Give me Strength

the violence & gentleness of this year's card

I need it. You need it. We all need it. Strength. Our collective card for the year of 2024. How can we make sense of this card? What context does it offer to our current time and space? Let’s open an inquiry.

Part One: Origins and Evolution of Strength

As someone who came to tarot through the Waite-Smith tradition I’m accustomed to a gentle version of Strength, a woman calmly attending to a lion. Patience and compassion were among the first key words I associated with this card (shout out to Joan Bunning for that). But when I delved further into tarot history I realized the earliest illustrations were quite different, showing a man (Hercules, most likely) beating a lion with a club.

Side by side: Strength from the Visconti-Sforza and Waite-Smith decks.

This juxtaposition in themes of violence and gentleness seems as relevant a place as any to begin talking about our card of the year for 2024. With either of these viewpoints, you could say Strength is about facing something difficult. Perhaps this year asks us individually and collectively:

What difficulties are you facing internally and externally? Will you respond with force and violence, or patience and gentleness? Or perhaps some combination thereof?

There’s also the question of perception and framing here. What one person perceives of as gentleness might be perceived by someone else as violence and vice versa. Things aren’t always what they seem.

In the earliest decks, like the Visconti-Sforza shown above, the card was titled Fortitude and is one of the classic cardinal virtues. Wikipedia defines Fortitude as “the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation.” To add even more nuance, the virtue of Fortitude requires patience. It isn’t just about charging into a quick battle and mowing things down. True Fortitude asks you to pace yourself so you can be present for the long-haul, not just the current crisis.

But it’s also important to note that pacing yourself doesn’t mean looking away. Fortitude, or Strength, asks us to stay present with fearful and uncertain circumstances. In some moments, being present might mean taking direct action, doing something. In other moments, staying present is simply continuing to bear witness.

In my last couple of posts I talked extensively about the book Forest of Souls by Rachel Pollack and guess what?! I saved more for THIS post because Rachel shares some great insights on the development of the Strength card.

In particular, she considers how the image of Hercules quickly became replaced by a woman with a lion in the Marseille tarot. Rachel writes:

“The image of a woman with a lion is in fact extremely old, far older than Hercules and his thick club. In fact, the Hercules story might have represented the need of the warrior Greeks to subdue an older, more indigenous culture, one centered on a Goddess. The image of a female deity with big cats goes back at least eight thousand years to a small statue excavated in Turkey. A powerful woman sits on a chair and gives birth, without struggle, while leopards lie on either side.”

She goes on to share several other historical cultural connections between women and lions/great cats (the Egyptian Sphinx, the Indian goddess Durga and more).

In a different book, Tarot Wisdom, Rachel studies how definitions of the Strength tarot card have evolved over time. The earliest interpretations were about force, power, and vanquishing the untamed. Yet if you are familiar with any modern tarot interpretations, you’ve surely seen this card described as a gentle touch. The woman on the card, it is often said, befriends the lion. Tends to it with care and understanding. Seeks to calm and soothe it, not beat it into submission. Rachel writes:

So where does that idea of gentleness come in, of feminine passion? Maybe it literally comes from women, and modern women at that, the many who have helped shape tarot interpretation over the last (several) decades. One of the earliest of these modern interpreters was Eden Gray, author of several Tarot books in the late 1960s-70s, who says about Strength: ‘force of character, spiritual power overcoming material power, love triumphing over hate…’

It is always interesting following the threads of thought that form our modern conceptions of tarot cards. And I really value giving credit to people like Eden Gray whose influence is always present, but not always acknowledged by modern tarot readers.

Part Two: is it REALLY a Strength year tho?

It’s worth mentioning that for some tarot practitioners, 2024 is not a Strength year at all, but a Justice year. Justice was card 8 and Strength 11 in the earlier numbering of the major arcana. It was Arthur Edward Waite and the Golden Dawn who made the switch to better align with their astrological correspondences. I kind of love the attitude Waite gives when acknowledging this in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot:

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.

Y’know, the next time someone asks me why I prefer some method or another when it comes to tarot I might just reply “for reasons which satisfy myself” and leave it at that.

Anyway, I learned with the Golden Dawn numbering, and even though I don’t really incorporate astrology into my tarot readings, I think Strength is a more natural fit as card 8. There’s a couple reasons for this. The first is that as I mentioned in my post on 2023’s card, the Chariot, I learned to consider Strength + the Chariot as a pair. As such, it seems natural for Strength to follow the Chariot.

The second is another thing Rachel Pollack points out (I’m mentioning her again…what a surprise!), which is that the Golden Dawn numbering puts Justice right at the center of the major arcana, giving it a pivotal role. That gives me shivers and just feels right. There’s much more to be said about this, but that’s another topic for another day.

Most modern decks use the GD numbering, but there are exceptions. I famously wrote a whole series on the Wild Unknown tarot, a modern deck which reverts to the old numbering of Strength as 11 and Justice as 8. As with most things in tarot, take on whichever numerology resonates with you.

Part Three: Where do we go from here?

As I consider how Strength fits into the context of 2024, I keep coming back to the notion of energy conservation. I talked a little about this earlier. Pacing yourself to be present for the long haul.

That was on my mind when we created our version for The Spacious Tarot. The cactus exists in a harsh landscape. Water is scarce and cannot be wasted. The plant has adapted to this landscape and treats every bit of moisture as a precious gift. The sun is harsh and survival is not easy, yet a bloom appears.

Many of the problems we face in 2024 do not have quick solutions. Mass violence and oppression, climate change, resource hoarding…none of this is new. Much of it will be impossible to solve this year. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We keep going, but we monitor our energy. We do what we can to make our actions and reactions sustainable. Easier said than done, but perhaps that is one of the callings of Strength this year.

And yet a bloom appears. This is true not only in the Spacious Tarot illustration, but in the Waite-Smith as well. The woman is connected to the lion by a chain of flowers. This is a reminder that beauty and tenderness can and do exist alongside horror. It is a somber thing, facing difficulties. But it is a precious thing as well. Cherish the moments of laughter and thriving this year. Even when they are small, they matter immensely. That’s part of conserving your energy for the big picture.

The other day I saw a clip of Fiona Apple talking about how our brains are wired to remember difficult things. It’s a survival mechanism. I know this and I think about it often. She went on to say that it’s helpful to make an effort to remember good things as well. She says that any time you experience something good, no matter how small, take at least 30 seconds to dwell on it and relish in the experience, so it becomes embedded in your psyche. Try this with your flowery moments this year.

Going back to the Waite-Smith depiction, I’m intrigued by the expression on the person’s face. They don’t appear scared or angry or even tired. Yet they don’t appear happy or peaceful, either. To me, their appearance conveys acceptance. Here I am. I’m in this reality. I may not like it. It may be brutal. But I’m here and I will do what I can.

And so it is. I ask for Strength for myself, and for you, and for us all. May we keep showing up.

Carrie