Historical Note: The Great Swap

In the Golden Dawn system inherited by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, Strength is Trump VIII (Hebrew Teth, Leo, Path 19) and Justice is Trump XI (Hebrew Lamed, Libra, Path 22). Aleister Crowley, following instructions he claimed to have received in The Book of the Law, swapped these two cards: in the Thoth deck, Adjustment (Justice) becomes Trump VIII and Lust (Strength) becomes Trump XI. Crowley's rationale was astrological — the card showing a woman and a lion "quite evidently" refers to Leo, and the traditional ordering put the Lion card at number 11 (Libra's position) while the Balance card sat at number 8 (Leo's position), which he saw as an error needing correction. This swap is one of the most significant structural differences between the RWS and Thoth systems, and every reader working across traditions should be aware of it.

The Poetic Line

"Open the lion's jaw and find your own voice roaring back."

Keywords

Narrative Description

General Meaning

Strength is the card of the tamed lion — but what "tamed" means is the entire question. In the RWS tradition, a woman gently closes the lion's mouth. She does not wrestle it, cage it, or kill it. Her power is not over the beast but with the beast. She has made an ally of the very force that could destroy her. The card's essential teaching: the instincts, the passions, the animal body — these are not obstacles to spiritual life but its fuel, if we learn to work with rather than against them.

The card follows The Chariot in the sequence, and the relationship is precise. The Chariot represents the will that conquers external obstacles through force and direction. Strength represents the will that conquers internal obstacles through love and integration. The Chariot wears armor; Strength wears flowers. The Chariot drives forward; Strength stands still and lets the power come to her. The transition from 7 to 8 is the movement from outer victory to inner mastery.

In the Thoth tradition, Crowley renames the card Lust — a word he uses not in its degraded modern sense but in its older meaning of vigor, vitality, the joy of being alive. "Lust implies not only strength, but the joy of strength exercised," he writes. "It is vigour, and the rapture of vigour." The Thoth Lust is not about controlling desire but about riding it — the Scarlet Woman (Babalon) astride the seven-headed Beast, holding the reins of passion in one hand and the Holy Grail (aflame with love and death) in the other. This is not tame; it is ecstatic. The difference between RWS "Strength" and Thoth "Lust" is the difference between gentle mastery and rapturous participation.

In a reading, Strength signals that you have — or need to find — the inner resources to face what frightens you. It is a card of moral courage, emotional resilience, and the quiet confidence that comes from having done the inner work. It says: you are stronger than you know, and the thing you fear may be the very thing that saves you.

Symbolism & Imagery

Rider-Waite-Smith (1909): A woman in a white robe (purity of intent, not absence of passion) leans over a lion, gently closing its jaws. She wears a crown of flowers — roses for love, and the belt around her waist is also floral, suggesting that what binds her is not chain but beauty. Above her head floats the lemniscate, the infinity symbol, also seen on the Magician — but where the Magician's lemniscate represents mastery over the elements, Strength's represents infinite patience, the endless resource of love in the face of ferocity.

The lion is the color of gold, the solar metal, the heart. Its mane is full and its body powerful; this is not a sick or weakened beast. It could kill her. It does not. The landscape behind them is gentle — green hills, a blue sky — suggesting that the inner peace she has achieved radiates outward and creates a peaceful world.

The woman's expression is not one of strain but of calm focus. She does not look at the lion's mouth, where the danger is; she looks slightly downward, as if attending to something beneath the surface. This is the gaze of one who sees through aggression to its source — fear, wounding, the unmet need to be loved.

Thoth (Crowley/Harris, 1944): Harris's Lust is arguably the most radical reimagining in the entire Thoth deck. The central figure is the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, a form of the Moon fully illuminated by the Sun. She rides the Beast — a lion-serpent hybrid with seven heads: an Angel, a Saint, a Poet, an Adulterous Woman, a Man of Valour, a Satyr, and a Lion-Serpent. This is the full spectrum of human (and divine) nature, all ridden by the Woman who has accepted everything.

She holds the reins of passion in her left hand and the Holy Grail — aflame, containing the "blood of the saints" — in her right. The cup is the sacrament, the mingling of all that has been given in love. Ten luminous circles (the Sephiroth in latent state) surround her, and ten horned serpents at the top of the card are sent to destroy and re-create the world.

