Strength (VIII): Tarot Card Meaning

Upright

Gentleness that turns out to be holding the reins.

The lion is not being defeated. Nothing on this card is being defeated. What has happened is that two things which could destroy each other have arrived at terms, and the terms hold for exactly as long as somebody keeps them.

That is the part people want to skip. There is no version of this where the dangerous thing is finished and you can stop attending to it. Appetite, temper, grief and ambition are all permanent residents, and the trump is about tenancy rather than eviction.

Upright, it says the terms are currently good ones and that you negotiated them. That is a real achievement and it is invisible from outside, which is why nobody has mentioned it.

Reversed

Courage spent on the wrong thing.

Reversed, courage spent on the wrong thing. The nerve is genuine — the card never questions that — and it has been aimed at something that did not require it.

Usually there has been a substitution. The genuinely hard thing was left alone, and something else is being fought hard enough to serve as evidence that you are not somebody who backs down. The evidence is even convincing.

So the verdict turns to no, and what it refuses is not the nerve but the placement. Effort put where nothing will move is still effort, and it is spent from the same account as the effort that would have worked.

Yes or no

Upright

Yes

Reversed

No

Upright, yes — a long yes, to something that has to be repeated rather than completed. Reversed it turns to no, because the nerve is real and it is pointed at something that will not move whatever you spend on it.

Where the card comes from

Leo, and the rarest combination in the zodiac

The sign is Leo: fire, and fixed. Fixed fire is the least intuitive of the twelve pairings, because fire is the element that moves and fixed is the quality that does not. What survives that contradiction is a coal — no flame, no extinction, and heat for hours.

That is precisely the demand the card makes. Not one act of bravery but the same heat tomorrow, and the day after, with nobody watching and no obvious progress to point at.

Teth, and a sword that is only in the title

The letter is Teth, which means serpent — the animal traditions reach for when something is both dangerous and older than you, and can be understood but not domesticated. The Golden Dawn title is Daughter of the Flaming Sword, and it is worth noticing that the sword is in the name and not in the picture: the sharp thing was inherited, and what is being used here is an open hand.

A hand inside the jaws

The familiar card has her standing, calmly closing the lion’s mouth. Ours has her kneeling, with her hand inside a mouth that is wide open.

The lion’s eyes are shut. It is neither attacking nor tame; it is still. There is blood on her sleeve and it is not from today.

That composition moves the whole card from power to trust that has already been paid for. She is not restraining the animal. She is in a position where it could end her at any moment, and she is staying there.

Eight, and the exchange with Justice

Eight is repetition: four doubled, one shape stacked on itself. One later trump folds back here, The Star at seventeen, and the pairing is apt — both are cards about doing the same unremarkable thing again with no guarantee. Eight is also the contested number in this deck: older orders put Justice here and Strength at eleven, and Waite exchanged them so the trumps would follow the zodiac.

Read the lore for Justice (XI)

In a reading

As a Daily Card it usually names the thing you will meet today that would be quickest to shout at. The card recommends the slower route, not because it is nobler, but because the quick one has to be repeated next week.

In a three-card reading it lands most often in the present, where it points at something you have been carrying for a long time without filing it under work.

Common questions