osiris, Tristan and Isolde, Brunnhilde and Siegfried, Danae and Zeus, Penelope and Odysseus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pluto and Persephone, Venus and Vulcan, Paolo and Francesca, Aeneas and Dido, Dante and Beatrice, Cupid and Psyche, Tannhauser and Elisabeth, Ariadne and Bacchus

 

BONUS: includes an excerpt from Tarot for Storytellers: A Modern Guide for Writers and Other Creatives by Kris Waldherr.

The Lover's Path Tarot deck available separately.

Praise for The Lover's Path Tarot:

"When doing tarot readings, I have found that the most frequently asked questions involve love and relationships. The Lover's Path Tarot Set by artist and writer Kris Waldherr not only answers queries about partnership issues, it also offers insights into how our relationships with others mirror our relationships with ourselves. . . The Lover's Path Tarot Set is one of the prettiest presentations I have seen -- a delightful and unique set to give or to own. Whether your customers are tarot experts or novices, this gorgeous deck is sure to captivate them." —New Age Retailer

 

"The Lover's Path Tarot comes to us from the creator of the Goddess Tarot, Kris Waldherr, and while the highly acclaimed Goddess Tarot is a tribute to the talented painter and storyteller, Waldherr outdid her own formidable reputation with this latest. My head can't stop saying, "how wonderful!" and my heart echoes, "how beautiful!" when I look at these cards. . . . If romantic themes, mythology and beauty intrigue you, The Lover's Path will be winding its way into your tarot collection very soon." —Tarot Passages

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muse Publications LLC
• Release date: Dec 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990448759

Kris Waldherr

Kris Waldherr is an award-winning author, illustrator, and designer. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, and her fiction has been awarded with fellowships by the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts and a reading grant by Poets & Writers. Kris Waldherr works and lives in Brooklyn in a Victorian-era house with her husband and their daughter.

Book preview

The Lover’s Path TarotTitle page for The Lover’s Path Tarot guidebook

Also by Kris Waldherr

Selected Card Decks:

The Goddess Tarot

The Lover’s Path Tarot

The Goddess Inspiration Oracle

The Sacred World Oracle

Selected Books:

Tarot for Storytellers: A Modern Guide for Writers and Other Creatives

Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women

The Lost History of Dreams

The Lover’s Path: An Illustrated Novella

Bad Princess

Doomed Queens

The Book of Goddesses

Learn more at KrisWaldherr.com.

Contents

Title page

Also by Kris Waldherr

Introduction

The Major Arcana

The Suit of Cups

The Suit of Staves

The Suit of Arrows

The Suit of Coins

Using The Lover’s Path Tarot

Past-Present-Future reading

Burning Question reading

The Dueling Path reading

The Celtic Cross reading

The Relationship Cross reading

The Lover’s Path reading

Resources

About the Author

TAROT FOR STORYTELLERS excerpt

Introduction

PART ONE: Tarot Basics

Chapter 1

Introduction

All love relationships mirror our relationship with ourselves. They ultimately reflect upon our relationship with the world around us: how we think others see us, what we believe we are worthy of. Our beliefs about love relationships can even embody our thoughts about how we feel the universe nurtures and supports us.

This truth is a rewarding but complicated conundrum which all humans confront throughout their lives, for we are surrounded by relationships from our first breath. They begin with our dependence upon our parents for our very existence and continue as we grow through our friendships. They reach their perhaps most intense expression in the magical, self-contained world of lovers.

In many ways, the ultimate expression of our connection to the world is to fall in love. Daring to love another brings us face to face with whatever is going on within ourselves, for better or for worse. It brings up our hopes about our lives, our fears of abandonment. Love can be viewed as the bravest act of all, for in order to be truly intimate, we must be honest in our vulnerabilities. As we reveal our innermost selves to our beloved with all of our imperfect glories, we are truly exposed in both body and soul.

