Strength (Leo) is the first card on the deck that caught my attention when I started my tarot journey.
It’s the first card that I could relate to; therefore, try to understand it better.
For the longest time, before I knew there was this thing called the “Tarot Birth Card”, I thought Strength was my IT card.
It’s not without reason.
I believe it’s the Strength (resilience) I cultivated in my early 20s that had brought me to where I am now.
You would think I must have written plenty about the Strength card before with all that reflection. Lamentably, when I did a keyword search on this blog about the card, not even one post came up. I guess I have written plenty of the Strength in my journal but have yet to share it here. So here goes…
The Strength (La Force)
In the classic Rider Waite Smith tarot deck, the Strength card is depicted as a woman taming a lion by stroking its head. Throughout my short time of learning tarot, I have seen so many variants of the card. Of course, the lion itself has taken different forms of animal, from a cat, a wolf to, ever so often, a tiger — but it’s the lion that has been imprinted in my mind when I recall the Strength card.
The Lion
Lion is also the first prominent animal that appears in the classic Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck in sequential order—on the major arcana card number 8 (Strength), making it one of the most culturally accessible tarot cards.
Lion, the king of the jungle, has been a prevalent symbol in many cultures, from ancient to current, from drawing on the stone age to the be one of the house mascots in Harry Potter.
Tarot culture
From the Lion Dance in the Chinese culture to the Egyptian Sphinx, Lion symbolises bravery, power, strength, and protection in most cultures.
The Strength in tarot draws a similar cultural understanding of the card — of bravery, control, power, influence and literally, strength.
Meanwhile, Lion’s dual nature, the beast and the protector, has also been documented throughout different cultures, from the two guarding Lion sculptures found in many East Asian homes to the Lion in Hinduism. The latter has been the vehicle for Kali — it both protects and is ready to tear you apart, depending on the Goddess’s instruction.
In tarot, the duality representation goes beyond just the lion’s nature — it’s of the woman and the lion.
The person can be seen as taming/being in control of the lion, befriending or even becoming the beast itself. Essentially drawing this card as a querent one can be the person or the lion.
More so, as in real life and its’ cultural deception, Lion in tarot can also be read with a negative connotation (reversal). Too little, too much or misuse of power (remember Mufasa of Lion King), spinning out of control, disgrace, even insecurity.
Makes you think.
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[…] recently wrote about the cultural symbolism of Lion in relation to the Strength card in tarot. With that I went on the Strength card rabbit hole and discovered Peranakan themed tarot […]