Strength

Strength (VIII) is the ninth card of the Major Arcana in Tarot, representing courage, patience, and inner fortitude. In a reading, it signals a call to meet difficulty with compassion rather than force, trusting quiet resilience over brute power.

There is a kind of power that does not raise its voice.

It does not clench its fists or build its walls higher. It does not conquer, subdue, or overwhelm. It sits quietly beside the thing that frightens it and waits. It opens its hands where others would close them. It meets ferocity with tenderness, and somehow, impossibly, the ferocity yields.

That is the power the Strength card describes. And it may be the hardest kind of power there is.

At a Glance

Visual Traditions: Three Decks

The Major Arcana's imagery varies significantly across the three major traditions. Understanding these differences deepens your reading of any deck.

Rider-Waite-Smith (1909) · The image shown above.

Tarot de Marseille (17th-18th century) · The Marseille La Force is numbered XI (not VIII) and shows a woman forcing open a lion's jaws with visible effort. The image is more physically forceful than the RWS version's gentle touch. The Marseille Strength is about raw courage and physical fortitude as much as inner patience.

Thoth Tarot (1943) · Crowley's version, renamed 'Lust,' is dramatically different. Babalon (the Scarlet Woman) rides the seven-headed Beast in ecstatic union. This is not gentle taming but passionate embrace of instinctual power. The card radiates primal energy, sexual force, and the courage to merge with what terrifies you.

Key Imagery and Symbolism

A woman gently opens (or closes) the jaws of a lion. She does not use force; her touch is calm, loving, and confident. An infinity symbol (lemniscate) floats above her head, the same symbol as the Magician's, signifying infinite consciousness. She wears a garland of flowers and a white robe. The landscape is green and gentle. There are no weapons, no armour, no struggle: only quiet mastery through gentleness. The lion is not killed or caged but willingly submits.

Every detail of the image contradicts our usual understanding of strength. The powerful one wears flowers, not armour. She uses her bare hands, not tools. She does not dominate the lion but befriends it.

What Strength Means

Upright

Inner strength, courage, patience, compassion, gentle mastery, taming the beast within, self-control through love not force, resilience, influence. The power of soft over hard.

Strength upright appears when you need to meet a challenge not with aggression but with patience, not with force but with compassion. It is the card that appears during long recoveries, difficult relationships, creative blocks, and any situation where brute force has failed and something subtler is required. Strength says: you are stronger than you think, but your strength looks different from what you expected.

Reversed

Self-doubt, weakness, lack of discipline, raw emotion overwhelming reason, inner turmoil, cowardice, cruelty, abuse of power. Losing the struggle with one's instincts.

Reversed, Strength warns that your inner lion is running wild. Perhaps fear has overcome courage. Perhaps anger has overcome patience. Perhaps you are being cruel to yourself or others because you feel powerless. The reversed Strength can also indicate that you are suppressing your natural energy rather than befriending it: taming that has become caging.

How Position and Surrounding Cards Shift the Meaning

Next to the Chariot, Strength highlights the difference between external and internal power: force versus patience. Next to the Devil, the question becomes whether instinct is being befriended or enslaved. Next to the Star, gentle courage opens the way to profound healing.

Strength in a relationship spread almost always calls for patience, compassion, and the courage to remain open when closing down feels safer.

The Archetype: A Jungian Perspective

The confrontation with instinct and the integration of the animal nature: not through repression or violence but through conscious, compassionate relationship. The woman and the lion represent ego-consciousness and the instinctual unconscious. Unlike the Chariot's forceful control, Strength achieves mastery through love and patience.

In Jungian terms, this is the beginning of shadow integration. The ego learns that instinctual energy is not an enemy to be conquered but a power to be befriended. The shadow is tamed, not killed. The lemniscate above the woman's head connects her to the Magician: both wield infinite creative energy, but the Magician directs it outward through will, while the woman of Strength directs it inward through love.

The Fool's Journey: Strength's Place in the Story

The first challenge of the inner journey. The Fool, having triumphed in the outer world (Chariot), must now face raw instinct: anger, desire, fear, the animal self. But the lesson is not to fight: 'You cannot conquer your instincts by force. You must embrace them with courage and compassion.' This is the beginning of genuine inner work.

Previous: The Chariot · Next: The Hermit

Strength in Love, Work, and Health

Love and Relationships

Upright in love, Strength signals patience, emotional courage, and the power of vulnerability. It appears when a relationship requires endurance, when loving someone means accepting their imperfections (and your own) with grace. Strength in love is not about grand romantic gestures but about the daily courage of staying open.

For those who are single, Strength suggests that the partner you seek will be drawn to your authenticity and emotional resilience rather than any performance of perfection.

Reversed in love, Strength warns about emotional overwhelm, codependency, or the loss of boundaries. Are you being patient or are you being a doormat? The line between compassion and self-neglect requires honest examination.

Career and Finances

In career readings, Strength indicates that persistence, diplomacy, and emotional intelligence will serve you better than aggression or ambition. It favours counsellors, therapists, animal workers, healthcare professionals, and anyone whose work requires patience with difficult situations or people.

