Major Arcana · 8
Strength
La Force (Tarot de Marseille, numbered XI) · Fortitude · Daughter of the Flaming Sword; Leader of the Lion (Golden Dawn) · Lust (Thoth Tarot)
A woman in white calmly closing a lion's jaws, an infinity sign above her head. In the Waite–Smith tradition Strength stands for courage, patience and the power of gentleness over force.
Upright courage · gentleness · patience · compassion · inner strength · self-control
Reversed self-doubt · weakness · impatience · raw emotion · insecurity · force used badly
- Astrology
- Leo
- Element
- Fire
- Hebrew letter
- Teth
- Number
- 8 (11 in the Tarot de Marseille)
- Golden Dawn title
- Daughter of the Flaming Sword; Leader of the Lion
- Yes or no
- Yes
Upright
Strength in the Waite–Smith tradition is not muscle but composure. The card signifies courage, patience, compassion and the quiet self-mastery that tames fear and anger without crushing them. It suggests that the most stubborn problems yield to steady, kindly persistence.
Love and relationships: tenderness, tolerance and the patience to work through difficulties. It favours relationships in which each person brings out the other's best, and it can show the courage to be vulnerable.
Work and money: resilience under pressure, calm leadership, handling difficult people with tact. Progress comes through endurance rather than confrontation.
Advice: meet what is wild — in yourself or in a situation — with calm confidence. Readers often describe the lion as one's own instincts and passions: they are not enemies, but they work best when befriended and guided.
Reversed
Reversed, Strength can show courage faltering. Readers describe self-doubt, anxiety and a sense of being overwhelmed by one's own emotions; or, in the other direction, impatience and anger breaking loose, with force used where gentleness was needed.
In relationships this may look like insecurity, jealousy or quarrels that flare too quickly. At work it can suggest burnout or a loss of nerve before a challenge.
Many readers do not use reversed meanings, preferring to let adjacent cards show whether the lion is calm or restless.
The image
Smith's Strength shows a woman in a white gown, garlanded with flowers, bending over a great tawny lion. With her hands she closes, or gently holds, its jaws, and the lion appears docile, its tongue lolling and its tail curled between its legs. A chain of roses passes from her waist around the lion's neck. Above her head floats the infinity sign that also crowns the Magician. The sky is bright yellow, and a blue mountain stands in the distance.
History
Fortitude was one of the cardinal virtues, and the early Italian decks include it with Justice and Temperance. Some fifteenth-century cards show Hercules clubbing the Nemean lion, others a woman with a broken column or a lion. The Tarot de Marseille's La Force is a woman in a broad hat opening a lion's jaws, numbered eleven, while Justice is eight.
The Golden Dawn exchanged the two cards so that the order of the trumps would match the order of the zodiacal signs on the Hebrew letters: Teth with Leo for Strength, Lamed with Libra for Justice. Waite adopted the swap in his deck and notes in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) that it was made for reasons that satisfied him. Most modern English-language decks follow Waite, while Marseille-style decks keep Strength at eleven. Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck renamed the card Lust.
Symbolism
The lion is Leo, ruled by the Sun, and stands for vitality, pride and raw passion. The woman's white dress signifies purity of motive, and the garland of roses suggests that the bond between her and the beast is made of love, not iron. The infinity sign connects her with the Magician: both draw on an inexhaustible source, he through will and she through patience.
Eight, in the Waite order, is often read as balance and regeneration; in many numerological schemes it is also the number of power and its right use. Teth means "serpent", which Golden Dawn writers linked with the coiled vital force. The card lies on the horizontal path between Chesed and Geburah, mercy and severity, on the Tree of Life.
In a reading
Strength is a reassuring card in questions of health of spirit, conflict and challenge. Beside the Chariot it contrasts control by will with control by calm; with the Nine of Wands it underlines endurance; with the Justice card it can signal a fair outcome won through patience. Readers using Marseille decks should remember the different numbering.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City — Michael Dummett, 1980
- The Golden Dawn — Israel Regardie, 1937
- The Book of Thoth — Aleister Crowley, 1944