The background is deep crimson and purple — the colors of blood, of royalty, of the alchemical stage of rubedo (reddening), the final phase of the Great Work. The entire image pulses with a fierce, almost uncomfortable vitality. This is not a card for the faint of heart; it is an invitation to dissolve into the life force itself.

The key difference: RWS shows the woman closing the lion's mouth — containing, gentling. Thoth shows the woman astride the beast, riding it, merged with it, her cup spilling fire. RWS is integration through understanding. Thoth is integration through ecstatic union.

Astrological & Elemental Layer

Leo, the sign of the Lion, governs Strength in both traditions. Leo is fixed Fire — the steady flame, the heart that does not flicker, the sovereign who rules by being rather than by doing. The Sun rules Leo, and solar energy gives this card its warmth, its visibility, its refusal to hide.

Leo's shadow is pride, theatricality, the need for applause — but Strength/Lust channels Leo energy differently. This is not the Leo of the stage but the Leo of the inner throne room: the regal self-possession that needs no audience because it knows its own worth. The lion in the card is not performing; it is simply being what it is, and the woman meets it with equal authenticity.

The elemental attribution is Fire — the element of spirit, will, creative energy, transformation. Fire cards burn, illuminate, and change whatever they touch. Strength as Fire is the heat of the heart, the passion that warms without consuming, the inner sun that can face the outer lion without being burned.

In the Thoth tradition, the Leo attribution is deepened by the decan ruler: Venus in Leo. Venus, the planet of love and beauty, in Leo, the sign of creative self-expression, yields a card of passionate artistry — the love that creates, the beauty that transforms, the heart that rules through attraction rather than force.

Kabbalistic / Tree of Life Layer

Path 19 connects Chesed (Mercy, the fourth Sephirah, the expansive love of Jupiter) to Geburah (Severity, the fifth Sephirah, the disciplined force of Mars). This is the path that holds the tension between the two pillars of the Tree — Mercy on the right, Severity on the left. Strength/Lust is the bridge between love and power, the channel that ensures neither becomes pathological.

Chesed without Geburah becomes indulgence, the love that smothers, the mercy that enables. Geburah without Chesed becomes cruelty, the discipline that breaks, the strength that destroys. The path between them is the balanced heart — the lion that is both powerful and gentle, the will that is both fierce and kind.

The Hebrew letter Teth means "serpent" — the same serpent that appears in the Garden, on the caduceus of Hermes, coiled at the base of the spine as kundalini. Teth is the wisdom of the body, the intelligence of instinct, the force that rises through the chakras when it is acknowledged rather than suppressed. The shape of Teth is often described as a vessel that contains — the body as the container of the soul's fire.

In the Thoth system, Teth is placed on the same path (Chesed to Geburah) but renumbered to Trump XI. Crowley's justification: the card showing the Lion must belong to Leo, and the path of Leo is Teth. The renumbering was, in his view, a correction of an ancient error.

Archetypal & Life-Stage Themes

The Tamer / The Integrator: The RWS Strength embodies the archetype of the one who has made peace with the inner animal — not through violence or suppression but through patient relationship. This is the lion-tamer who uses love rather than the whip, the therapist who sits with the client's rage until it softens into grief, the addict in recovery who has learned to acknowledge the craving without obeying it.

The Ecstatic (Thoth): The Thoth Lust embodies the archetype of the one who has surrendered to the life force and discovered that surrender is not weakness but the ultimate strength. This is the mystic in rapture, the artist in creative frenzy, the lover who loses the self and finds a larger self in union. Babalon riding the Beast is not being destroyed by passion — she is directing it, and her direction is toward the Grail.

The Lion: In both traditions, the lion is an archetype in its own right — the king of beasts, the solar animal, the heart's courage. The lion is what we fear in ourselves: our anger, our desire, our will to power. Meeting the lion is the central task of the second half of life: integrating the instincts that the first half of life taught us to suppress.

The Inner Child's Protector: Strength is also the archetype of the healthy inner adult who can hold the frightened inner child. The woman with the lion is the part of us that can say to our terror: I see you, I am not leaving, and we will get through this together.

