Ace of Hearts

Before there is a relationship, there is only the readiness for one — and that readiness is what this card actually depicts. Rome called the household gods the Lares, small figures kept by the hearth and greeted before anything else in the house was decided; nothing was built until they were acknowledged first. Jung would call this the constellation of eros before it has an object — pure relational potential, not yet a person to love. Nothing has happened yet. Everything is suddenly possible. The old paradox applies here as much as anywhere: the moment you go looking for the feeling itself, hunting it like a thing to be caught, it stops being available to you. It can only be entered, never captured.