Strength

The Meaning of the Strength
Major Arcana Tarot Card in Readings

The Tarot Strength card meaning in a nutshell:
Strength of a kind that's superior
because of its clever application.

Archetype:
Hero — a great feat.

The Book

Tarot Unfolded

This book presents all the 78 Tarot card images and their allegorical symbols. Several divination spreads are also explained. The book will help you find your own intuitive way of making inspired Tarot card readings. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link).

More about the book here.

The strength on the picture of the Tarot card seems delicate: A maiden pure at heart holds the jaws of a lion, making it harmless. That's real strength, far beyond what mere muscles can accomplish. It's so powerful because it has an ideal.

It's very significant that on the Tarot Strength card image, she masters the lion not by forcing its jaws apart, like any Tarzan would, but by keeping them together, hiding its teeth. The lion has become harmless and its tongue suggests that it enjoys this. So, it's the strength of neutralizing strength. A beneficial paradox.

Some would say that the Tarot Strength card is not about strength at all, but the path away from it. Maybe so. But strength is a force that tends to yield only to superior strength. Therefore, it can only be pacified by being defeated.

That's the fundamental weakness of strength and the strength of weakness. What yields will prevail, what resists will break, Tao Te Ching, the ancient book of Taoist wisdom, has told us.

An expressive example of this is Achilles, the hero of great strength who had just one weakness: his heel. That's where his mother held him when dipping the infant Achilles in the potion that made the rest of his body invulnerable. This tiny weakness killed him. Every strength has one. Here's a Roman sculpture of Achilles, just when an arrow pierces his heel:

Achilles. Sculpture by Innocenzo Fraccaroli, 1842.
Achilles, just as the fatal arrow strikes his heel, the great hero’s only weakness. Sculpture by Innocenzo Fraccaroli, 1842.

The lion has mighty muscles by which to close its jaws on a prey, but not nearly as much strength to open them. Evolution slipped on that detail. Real strength is to make use of such weaknesses. That way, little strength is needed and still not even the strongest in the world can resist.

The Strength Card as a Person

If the Tarot Strength card refers to a person, it's someone who knows how to apply the resources to where they accomplish the most. Such strength is power. You should make that person an ally and learn from the experience. But remember that there are also other ways entirely to solve problems, than any kind of strength.

The Strength Card as an Event

If the Strength card refers to an event, it would be one where victory goes where it seems the least likely. Strength, as most things human, is in the mind. The problem at hand needs true strength, not just struggling with all your might. Find the smooth application of your abilities.

The Strength Card as You

If the Tarot Strength card has a position in the divination spread referring to you, then you tend to utilize strength before considering other solutions. You have it, so you hurry to make use of it. That's really a weakness. It may be temporary, upon meeting a problem that frustrates you to begin with, or it is the way you tend to react. In any case, consider when strength of any kind is appropriate and when it is not. Quite often it is not, even when it seems to be needed.

A. E. Waite about the Tarot Strength Card

Click the header to read what A. E. Waite had to say about the Major Arcana Strength Tarot card symbolism and meaning in divination.

The Major Arcana Tarot Cards

About Cookies

My Other Websites:

I Ching Online

The 64 hexagrams of the Chinese classic I Ching and what they mean in divination. Free online reading.

Complete Horoscope

How predictions are done in classical astrology with the full horoscope chart. Many examples.

Creation Myths

Creation stories from around the world, and the ancient beliefs about the world and the gods as revealed by the myths.

Other Books of Mine

Click the image to see the book (and Kindle ebook) at Amazon (paid link).

Your Health in Your Horoscope

What the horoscope says about your health, according to the old tradition of medical astrology.

Life Energy Encyclopedia

Qi, prana, spirit, pneuma, and many other life forces around the world explained and compared.

Archetypes of Mythology

Jungian theories on myth and religion examined, from Carl G. Jung to Jordan B. Peterson.

Stefan Stenudd

About me

I'm a Swedish author. In addition to fiction, I've written books about the Tarot, Taoism, astrology and other metaphysical traditions. I'm also an historian of ideas, researching ancient mythology. Click the image to get to my personal website.

TAROT READING	TAROT CARDS	WHAT

CELTIC CROSS	ARCHETYPES	HOW