No card in this series has a messier numbering history than this one. Depending on which deck you’re holding, Strength is either card VIII or card XI — and the reason for that split is one of the more genuinely interesting stories in tarot history, not just trivia. Same ten lenses used across the series so far, applied to this card.
Historical & Esoteric Systems
1. Rider-Waite-Smith — Dominion Through Gentleness
A serene woman gently closes (or holds open) the jaws of a lion, an infinity symbol — the same lemniscate that hovers over The Magician in card I — floating above her head. Waite is clear this isn’t about physical force at all: it’s moral and spiritual dominion, subduing the lion through compassion and calm resolve rather than muscle. Read this way, the card isn’t “overpowering your instincts” so much as “no longer being ruled by them” — a very different image of strength than a raised sword or a clenched fist.
2. Marseille — The Same Woman, a Different Number
Here’s the real story: in the historical Tarot de Marseille, La Force shows essentially the same scene — a woman managing a lion’s jaws — but she’s numbered card XI, not VIII. This isn’t a printing error or regional variation; it’s the older, original placement. The RWS/Golden Dawn version you’re used to is the one that moved.
3. Thoth (Crowley/Harris) — Lust, and a Return to the Old Number
Crowley renamed this card Lust and, tellingly, put it back at XI — reverting to the older Marseille position rather than following the Golden Dawn numbering he’d been trained in. His card shows a woman (often identified with Babalon, the Scarlet Woman of Revelation) riding astride a seven-headed beast, holding the reins that unite them in one hand — “representing the passion which unites them” — and the Holy Grail, aflame, in the other. This is a much more radical reading than “taming an animal”: passion isn’t subdued here, it’s ridden, directed, and offered up as something closer to sacrament than sin.
4. Etteilla — Fortitude, Then Sovereignty
Etteilla’s card 11, “La Force” or “Le Souverain,” corresponds to traditional Trump XI and keeps a recognizably traditional upright meaning: fortitude, moral strength, perseverance, greatness of soul. Reversed, though, it swings somewhere unexpected — not weakness or self-doubt, but sovereignty and governance: kingdom, empire, state, administration. It’s as if Etteilla read “strength” all the way through to its logical political conclusion, rather than stopping at the level of personal character.
5. Golden Dawn — Why the Number Actually Moved
This is the card where the Golden Dawn’s whole project of realigning tarot with astrology shows its hand most clearly. They assigned Strength the Hebrew letter Teth (“serpent”) and the zodiac sign Leo — and Leo needed to fall earlier in the trump sequence than Libra (assigned to Justice, further down this series) to keep the Hebrew-letter-to-zodiac correspondences running in proper astrological order through the deck. Since Leo (the lion) obviously belongs with Strength and Libra (the scales) with Justice, something had to give: the Golden Dawn swapped Strength to VIII and Justice to XI, breaking with centuries of Marseille tradition purely to keep their own correspondence system internally consistent. Crowley, notably, didn’t follow his own order’s fix here — see #3 above.
Psychological, Structural & Modern Lenses
6. Reversed — Force Without Compassion
Traditional reversed meanings point to self-doubt, raw impulse breaking free of discipline, or willpower applied so harshly it stops being strength and starts being cruelty — toward yourself or someone else. The lion is still there reversed; it’s just not being met with anything gentle enough to actually reach it.
7. Numerological — Eight as the Turned Infinity
Eight is a natural fit for a card that already carries the lemniscate: turned on its side, the numeral 8 is the infinity symbol. Numerologically, 8 often represents balance between material and spiritual forces, or a cycle folding back on itself rather than running in one direction — a fitting number for a card about power that isn’t spent fighting, but sustained indefinitely through steadiness.
8. Jungian / Archetypal — The Shadow
Jung’s Shadow archetype represents the instinctual, repressed, or disowned parts of the self — not evil exactly, just unintegrated. Read through this lens, the lion isn’t an enemy to defeat; it’s the Shadow, and the woman’s gentleness is the actual technique Jung recommended for working with it: acknowledgment and integration rather than suppression, since a Shadow that’s fought head-on tends to just get stronger.
9. Modern Intuitive / Self-Reflection
Contemporary journaling-style tarot treats this card as a prompt about the difference between force and resolve: Where am I trying to muscle myself into control through sheer willpower, rather than meeting that part of myself with patience? What would it look like to be firm without being harsh, with myself or with someone else?
10. Comparative Mythology — The Road of Trials
Continuing the Campbell throughline, “The Road of Trials” is the stage where the hero faces a whole series of tests and obstacles after leaving the ordinary world — often described as confrontations with monsters that turn out to represent unresolved parts of the hero themselves. That’s almost exactly the Jungian Shadow reading above, restated as narrative: the lion isn’t one battle to win outright, it’s the recurring, ongoing test that keeps showing up along the road, met a little differently — and a little better — each time.