Reversed in career, Strength warns about burnout from emotional labour, or a professional environment that is draining your reserves faster than you can replenish them.

For students exploring the Major Arcana in depth, Mary K. Greer's course A Jungian Approach to the Tarot explores the archetypal dimensions of each card through a Jungian lens, connecting Tarot imagery to the individuation process.

Health and Wellbeing

Strength connects to the heart, the spine, and the vital force. Upright, it suggests resilience, recovery through patience, and the importance of self-compassion in healing. It can also indicate that the immune system is strong and the body's natural healing capacity is activated.

Reversed, it may point to chronic fatigue, emotional exhaustion, or the physical effects of suppressed anger or fear.

Esoteric Correspondences

Kabbalah

Strength corresponds to Teth, the serpent: kundalini, primal life force, the coiled energy that must be raised consciously. On the Tree of Life, Strength walks Path 19, connecting Chesed (Mercy) to Gevurah (Severity). This is the path of balancing expansion and restriction through inner discipline: mercy and severity harmonised through courageous love.

For more on the paths of the Tree of Life and their Tarot correspondences, see the complete Kabbalah paths guide.

Astrology

Leo: courage, heart, creativity, pride, the lion, solar fire, self-expression, generosity. Leo is fixed fire: sustained, radiant, loyal. The Strength card expresses Leo's highest quality: the courage of the heart. Not the roar of the lion but the open-hearted bravery of the one who faces the lion without weapons.

Numerology

Eight: infinity (the lemniscate), cycles, karmic balance, power, regeneration. As the first card of the second row (in the 3x7 model), 8 represents a new octave: the same themes of personal power revisited at a deeper, more interior level. The Magician's 1 becomes Strength's 8: will becomes patience.

Element

Fire (via Leo): courage, vitality, the fire of the heart. But unlike the Emperor's commanding fire or the Chariot's driving fire, Strength's fire is the warm, steady flame of compassion. This is the fire that sustains rather than consumes, that warms rather than burns.

Card Pairings and Relationships

Every Major Arcana card takes on different dimensions depending on its neighbours. These pairings are not fixed rules but starting points for interpretation.

• Strength + The Chariot (two kinds of mastery): Force versus gentleness. External triumph versus internal integration. The Chariot conquers the world; Strength befriends the inner lion.

• Strength + The Magician (the lemniscate pair): Both bear the infinity symbol. The Magician directs energy outward through will; Strength directs it inward through love. Active and receptive creative power.

• Strength + The Devil (instinct befriended vs enslaved): Strength tames the lion through love; the Devil chains the lovers through unconsciousness. The same instinctual energy, handled differently.

• Strength + The Star (gentle healing): Patience and courage (Strength) open the way to cosmic healing (Star). The quiet strength that makes vulnerability possible.

• Strength + The Hermit (inner work deepens): Courage (Strength) followed by solitude (Hermit). Having faced the inner lion, the Fool withdraws to contemplate what was learned.

• Strength + The Empress (feminine power): Two expressions of the feminine principle. The Empress nurtures; Strength befriends. Both use love rather than force.

• Strength + The Tower (patience tested): Can gentle mastery survive the Tower's shattering? When patience has been shattered, what remains?

• Strength + Death (courage to transform): The inner strength required to face genuine transformation. The courage to let the old self die.

Related Cards

Row 2: Subconscious / Moral Development · cards in Strength's realm of inner testing:
- The Hermit · IX · Solitary wisdom that follows Strength's courage
- Wheel of Fortune · X · Fate's humbling reminder that patience is needed

Numerological column (1-8-15) · cards sharing Strength's vertical correspondence:
- The Magician · I · Personal power through will and creativity
- The Devil · XV · Personal power corrupted by unconscious compulsion

Cards of courage and heart · cards sharing Strength's quality of brave vulnerability:
- The Star · XVII · Naked vulnerability that heals after destruction
- The Sun · XIX · The radiant joy that Strength's courage makes possible

Explore the Major Arcana Further

Strength is one of 22 archetypal encounters in the Major Arcana · and its meaning deepens when read alongside the cards that surround it. If you are drawn to the Tarot's psychological and spiritual dimensions, these courses offer a guided path from first reading to archetypal mastery.

Recommended courses:

• TarotNav: A GPS for Life · One lesson per Major Arcana card, with reading techniques and personal applications · Taught by Linda Marson
• Major Arcana Only Readings · Reading techniques using only the 22 Trumps · Taught by Rachel Pollack
• Active Imagination and the Tarot · Meditation and visualisation techniques using Tarot imagery · Taught by Mary K. Greer

For the complete guide to all 22 Major Arcana cards, visit The Major Arcana: Complete Guide to the 22 Trumps.

For a comprehensive introduction to reading all 78 Tarot cards, see How to Read Tarot Cards: A Complete Guide.

← The Chariot · VII | The Hermit · IX →