Experienced authentically, love relationships offer the sweetest rewards and the thorniest challenges. They also present us with an unparalleled opportunity to gain awareness and wisdom. The Lover's Path Tarot is a tool to examine and improve relationships—whether they be with yourself, with your beloved, or with the world. Examining our preconceptions about love, the ways we yearn to connect with another, what we desire in a partner, is an of self-illumination. More importantly, it's one way to take personal responsibility for our lives.

CREATING THE LOVER’S PATH TAROT

The genesis of The Lover's Path Tarot could not have occurred without The Goddess Tarot, which I created in 1997.

In many ways, the road to creating The Goddess Tarot began when I was a small child. Ever since I saw my first tarot deck, I've been fascinated by the tarot. Though I was too young to comprehend how the cards were used, there was something irresistibly powerful about them. Years later, while in college at the School of Visual Arts, I began working with the tarot. I first used the art nouveau-inspired Aquarian deck, which was designed by one of my professors, David Palladini. I also worked with the Predictive and Rider-Waite Tarots. While I was attracted to the serene simplicity of the Predictive Tarot's art, I soon felt its limitations. I continued working with the Rider-Waite, but I wasn't fully satisfied by it, or by other decks I came into contact with.

It was around this time that I began to fantasize about creating my own deck, one which would contain the elements that I wanted in a tarot deck: beauty, feminine strength, creative empowerment. I completed four drawings—The Moon, The Sun, The Star, and The High Priestess—but became deterred by the amount of work involved. In 1994, I painted the art for The Book of Goddesses. As I worked, I noticed each goddess seemed to naturally correspond to a major arcana trump. From there, The Goddess Tarot emerged in an organic manner.

In the years since the publication of The Goddess Tarot, I’m grateful to have heard from many women about their experiences with it. I learned a number of them often used the deck to clarify relationship issues. I also noticed the most popular area on The Goddess Tarot website was the section devoted to relationships—no other section even came close.

Love, the most ecstatic of emotions, seemed to bring up the most complicated scenarios, where there appeared to be no easy answers. I wondered why this was so. As I pondered these questions, I began to think there was something more at play than the deeply rooted need all humans have for affection and connection with another person. Ultimately, weren't these women using their love concerns as a vehicle to explore their feelings about their lives, their place in the world, their hunger for nurturance?

Around this time, I also got married. Even though I was with my husband seven years before our wedding, I was amazed by how marriage changed me. I began to think of creating a tarot deck which would reflect my new life experiences. Just as The Goddess Tarot used goddess myths, I decided that this new deck would use classic love stories from myth, folktale, and history to explore these core emotional issues. It would remind how love relationships mirror our relationship with ourselves—loving another can be a path for enlightenment and growth.

And so The Lovers Path Tarot came into being.

ABOUT THE ART

The art for The Lover's Path Tarot was inspired by my first visit to Italy in 1990. Thi­s encounter opened up the rich world of the Italian Renaissance for me. I also fell in love with Venice, a city as mysterious and surprising as a masked lover.

During this trip, as I wandered the labyrinthine streets and canals of Venice, I could never be certain what wonder would appear before me around a corner. Often, just as I convinced myself that I was irrevocably lost, I would find myself exactly where I intended. Other ti­mes, I discovered a place better than I’d imagined.

My experiences in Venice seemed a perfect metaphor for the unpredictable way life unfolds. Try as we may, we often cannot see where our experiences will lead—all we can do is trust they will take us where we are meant to be. It is the same way with relationships.

Accordingly, the art for The Lover's Path Tarot was inspired by the art, architecture, books, and maps of the Italian Renaissance. The decorative borders for each card were painted in gouache upon handmade paper. Other elements incorporated into the borders—the map backgrounds, the oil paintings of the elements—were digitally assembled.

