8: Strength
Major Arcana #8 is the strength card. This card is technically the 9th card and it has some deep significance pertaining to strength and what it truly means to be strong. Taking a look at the card, we see a woman dressed in a white gown, a rose garland tied around her waist and draped down her skirt, with a crown of roses on her head, above which an infinity sign hovers. This woman, for all intents and purposes, seems fairly average in stature, but in her hands she is holding open the jaws of a lion. That is certainly not the norm for someone who isn’t physically mighty! Additionally the lion doesn’t seem to be resisting at all, rather he seems happy to oblige her, as he stares up at her soft filing face. They are outside in a grassy field with a clear bright yellow sky and a mountain range behind them. When we think of strength, we tend to think of physical strength, as the patriarchal society we live in tends to associate strength and power to acts of aggression and physicality....