Strength Tarot Card Meaning

Strength tarot card upright: what it means

Eight is the number on this card in Waite's deck, and the card before it helps explain the meaning. Biddy Tarot says The Chariot signifies "outer strength and will", and The Tarot Guide says Strength usually refers to "inner challenges". That puts the Chariot's win on the outside and Strength's inside the person.

In Waite's own words the card means "Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours." That list is loud and public. The gentleness came from his picture, where a woman closes a lion's jaws and the animal, already subdued, is led by a chain of flowers.

Biddy Tarot, Labyrinthos and The Tarot Guide each bring in confidence. Waite wrote against that reading. In his picture notes he says the card "has nothing to do with self-confidence in the ordinary sense", and that it concerns "the confidence of those whose strength is God". The card still stands for steadiness under pressure today. Waite places that steadiness in faith, not in self-assurance.

Strength reversed: weakness or too much force?

Set the reversed card beside the reversed Chariot and the difference is where the trouble sits. For the Chariot, Waite lists "Riot, quarrel, dispute" and similar outside events. For Strength he lists "Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace." That list points two directions at once: force used too hard (despotism, abuse of power) and force that has gone missing (weakness, discord).

The leading sites move the weakness inside. Self-doubt shows up in the reversed keywords of Biddy Tarot, Labyrinthos and The Tarot Guide, and Labyrinthos adds "forcefulness". Tarot.com names "emotional volatility". The Tarot Guide is careful: the reversal "does not indicate a lack of strength" and describes a person who has lost touch with it.

To choose between the readings, ask which way you are leaning. If you hold back because you doubt yourself, the modern reading fits. If you press harder than the situation needs, with a raised voice or a rule nobody agreed to, Waite's despotism fits better.

Is Strength a yes or no card?

Upright Strength gets a yes from every yes or no page we checked. Tarot.com says "the answer is YES.", Zenithalign gives Yes, and TarotAtlas says you "can be sure of a positive outcome". It is a yes that comes through steady effort.

For the reversed card the pages are thinner. Zenithalign answers conditional yes and describes the reader as feeling "self-doubt or raw impatience", while Tarot.com gives nothing. Our version: yes once the shaky part is dealt with, and not yet until then.

Book T ends its short meaning for the card with one extra word, "Obstinacy." A yes from Strength can be a yes to a plan you have grown stubborn about, so word the question so that giving it up is an allowed answer.

Strength in love

In a relationship

Two people argue in a parked car after a family dinner. One gets louder; the other lowers their voice and waits. That is the upright card between partners: patience that outlasts the heat. The Tarot Guide says Strength usually points to "a strong couple, close and united", and Labyrinthos adds a warning that the same fire can make a relationship "prone to anger, jealousy or other emotional explosions".

Single

Tarot.com advises single readers to "root any relationship search in self-worth". The Tarot Guide adds that "a relationship with a Leo may be on the cards". We read that as a hint about the sign.

Strength as feelings

Standing for someone's feelings, upright Strength is care held carefully. Labyrinthos reads it as "deep admiration and respect for your resilience". The feelings are strong, and the person is handling them on purpose.

Strength reversed in love

The reversed card can describe someone too unsure to say what they feel; Labyrinthos writes of a person who "lacks confidence in expressing them". It can also fit the other side of Waite's list, one partner running the other. Ask which of the two is closer, since they call for different conversations.

Astrology side of the same question: Leo compatibility with every sign · Leo in love.

Strength as work and money

Should you speak up when a coworker keeps cutting you off, or let it pass? Strength leans toward calm firmness. Tarot.com says the card may be asking you to "take the high road with a difficult boss, client, or co-worker", and Labyrinthos says you may only need to "muster your courage to make big moves".

Reversed, the card fits low energy after a long push, or a manager who uses authority to shut people down, which is Waite's abuse of power. Pace yourself in the first case; document what happened in the second. On money it speaks of controlling impulses and promises no outcome.

Strength as advice and as a person

Fortitude was a virtue before it was a card. Wikipedia places it with Temperance and Justice among the cardinal virtues in the Major Arcana. As advice, that makes Strength a practice: do the steady thing again tomorrow, and start the hard conversation at a low volume.

When the card stands for someone, it is the patient one in the room, the person who stays level when others do not. Book T gives the card to Leo, a fire sign ruled by the Sun, so we picture that person as lion-hearted. That is our reading, not a source's.

Symbolism of the Rider–Waite–Smith card

• The woman. Waite describes "a woman" who is "closing the jaws of a lion". Biddy Tarot adds a white robe, which it reads as purity of spirit.
• The lion. Waite writes that "the lion signifies the passions, and she who is called Strength is the higher nature in its liberation".
• The chain of flowers. The animal is led by "a chain of flowers", which Waite says signifies, among many other things, "the sweet yoke and the light burden of Divine Law". Tarot.com writes "No chains", which is not quite what the picture shows.
• The infinity sign. Over the woman's head is the same symbol of life Waite points to in the Magician. Wikipedia gives Eden Gray's reading of it as enlightenment and spiritual powers.
• The crown of flowers. Biddy Tarot describes "a belt and crown of flowers" that stand for the most beautiful expression of nature.
• The mountains. Labyrinthos reads the blue background over the mountains as stability and the calm that goes with it.

Strength or Fortitude: why the card is numbered VIII

Waite tells the reader outright that he moved the card: "For reasons which satisfy myself, this card has been interchanged with that of justice, which is usually numbered eight." Wikipedia says Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and Justice the eighth, and the swap makes them fit the Golden Dawn's correspondences, where the eighth card goes with Leo and the eleventh with Libra. The switch was first suggested in the Cipher Manuscripts.

The correspondence table below gives the card's Book T name and number as Fortitude, 11, because the Golden Dawn text writes it as "11. Fortitude". Yet the same text lists Fortitude eighth in its table of keys, after The Chariot and before The Hermit. So Book T keeps the old numbers but already puts the card in Waite's place.

Strength and Leo: the card's zodiac sign

Attributions from Book T (Golden Dawn, c. 1892; printed 1912).

The lion on the card matches the sign Book T gives it. Leo is a fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun, and the card's Hebrew letter is Tet. Fire is in the Book T title too, "The Daughter of the Flaming Sword". Wikipedia notes that older decks showed either a woman breaking a pillar or a person subduing a lion, and the modern picture likely merges the two.

In Book T, Leo covers three Wands cards: the Five of Wands (Strife, under Saturn), the Six of Wands (Victory, under Jupiter) and the Seven of Wands (Valour, under Mars). Read in order, the titles run from a struggle to a win to holding your ground.

The three Leo cards of the minor arcana

Next Leo season: the Sun enters Leo on July 22, 9:04 p.m. EDT and stays until August 23, 4:13 a.m. EDT (2027, US Eastern time).

Your Sun need not be in Leo for the sign to matter: across the 35,064 dates from 1930 to 2025 that we ran, 56.1% put at least one of ten planets in it. The tool below places yours.

Questions about Strength

Next to Strength

In the Major Arcana: The Chariot (7) ← Strength (8) → The Hermit (9).

Leo on this site: Leo zodiac sign · Leo rising · Mercury in Leo · Venus in Leo · your full birth chart.

All 22 cards with their signs and planets: tarot card meanings.

Written by The Zodiac Atlas editorial team with the help of AI and edited by a person. Quotations are from Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot and the Golden Dawn's Book T, both in the public domain; the card picture is a 1910 printing of Pamela Colman Smith's drawing for the 1909 deck. Sign dates and planet positions come from the astronomy-engine ephemeris (tropical zodiac). Tarot and astrology are symbolic traditions; they do not predict events.