The main card art was created with oil paints glazes, which were layered over a watercolor under painting sealed with acrylic gel medium. The paintings were modeled for by friends and associates, each person chosen because they reminded me in some manner of the character they represented. In this way, the art reflects my belief that the human is divine, the divine human.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE LOVER’S PATH TAROT

Like most traditional tarot decks, The Lover's Path Tarot contains seventy-eight cards. These seventy eight cards are divided into twenty-two major arcana cards and fifty-six minor arcana cards.

Each major arcana card is affiliated with a story of a famous couple from history or mythology. These stories explore the many experiences of love, and the major archetypes and universal questions we all experience as we journey through life. Accordingly, each card is named after archetypal emotional states represented by the stories; these, in turn, are related to traditional tarot symbolism. In this way, I hope that the world of The Lover's Path Tarot will be accessible for tarot readers familiar with the popular Rider-Waite or Morgan Greer Tarots.

In the minor arcana, the great themes explored in the major arcana are brought to earth, made relevant to our individual experiences. The minor arcana is divided into four suits of cups, staves, arrows, and coins, which are related to the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. Each suit retells one classic love story, with each card progressively depicting an important scene from the story. They serve to impart the lesson associated with each suit. These are explained in greater detail in the introductions to the suits.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book is set up in six parts, each one exploring a crucial area of The Lover's Path Tarot.

In Part One, The Major Arcana, the love stories associated with each card are retold. These retellings have been collected and developed over the past decade. Also explained is the symbolism woven into each image and story: Parts Two through Five explore the minor arcana suits of cups, staves, arrows, and coins. The love stories associated with these four suits are progressively retold card by card.

Though meanings have been included for the seventy-eight cards comprising The Lover's Path Tarot, I hope you will look upon these as a guide to spark your intuition into play. Please feel free to personalize these card descriptions to reflect your own life experiences. This will add a layer of resonance as you work with The Lover's Path Tarot.

Also included are descriptions for reversed, or upside-down, cards. These can be used according to your judgment. l prefer to think of cards as being strong or weak by taking into consideration the question being asked, their relative position in a tarot spread, and the surrounding cards.

Finally, Part Six, Using The Lover's Path Tarot, offers techniques, exercises, and card spreads designed specifically for this deck. Many of the card spreads include variations for couples to share, a wonderful way to increase intimacy with a partner.

Also included is a list of resources I found helpful as I worked on this project. I hope these resources—which range from books on tarot and love, to musical works, and films—will inspire you as you travel along the lover's path.

heart decorationThe Major Arcanawinged heart decoration

Every path begins somewhere. In The Lover's Path Tarot, it begins with the major arcana. The major arcana's twenty-two cards tell a story of progressive life lessons, each an important archetypal experience. The lessons on these cards are named after emotional states and experiences, which in total represent the hidden geography of the heart.

The journey of The Lover's Path Tarot starts with Innocence (Card O) and ends in Triumph (Card XX), with twenty cards in between. Shared along the way are twenty-two love stories, each affiliated with a major arcana card. Culled from the most inspiring myths, legends, and historical events known to western civilization, these stories illustrate the emotional principal associated with each card. They range from the magical fairy tale of Pamina and Tamino (O-Innocence) to the tragic but true story of Paolo and Francesca (XV-Temptation); from the legend of clever Shahrazade (II-Wisdom) to the inspiring myth of Ariadne and Dionysus (XXI-Triumph).

When major arcana cards appear in tarot readings, they can represent recurrent life themes and important transitions at hand. They suggest more to a situation than meets the eye, challenging us to view our lives as wider than we can see, larger than we can imagine while we travel the lover's path.

heart decoration

O • INNOCENCE

Major Arcana 0 - Innocence

Traditional Card: The Fool

LOVERS:

Tamino and Pamina

KEYWORDS:

New Ventures

Trust

Innocence

The Magic Flute was the last opera Mozart composed before his death in 1791. Elements of its fairy tale plot were inspired by the rites of the Freemasons, a secret society into which Mozart had been initiated. The Magic Flute tells of a princess named Pamina