Major Arcana · 8
Strength
La Force · Fortezza · Lust (Thoth)
The Strength tarot card meaning runs through both orientations: upright, inner strength, courage, compassion; reversed, self-doubt, force used wrongly, raw emotion ungoverned. Below, its imagery across the Rider–Waite–Smith, Thoth, and Marseille decks, and what the tradition’s writers said about it.
- Element
- Fire
- Planet
- Sun
- Zodiac
- Leo
- Hebrew
- Teth
- Numerology
- 8
- Timing
- Leo season (July–August); within weeks; Sundays (Sun day).
Upright
- inner strength
- courage
- compassion
- patience
- self-mastery
- tender power
Reversed
- self-doubt
- force used wrongly
- raw emotion ungoverned
- weakness through fear
Strength Tarot Card Meaning
Upright
Tender power. Strength is the courage that doesn't need to dominate — the patience that outlasts force. Whatever fierce energy is alive in you (anger, desire, ambition) can be befriended rather than fought. The lion is not killed; it is loved into cooperation. This is mastery from within.
- Love
- Patience and tenderness in love. A relationship that requires you to soften rather than push. For singles, attracting through self-acceptance, not striving. For couples, navigating conflict with compassion rather than reactivity.
- Career
- Quiet confidence wins. Soft power. Roles requiring patience, animal care, leadership through inspiration not coercion. A challenging colleague responds to kindness, not opposition.
- Finances
- Patient wealth-building. Resisting the urge to act on every fear. Long-term gains through composure. Avoid impulsive financial decisions made from anxiety.
- Health
- Gentle, sustainable practices outperform extreme regimens. Heart health (Leo). Healing chronic conditions through patient, loving attention. The body responds to kindness.
- Spiritual
- The marriage of higher and lower self. Working with the shadow not by repression but by integration. Compassion as the most advanced spiritual technology. The strength to keep showing up.
Reversed
Either weakness through fear, or force used because patience was abandoned. Self-doubt eating at your courage; or, the inverse, raging at what could be soothed. The lion within is hungry for attention — feeding it rage or starving it both fail. Witness it.
- Love
- Insecurity, jealousy, or aggression. The relationship being run by the unmastered animal — outbursts, control, possessiveness. Or self-abandonment in love because you don't trust yourself.
- Career
- Imposter syndrome paralyzing you. Or burning bridges with colleagues from frustration. The middle path is composure with honesty.
- Finances
- Financial decisions driven by anxiety rather than analysis. Or refusing to act because of fear of failure.
- Health
- Anxiety, insomnia, heart-related stress. Eating disorders, addictive patterns where the unmastered hunger has taken the wheel. Therapy and somatic work indicated.
- Spiritual
- Spiritual bypassing of legitimate anger or desire. Or, the opposite — being run by the shadow because you refuse to look at it. The lion is asking to be loved, not killed.
The image, three ways
Rider–Waite–Smith
A woman in white, crowned with flowers and the lemniscate, gently closes the jaws of a lion. She does not fight him; he yields. Mountains rise behind. Roses bloom around them.
Thoth
Renamed Lust. A naked woman rides a seven-headed lion, holding the Holy Grail aloft from which flames erupt. Crowley restores the card's wild-power dimension — it is not taming but joyful union with the beast.
Marseille
La Force — a woman in a wide-brimmed hat (often resembling the Magician's lemniscate hat) opens (or closes) a lion's jaws. The card's number is 11 in this tradition — Waite swapped Strength and Justice.
Four ways a reversal speaks
After Mary K. Greer, Tarot Reversals (2002)
01 · blocked
Self-doubt eating courage; the lion within unfed and starving.
02 · shadow
The disowned wild side; cruelty that comes from suppressing rather than integrating fierceness.
03 · internalized
Anger turned inward; the unmastered animal devouring the keeper.
04 · excessive
Forced patience that has become repression; gentleness performed over real fury.
What the tradition says
The tradition broadly agrees that Strength is not about domination but about a more durable kind of power — one that works with fierce inner energies rather than against them. Waite, Pollack, Nichols, Greer, and even Crowley all locate the card's meaning in a relationship of cooperation between the conscious self and its wilder, instinctual depths.
Where the readings differ: Waite frames this cooperation as a moral and spiritual virtue — courage joined to innocence — where Crowley rejects the taming metaphor entirely, reading the card as uninhibited delight in the irrational, and Greer shifts emphasis from symbol to practice, treating the card primarily as a prompt for active self-inquiry.
A.E. Waite · 1910
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honors. The 'innocence of the dove' joined to 'wisdom of the serpent.'
Aleister Crowley · 1944
The Book of Thoth
Lust — joyful union with the unconscious. The naked priestess rides the beast, the Grail blazes; this is not taming but delight. Crowley's most provocative recovery.
Rachel Pollack · 1980
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Strength is the discovery that what we feared as the beast is actually our ally — that compassion is the most direct path to power.
Sallie Nichols · 1980
Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey
Nichols reads Strength as the integration of the shadow's instinctual life — the Beast Within transformed not by suppression but by relationship. The maiden's gentleness with the lion is the psyche's gentleness with its own animality, which is the precondition for any genuine spiritual maturity.
Mary K. Greer · 1984
Tarot for Your Self
Greer asks the Strength querent to identify the lion they have been at war with — anger, hunger, grief, libido — and to start a written dialogue with that energy on the page. The card's medicine is the surprising intelligence of the disowned.
Shadow
The repressor who calls suppression strength; the spiritual person uncomfortable with their own anger; the gentle mask hiding contempt.
Archetypal role
The Lion-Tamer / The Compassionate Warrior / The Self-Mastered
Historical notes
Waite swapped Strength (originally 11) and Justice (originally 8) to align with astrological correspondences in the Golden Dawn system — Strength to Leo, Justice to Libra. Marseille decks retain the original numbering. Crowley renamed the card Lust to recover its erotic-spiritual dimension; the Whore of Babalon riding the Beast is his image of redeemed desire.
Strength: common questions
- Is the Strength a yes or no card?
- In a yes-or-no reading, the Strength leans yes.
- What do tarot writers agree the Strength means?
- The tradition broadly agrees that Strength is not about domination but about a more durable kind of power — one that works with fierce inner energies rather than against them. Waite, Pollack, Nichols, Greer, and even Crowley all locate the card's meaning in a relationship of cooperation between the conscious self and its wilder, instinctual…
- What does the Strength tarot card mean?
- Tender power. Strength is the courage that doesn't need to dominate — the patience that outlasts force. Whatever fierce energy is alive in you (anger, desire, ambition) can be befriended rather than fought. The lion is not killed; it is loved into cooperation. This is mastery from within.
- What does the Strength mean in love?
- Patience and tenderness in love. A relationship that requires you to soften rather than push. For singles, attracting through self-acceptance, not striving. For couples, navigating conflict with compassion rather than reactivity.
- What does the Strength mean for career and money?
- Quiet confidence wins. Soft power. Roles requiring patience, animal care, leadership through inspiration not coercion. A challenging colleague responds to kindness, not opposition.
- What does the Strength reversed mean?
- Either weakness through fear, or force used because patience was abandoned. Self-doubt eating at your courage; or, the inverse, raging at what could be soothed. The lion within is hungry for attention — feeding it rage or starving it both fail. Witness it.
Neighbouring arcana
Strength combinations
Strength in a relationship
When this card turns up around someone you are dating, the question is usually about their behavior, not the symbol. These readings pair the card with the relationship pattern underneath the situation.
Last reviewed 2026-06-18
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