In the Fool's Journey: After the external victory of The Chariot, the Fool faces the internal test. Having conquered the world, can they conquer themselves? Strength/Lust is the card where the Fool learns that the greatest power is not over others but over one's own reactive nature — and that full power includes the power to love fiercely, desire fully, and live with the heart wide open.

Advising For / Advising Against

• If advising FOR: Be gentle with your own ferocity. The thing in you that rages, that wants, that terrifies — it is not your enemy. Approach it with the patience of the woman with the lion: not to destroy it but to understand it, to let it know it is seen, to invite it into the service of your wholeness. You are stronger than you believe. The quality of courage you need now is not the courage to fight but the courage to love what you have been taught to hate in yourself.

• If advising AGAINST: Do not mistake repression for strength. If you are holding yourself together through sheer will, through denial of your needs and desires, through the white-knuckled suppression of what is alive in you — that is not strength, it is a dam about to break. The lion you refuse to acknowledge will eventually roar. Better to open the mouth now, voluntarily, and hear what it has to say. And if you are in the Thoth/Lust shadow: do not let passion become possession, ecstasy become addiction, the Beast unridden.

Card of the Day

Today, meet your own strength. Something in you is afraid — of a confrontation, a desire, a truth — and your habitual response may be to suppress it or let it drive you. Instead, stay present with what is fierce in you. Breathe into it. Let it know you are not going to hurt it and you are not going to let it hurt you either. The lion and the woman can coexist. Today, they must.

Card of the Year

A Strength year — when your personal year number reduces to 8 (RWS) or 11/2 (Thoth) — is a year of inner consolidation and the testing of character. This year will ask you to face what you have been avoiding in yourself: old wounds, suppressed desires, the parts of your personality that embarrass or frighten you. The work is integration, not eradication. You may find yourself in situations that require enormous patience, situations where the only winning move is to stay calm while everything around you rages. By year's end, you will know yourself more fully — and you will have discovered reserves of courage you did not know you possessed.

Elemental Dignities Notes

Strength/Lust is Fire — the element of spirit, will, and transformation. In a spread, its elemental relationships follow the Golden Dawn system:

• Strengthened by Air (Swords): Air feeds Fire — clarity of thought fuels passionate action. A Strength card adjacent to Swords gains intellectual precision; the lion's power is directed by conscious intention.
• Strengthened by Fire (Wands): Like element intensifies. Multiple Fire cards amplify the passionate and creative dimension — the ecstasy becomes stronger, though at risk of burning out of control.
• Weakened by Water (Cups): Water quenches Fire. Cups adjacent to Strength may indicate that emotional overwhelm is dampening the inner fire — grief, sentiment, or emotional neediness sapping the will. The lion is being drowned.
• Neutral / Mixed with Earth (Pentacles): Earth can contain Fire — practical structures channel passion into lasting form. But too much Earth can smother the flame entirely, turning vitality into stagnation.

Deck-Specific Notes

• If using a Thoth deck: Lust (Trump XI) is one of the most powerful and confronting cards in the Thoth deck. The Scarlet Woman astride the seven-headed Beast, holding the flaming Grail, represents the full acceptance of the life force — sexual, creative, spiritual — as sacred. The reading emphasis is not on "taming" anything but on riding the energy with full consciousness. This card often appears when the querent is being called to stop apologizing for their vitality, their desire, their power. Shadow: the Beast unridden, passion without direction, the "Dark Brothers" who refuse the mingling of the blood in the cup and perish of their own poison.

• If using a Marseille-tradition deck: La Force typically shows a woman breaking a pillar or holding open a lion's mouth. The Marseille Strength often emphasizes the raw, almost violent aspect of force more than the RWS gentleness — the woman's power is visible, muscular, unambiguous. In some Marseille decks, the woman wears a hat whose brim forms the lemniscate.

• If using a blended or contemporary deck: The astrological and elemental layers apply across visual traditions. The core archetype — inner strength, integration of instinct, the courage to face the lion — persists. The Thoth/Lust dimension (ecstatic participation vs. gentle mastery) is often more accessible in contemporary decks that explicitly draw from both traditions.

