Major Arcana
Strength
Strength is courage with a gentle hand: patient, deliberate, and unwilling to dominate.
- courage
- patience
- self-command
- care
Read the card in its own right, then follow its meaning through the spread.
Two orientations
The card’s meaning
Strength concerns how power and intensity are met and expressed. It can share discipline or emotional steadiness with other cards while centering courage, restraint and the capacity to remain responsive.
Upright
Strength is courage with a gentle hand: patient, deliberate, and unwilling to dominate.
Strength keeps power close without turning it into force. The lion remains present, and the hand does not pretend instinct, anger, or fear has disappeared. Instead, the card describes the courage to stay present with intensity and choose how it is expressed. Its confidence is steady, its limits are clear, and its care does not require surrendering authority over your own response.
- courage
- patience
- self-command
- care
Reversed
Strength reversed turns courage inward, where strain, self-doubt, or overcontrol may mask it.
Strength reversed concerns courage that is difficult to access or sustain under strain. Composure may involve containing more than can be comfortably carried, or keeping fear and self-doubt out of view. The private effort of maintaining composure can add to the pressure already present. Acknowledging difficulty and easing unnecessary control can make self-command less punishing while preserving clear limits; the card does not define a person as weak.
- self-doubt
- pressure
- restraint
- inner courage
How the reversal changes the emphasis
The selected lens makes the effort behind composure visible: courage may be present even when doubt or strain makes it difficult to express.
The question changes the emphasis
Reading this card in context
Each spread gives its cards different roles. The examples below explore this card as an influence, a situation or challenge, and advice or support. Begin with the question your position asks, wherever it falls in the spread.
As an influence
Upright
Patience, self-command, or the effort to keep force out of the situation may still define its roots.
Reversed
A long effort to stay composed or carry intensity privately may still shape what you expect from yourself.
As a situation or challenge
Upright
Turn your attention to how strength is being used: as steady authority, restraint, endurance, or pressure.
Reversed
Consider whether keeping calm leaves enough room to acknowledge strain, ask for support, or adjust an expectation.
As advice or support
Upright
Choose a deliberate response, hold a clear limit, and leave room for care without giving force the final word.
Reversed
Name what is difficult and reduce an unnecessary demand on yourself, while keeping the limits you need.
Read through a particular life focus
Open reading
Consider what a steady response would involve when intensity is present, including the limits that make care possible.
Love & relationships
Patience and a clear limit can be considered together without treating endurance of harm as proof of love or strength.
Work & direction
A demanding exchange may benefit from deliberate response and an honest account of what can be sustained.
Home & family
Care can remain firm where needed, without assuming that keeping everyone calm is one person’s responsibility.
Self-growth
Notice what courage already requires and whether self-command leaves room to acknowledge difficulty or seek support.
Look a little closer
The imagery
Gentle hand
The woman rests her hand on the lion rather than restraining it by force.
The gesture makes courage relational: power is met through steadiness, attention, and trust.
Lion
A full-grown lion sits calmly beside the woman.
The lion keeps appetite, anger, and instinct present without making them enemies that must be conquered.
Infinity sign
An infinity symbol floats above the woman’s head.
The unbroken line suggests a strength renewed through continued practice rather than one dramatic victory.
Two points of gentle contact
One hand rests on the lion’s head while the other supports its chin.
The contact keeps attention close to the powerful animal while leaving its strength visibly present.
Similarities & differences
Related cards
Tradition & Lunaire’s interpretation
The traditional foundation
Waite associates Strength with fortitude and the handling of the passions, using the woman and lion within a religious account of spiritual confidence. He distinguishes that confidence from ordinary self-assurance.
Lunaire’s reading
Lunaire interprets courage through patient self-command, care and clear limits. Its private-expression reversal concerns strain or self-doubt that makes courage hard to express; this is a modern reflective selection, not a personal verdict. The gentle contact in this deck does not require the lion to be treated as an enemy.
Read the source in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot ↗
Arthur Edward Waite. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. W. Rider; [1911]. Illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith. Source edition details ↗