Strength Tarot Card Meaning

Strength upright

A woman calmly closes a lion's jaws, a garland of flowers leading it. Waite says the lion has already been subdued — she is not fighting it — and reads the flowers as the gentle yoke of a higher law. In a reading: steady kindness, self-control and patient courage will win where force would fail.

Strength reversed

Waite reversed gives despotism, abuse of power, weakness and discord. Either you are being too hard on someone (or yourself), or your confidence has dipped. Return to calm, consistent steps.

A reversed card (What does Upright / reversed card mean?) is one drawn upside-down.

Is Strength a yes or no?

Upright: Leans yes. Yes — though success comes through patience rather than pushing.

Reversed: Reversed, Strength reads as a gentle no: self-doubt, harshness, weakness.

The yes/no lean is BornClock’s reading convention drawn from the card’s meaning — Waite himself did not assign one.

Symbolism in the Strength card

What appears in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith picture, as Waite describes it:

• Woman closing the lion's mouth — passions already mastered, gently
• Chain of flowers — Waite: the "sweet yoke and light burden" of a higher law
• Figure-of-eight above her head — the same sign of life as the Magician

In Waite’s own words (paraphrased)

Upright: power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; complete success and honours.

Reversed: despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord.

Source: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910, public domain). Some of Waite’s 1910 fortune-telling meanings are old-fashioned; the plain-English reading above is ours.