Strength
A woman closes the jaws of a lion not by force but by a calm, steady hand, and the whole meaning of the card is in that gesture. Strength is power that has learned to be gentle. It is the courage that does not need to shout, the kind that meets what frightens it without picking a fight.
Upright meaning
Upright, Strength is courage joined to patience, the quiet mastery that comes from working with a force rather than against it. The card invites you to meet what scares you with a soft, unhurried touch, taming the lion within instead of wrestling it to the ground. Real strength rarely raises its voice.
This is also self-mastery, the slow art of staying steady when your own fear or anger flares. Gentle power is not weakness; it is the harder discipline of restraint. When Strength appears, it says you have more composure available than you have been using, and that calm will carry you further than fury.
Reversed meaning
Reversed, Strength suggests your reserves are low and your patience is wearing through. Self-doubt may be whispering that you cannot handle this, or a raw temper may be running the show, snapping at what gentleness could have soothed. The card does not scold; it points to depletion.
The remedy is to be gentler with yourself before you try to be steady with anyone else. You cannot pour calm you do not have. The reversed card asks you to refill, to forgive your own short fuse, and to remember that the lion is tamed by patience, including the patience you owe yourself.
In the heat of things
At work, Strength is the difficult conversation handled with composure instead of escalation, the pressure met without panic. In love, it is patience with a partner's hard edges and with your own. In daily life, it is the moment you feel anger rise and choose the slow breath instead of the sharp word. The card favours influence over force, every time.
Symbols on the card
In the Rider-Waite-Smith image a woman in a white robe gently closes, or opens, the mouth of a lion, her hands resting on it without strain. A garland of flowers loops around her waist and into the lion's mane, taming through beauty rather than chains. Above her head floats the same infinity sign worn by the Magician, marking power that flows endlessly when it is not forced.
Its I Ching kin
Strength is a Fire card, and its I Ching kin is Li ☲ (離), the trigram of Fire. Li is the bright, clinging flame that gives warmth and light without consuming all at once, fire that has found its discipline. That mirrors Strength exactly, a heat held steady enough to warm rather than burn. To feel where your patience is being tested, cast a hexagram, and read how tarot and the I Ching rhyme.
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