Journaling & Contemplation Prompts

• What part of myself have I been trying to tame — and what would happen if I befriended it instead?
• Where in my life am I using force when patience would serve? Where am I being patient when force is needed?
• What desire am I ashamed of? What would it look like to hold that desire with the same gentleness the woman offers the lion?
• If my vitality were a wild animal, what kind of animal would it be, and how have I been treating it?
• (Thoth) Am I riding the Beast, or is the Beast riding me? Is there a difference I've been unwilling to see?

Additional Associations

Shadow & Integration Message

The shadow of Strength is not weakness — it is the cruelty of the repressed. The person who appears "strong" because they feel nothing, who has walled off their vulnerability so thoroughly that they have become the wall, who "tames" their instincts by killing them. This is the parent who never cries, the boss who rules through intimidation, the spiritual practitioner who has bypassed their humanity in pursuit of an imagined purity.

The Thoth tradition adds a second shadow: the Beast unridden. Desire without direction, passion without the Grail. The Scarlet Woman who has forgotten the cup and is merely riding for the thrill of the ride — addictive, consuming, never satisfied. The seven-headed beast of instincts, each head demanding its own satisfaction, with no integrating consciousness to hold the reins.

Integration means neither killing the lion nor being devoured by it. It means the ongoing, lifelong practice of relationship with one's own power — the courage to feel fully, desire fully, love fully, while remaining the one who chooses, the one who holds the cup.

Elemental Intelligence (Suit Framing)

In the Jungian cognitive function mapping, Strength/Lust as Fire aligns with the Intuition function, the choleric humour, and the warrior/sovereign class. The Fire of Strength is not the explosive, short-lived flame of impulse but the steady, solar fire of the integrated self — the person whose actions arise from a unified center rather than from reactive fragments.

The choleric humour in its healthy expression is courageous, decisive, and warm — the natural leader whose authority is given, not seized. In its shadow, the choleric becomes the tyrant, the bully, the one whose fire burns everything around them because it has never been tempered by love. Strength's "class" is the true sovereign — not the one who rules by birthright but by worthiness, the inner king or queen who has earned the crown through the work of self-mastery.

Timing & Manifestation

For timing, Strength signals a period of inner work — not the swift breakthrough of The Chariot but the slower, deeper consolidation of the self. Chronologically, it corresponds to the Leo season (approximately July 23 – August 22). Events influenced by Strength tend to unfold through patience, through repeated small acts of courage, through the gradual building of trust between the conscious self and the instinctual depths. The timing answer is: when you stop fighting yourself — which may be sooner than you think, or the work of a lifetime.

Yes / No Tendency

Strength leans toward Yes, if you approach with love rather than force. The outcome is achievable, but not through aggression, not through white-knuckling, not through the willpower that exhausts itself. The "yes" of Strength is the quiet yes of the woman with the lion: I can do this, but not the way you think. In a yes/no spread, Strength asks: is your approach one of force or of integration? If force — the answer may still be yes, but the cost will be high.

In reversed / ill-dignified position, the tendency shifts toward not yet — the inner work is incomplete. The lion is not ready to be approached, or you are not ready to approach it. More patience, more gentleness, more honest self-examination is needed before forward motion is sustainable.

Common Misreads / Nuances to Know

Misread 1: "Strength means you can endure anything." The card is not about endurance at the cost of self. It is about the strength that knows its limits and respects them. The woman with the lion is not a martyr; she is a partner in a relationship that could go either way. True strength includes the wisdom to rest.

Misread 2: "Strength reversed means you're weak." More often, it means you are using the wrong kind of strength — forcing when you should be feeling, controlling when you should be trusting, suppressing when you should be expressing. The reversal is an invitation to try a different way.

Misread 3: "Lust (Thoth) is just about sex." Crowley's "Lust" is closer to the Latin lustrum (a period of purification) and the Middle English lust (vigor, delight) than to the modern pejorative. The card is about the life force in its totality — creative, spiritual, erotic, devotional. Reducing it to genital sexuality misses the point. The Scarlet Woman holds the Grail; the Beast she rides is the full spectrum of existence.

Nuance for RWS readers approaching Thoth: Do not be alarmed by Lust. It is not a fallen or debased Strength — it is Strength seen from the other side, the perspective not of the tamer but of the one who has realized that the lion and the self are not two. The integration that RWS achieves through gentleness, Thoth achieves through ecstasy. Both are valid. Both are needed.