Strength

  • Arcana Major
  • Number VIII
  • Figure on this site Tyr, who bound Fenrir
Historical evidence

In the earliest decks

The card belongs to the cardinal virtues among the trumps, with Justice and Temperance. In Italian it was Fortezza, Fortitude, and the French name La Force translates that. In the Tarot de Marseille tradition it is trump XI and Justice is VIII; Jean Dodal’s Lyon deck of 1715 is a standard example.

The earliest images are not one design. Specialist surveys describe two main types in 15th-century Italy. One is a woman with a pillar: the Charles VI cards (about 1460) show a figure with a scalloped halo and a broken pillar, usually read as a reference to Samson, and a Florentine painted panel by Pesellino of the same period gives Fortitude a pillar. The other shows a lion. Four lion cards survive, including one from the Visconti di Modrone deck (about 1440, Milan), where a woman sits on the lion and pries its jaws open, and a Budapest block-printed card where a man, perhaps Hercules or Samson, wrestles it.

Only the woman-and-lion type seems to have reached France in the early 16th century; the woman with a pillar never appears on French decks. The calm, seated woman on a passive lion was fixed in Marseille decks by the first half of the 17th century. Two Paris decks of the mid-17th century instead show a woman wrestling the lion.

Sources disagree on some details, and the order of trumps was not the same everywhere in Italy, so the Marseille numbers should not be read back onto every early deck.

Historical evidence

The Rider-Waite-Smith card

Pamela Colman Smith painted the deck under Waite’s direction, and William Rider & Son first published it in December 1909. Waite’s version follows the woman-and-lion type of the Marseille line: a woman closes the lion’s jaws, and the lion is tame.

Two things are new. Waite says in his own book that the lion has already been subdued and is led by a chain of flowers, and that the woman has the same sign of life over her head as the Hierophant (the lemniscate). Second, he gave Strength the number VIII and Justice XI, reversing the Marseille order. Waite says only that he had reasons that satisfied himself. Later writers connect the change with Golden Dawn teaching, which pairs Strength with Leo and Justice with Libra; Waite and Smith both belonged to that order. Crowley’s Thoth deck went back to the older order.

Myth and literature · Quotation

Waite’s description

A woman, over whose head there broods the same symbol of life which we have seen in the card of the Hierophant, is closing the jaws of a lion. The only point in which this design differs from the conventional presentations is that her beneficent fortitude has already subdued the lion, which is being led by a chain of flowers. For reasons which satisfy myself, this card has been interchanged with that of Justice, which is usually numbered eight. As the variation carries nothing with it which will signify to the reader, there is no cause for explanation. Fortitude, in one of its most exalted aspects, is connected with the Divine Mystery of Union; the virtue, of course, operates in all planes, and hence draws on all in its symbolism. It connects also with innocentia inviolata, and with the strength which resides in contemplation.

[…]

The card has nothing to do with self-confidence in the ordinary sense, though this has been suggested—but it concerns the confidence of those whose strength is God, who have found their refuge in Him.

Myth and literature · Context

Later meanings

These are additions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, not part of the early Italian cards.

Éliphas Lévi linked the card to the Hebrew letter Caph and described a woman with an infinity sign over her head gently closing a lion’s jaws. Oswald Wirth, in 1887, kept to the Marseille design and read the card in psychological terms. The Golden Dawn tradition, followed by Waite and Smith, put Strength eighth and tied it to Leo and the Sun, with Justice eleventh and Libra. Waite himself reads the lion as the passions and the woman as the higher nature freed from them, a spiritual reading of his own time.

Whether a deck numbers the card VIII or XI therefore depends on which tradition it follows.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the meaning used for readings here. Using the tarot to divine is a modern practice, and the Norse figure shown for each card is this site’s own association; the tarot began as an Italian card game. A short history is on the Tarot page.

Upright

Keywords: quiet courage, self-mastery, facing fear directly, sacrifice for the greater good

Tyr lost his hand binding Fenrir, and he did it anyway, calmly, because someone had to and he was the one willing. This isn't the card of loud heroics; it's the card of quiet, costly courage — strength that controls a real danger without needing an audience to witness it. Whatever feels untamed in your life right now, a fear, an impulse, a difficult person, doesn't need to be destroyed. It needs to be met directly, with steady hands, by someone who isn't performing bravery for anyone else.

In general: A difficulty is best handled through calm, direct engagement rather than avoidance or dramatic confrontation. You're more capable of this than you feel.

In love: Facing a hard truth about the relationship honestly, even at personal cost, rather than letting it run wild unaddressed.

In work: Taking on the unglamorous, risky task that needs doing because you're the one capable of doing it steadily, even if it costs you something.

Reversed

Keywords: avoidance, unaddressed fear, false sense of control, postponed reckoning

Avoidance can wear the costume of control. The wolf, ungoverned, isn't actually managed; it's just temporarily out of sight, gathering strength for later. If a fear is being handled by distance rather than direct attention, by simply not looking at the thing rather than facing it, the binding hasn't actually happened yet. Fenrir breaks free eventually. Better to meet him now, on your terms, than later, on his.

In general: Something frightening is being managed through distance rather than confrontation. The distance is temporary; the problem isn't.

In love: A difficult conversation or fear about the relationship that's being sidestepped rather than faced. It's not going anywhere on its own.

In work: A risk or problem being quietly ignored rather than addressed, hoping it resolves itself. It rarely does.

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